Twenty-Point Violations** (may include a $150 fine):
Falsification of information
Failure to properly identify oneself
Inappropriate personal contact including any state of undress with a member of the opposite sex
Creating a disruption to the community
Interacting with alcohol, including but not limited to: participation in a social gathering where alcohol is served, consumption of alcohol, and/or serving, buying, or possession of alcohol
**Appeals for 20-point violations are only accepted in limited circumstances within 12 hours of notification. Accepted appeals will be seen before the Student Court of Appeals and a trial of your peers will be had. Following a trial, all decisions—including extended fines and expulsion—are final.
When Catherine’s older brother invited us to an off-campus party the weekend before Christmas break, Ruthie couldn’t have said yes faster. It was like the word was living on the tip of her tongue just waiting to fly off the second “off-campus” and “boys” were mentioned in the same sentence. She had basically been preparing for this since our first night in the forest, waiting patiently until our party group decided to take the party off the blessed land to somewhere less holy but more interesting.
“This isn’t a Covenant party,” Catherine had said. “It’s with locals. So...don’t look like a Covenant student.”
Ruthie took that assignment to heart and got us ready in the most scandalous thing we could think of to wear in freezing temperatures: jeans and T-shirts. Ruthie sliced her shirt midway so it seemed to float over her boobs and reveal her belly button, and she pulled mine taut around my newly formed waist and tied it in a flimsy knot that sat against my lower back like a tattoo.
“We look hot,” she said, standing beside me in the mirror once we finished getting ready. She was right, we did. I’d lost fifteen pounds at that point. I’d noticed the way my collarbone poked out from my shoulder, the way my cheeks and chin were more defined. The way everyone exalted, congratulating me with every pound gone, like this was the accomplishment of a lifetime. But in my old clothes, all of that was hidden. The only time I thought about it was when my underwear started forming into clumps under my pants, too baggy for my new body, but I was too poor to buy more.
Ruthie pulled her makeup out from under her bed, from the spot it had been sitting and gathering dust ever since we started hanging out with Catherine and Annie. She seemed unconcerned that any of it was expired.
She moved all the wands and brushes and sticks over her face effortlessly, like all of this was muscle memory; she’d done it so many times she didn’t need to think. Then she did the same to me—covering my face in foundation, filling my cheeks with blush, lining my eyes with mascara. When she finished, I hardly recognized myself—my eyelashes long and chunky, my eyelids sparkling in brown and gold powder, my cheeks bony and pink.
I could hardly contain my excitement, not just for the party but for Ruthie. There was something about getting ready with her like this—exchanging clothes, making each other look good, smiling side by side in the mirror hanging on the back of the door—that was perfect. Everything was perfect. This was exactly what I’d pictured college to be. And Ruthie was the perfect person to share it with.
“Here.” I twisted my hands behind my neck and pulled off my necklace, my initials mocking me with their permanence. The delicate cross on the other side was like one last warning, one last reminder that I was doing this. I was leaving all this behind. “You should wear this,” I told her, remembering her compliments from our first day. She took it without question, looping it around her neck and clasping it in one practiced move.
“I love it,” she said, her hand lingering over her heart. “Take a picture with me.”
She held her camera out, coiling her hands around to attempt to aim the lens at us. We smiled, the flash stinging my eyes for a moment.
She put the camera in her small purse. “I’m going to immortalize this party,” she said, uncontained glee oozing from her every word. “Let’s freaking do this.”
We knew that Brigid would patrol our hallway sometime between 9:45 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., and at 9:48 we heard the heavy fire door open, then the dull shuffle of Brigid’s clogs against the carpeted hallway, moving slightly faster than usual. She stopped briefly in front of a few doors, and it was unclear whether she’d heard something or she was innately suspicious. By 9:52, she was gone.
“She moves one floor at a time,” Ruthie whispered to me as she peeked her head out our door to double-check we were in the clear. She waved for me to follow her and I turned off the lights and did exactly what she said. We stood against the fire door, peeking through the small glass window until we saw Brigid emerge and disappear down the West Wing staircase.
