LUCKY ME

The last time readers met Cecily “C.C.” Carruthers (Curtis Piperfield’s Biggest Fan, 1995, etc.), she had just become the first girl in her ninth-grade class at St. Bernadette School to be French-kissed by a boy, an experience that effectively ended her crush on Curtis Piperfield and left her half in love with impossibly handsome Patrick. The problem is that Patrick, a very methodical person, wants to go beyond the kissing stage of their relationship, and C.C. questions the entire range of baseball metaphors tied to sexuality. Her girlfriends can’t help her with the answers; they shock C.C. with the depth of their own experiences, of which she’d been oblivious. One friend she can always depend on is her long-time admirer Cluck. It’s not much of a surprise that C.C. and Patrick part company (but only after funny episodes in which her father intercepts the “date bra” that C.C. has ordered through the mail, and catches C.C. and Patrick necking), but getting to that break-up includes hilarious scenes roiling with the agonies of adolescence. The cast of perfectly realized characters is headed by the bright and talented C.C., who remains her own person through it all. (Fiction. 11-14)