“Let’s go,” Ruthie whispered, quickly hopping into the elevator and pressing the down button. It’s easy to forget that Brigid is still a student here. She gets weighed in, too. She was probably told by her freshman RA about the benefits of the staircase and hasn’t taken the elevator since. Who knew that one note would be so beneficial.
We pushed out the dorm’s front doors and into the darkness like we had so many other nights, snaking through the bushes, following our usual routine. But this time there was an excitement to it I hadn’t felt since our first night in the woods. This was something new. We were leaving.
We met Catherine, Annie, Andrew, Nicholas, and Timothy in our spot in the woods. When I told Ruthie that Timothy kissed me—running from the spot to our dorm on a mission that afternoon—she didn’t quite react the way I expected her to. She cheered me on and we jumped up and down, excited for me to have experienced my first real kiss, to have my first potential boyfriend, to do all the things with boyfriends that we had talked about. But it felt forced. Fake. Like she was doing it to placate me, not because she actually felt that way; not because she was actually happy. She seemed jealous. Like she wished it was her instead.
In the woods, Timothy realized that if we stood on the cooler, we could climb over the stone wall and we wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught on any cameras leaving campus late. I wanted to ask how we’d get back without a cooler on the other side, but decided not to worry about it. If they weren’t concerned, they probably had a plan. Who was I to question it?
Catherine’s brother was on the other side of the wall waiting for us and we squeezed into his car. Nicholas with his broad shoulders sat in the front and the rest of us in the back. Timothy invited me to sit on his lap—I nearly screamed with excitement at the thought—and I could feel his penis against my leg whenever one of us shifted with a bump in the road.
When I looked over at Ruthie, sitting on Andrew’s lap, she was staring out the window, her forehead resting on the glass. She was smiling, taking in the promise of the night. With her right hand, she lowered the window. The wind kicked in once we hit the two-lane highway and she closed her eyes, still smiling, dreaming. Her face glowed in the light of the moon.
Catherine’s brother parked on the grassy edge of the road, at the bottom of what looked like a full mountain, claiming he didn’t have the right tires to trek all the way up and back down if it was supposed to snow, like the forecast suggested. “Plus, his parents don’t want all our cars in their driveway,” he added.
“His parents are going to be there?” Catherine asked.
“Of course not. But they still have rules, I guess. Whatever. I don’t even know them.”
Ruthie turned around to face the steep trail through the forest to the house, planks of wood firmly stationed into the cold ground to create steps, their shape uneven and difficult to maneuver, not unlike the Rape Steps on campus.
This was when the first of many uneasy feelings started creeping into my chest, making me wish I’d taken a shot or two in the woods before we left. Something that would help push them away. The anxiety of the unknown sat on my rib cage, making it even more difficult to breathe than it already was as I climbed.
Ruthie sidled up to me on the trail and before I knew it, her camera flashed in our face.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Catherine’s brother hissed.
Ruthie giggled like she was already drunk. “Oh, calm down!” she said, continuing up the hill.
I didn’t like that I didn’t know where we were. I didn’t like that our ride home was gone and our access to cell phone service was spotty at best. I didn’t like that I didn’t have an address or a town or even the name of the owners. It was starting to feel too secluded.
Halfway up the mountain’s trail, a light sparked through the trees in the distance, on and off quickly like Morse code as we moved closer.
“There it is,” Ruthie whispered, like she’d just found the Holy Land. “There’s the party.”
I, however, didn’t see the light as welcoming. I, like with most things, saw it as a warning. Like the old tin sign that my great-great-grandfather had hammered onto the foot of our property, the point at which the paved street split into our long dirt driveway.
Trespassers Will Be Shot.
It wasn’t an empty threat.
The house was glass and wood and didn’t come into view until we were already in the front yard, blending into the darkness like a Monet painting, so much that it was impossible to tell how big the house was—just that it was big, and dark, and empty. I started to get nervous that we were in the wrong place, or that this was all a trap, until the dull murmurs of talking, the faint bang of a bass, the hushed whooping of cheers, muffled and lost in the surrounding trees, began to reveal themselves.
Ruthie squeezed my arm as we walked around the side of the house, excited beyond words that we were at a college party. Any disappointment she felt over the fact that it took us this long to get invited to one was quickly washed away in anticipation.
“Tonight’s the night,” she whispered. “It’s all going to happen.” I looked over and matched my smile to hers, though I wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about.
Behind the house, in the back corner of the property, was an old red barn, the source of the muffled noise we were drawn to like moths to light. It looked like it didn’t belong there—the peeling red paint, the hole-filled roof, the broken doors. It looked like my parents’ except ours wasn’t painted and was filled with hay, not drunk college students.
We followed Catherine’s brother as he slipped through the slightly ajar door and the party opened up in front of us. A song about dancing until you die was so loud I was shocked we couldn’t hear it from the street where we parked. There were kids everywhere—dancing, rubbing together like they were having sex fully clothed (a thirty-point violation, at least); standing around a folding table covered in a formation of red cups, the same in the scene from the Hell House we’d been to all those months before (twenty points); lingering around the perimeter (twenty points), drinking or smoking or laughing (thirty points). In the back corner of the barn, on a collection of old and frayed leather couches, a couple was kissing, the girl straddling on top of the boy, her legs spread over his lap (thirty points).
It was like everywhere I looked, a little button popped out of the air, tallying how many points everyone would be accumulating throughout the night. At first it freaked me out and, for the briefest moment, I contemplated leaving—if I left now, I could still make it back before curfew. I’d be safely tucked into bed and zero points would be written on the dry-erase board next to my door when I woke up in the morning.
But Ruthie would never let me. She’d been waiting for this for months. If I left this party, I’d lose her. There was no question about it. So, in that moment, I took a deep breath and decided to stay. And if I was going to stay, if there was even the slightest chance that this night would lead to hundreds of points and a one-way ticket to my parents’ less-than-welcoming arms, well, it was going to be the best night of my life.
A flash brought me back as Ruthie took another photo, though this time, in the light of the barn, it didn’t leave me with white circles under my eyelids. And no one else seemed to notice at all.
Two guys—possibly two of the hottest boys I have ever seen—greeted Catherine’s brother with an excited “Yooo!” as we snaked through people toward the drinks. A girl I could only describe as absolutely beautiful followed them closely, a fake smile on her face as she watched the two boys’ attention divert from her to us.
“See?” the taller boy said to the shorter, “I told you he’d bring girls!”
Their fangirl stopped in her tracks then, shook her head, and walked away.
They stood in front of us, looking each of us up and down in the least subtle way I’d ever seen. They weren’t trying to play it off as hello, either—they were undressing us with their eyes. Little did they know how easy we’d made it for them compared to our usual outfits.
I tugged at my shirt once the taller one’s eyes met mine. I suddenly felt naked, like he could see right through my T-shirt and jeans and borrowed The North Face jacket. It felt like he was bypassing the abs that had more definition than I’d ever known possible or the arms that were toned just for Jesus, and focused straight on my real body, the virgin body. The guys were like golden retrievers: happy, excited, and staring at us, waiting for us to play with them.
“Are you going to get us drinks or what?” Catherine finally said, breaking the drunken silence.
The guys turned and led us to a Gatorade cooler in the back—I recognized it from convocation. There was always a stack of them on the sidelines as Dr. Felix Chastain spoke from his makeshift altar in the center of the football field once a week.
The shorter boy pulled some red cups out of a stack and held them under the cooler’s spout. He handed one to me as he began to fill another and when I looked inside, I was disgusted by a fluorescent pink liquid. I watched as everyone else received their glasses and no one questioned why our drinks looked radioactive, so I didn’t either. If everyone was drinking it, it wouldn’t kill us all, right?
Ruthie sidled up to me, holding her cup to mine. “This is going to be the best night of our lives,” she said. “Cheers.”
I didn’t think. I just drank. I knew that if I let myself truly taste—or even smell—whatever shit was in this cup, I’d vomit, so I put it to my lips, opened my throat, and didn’t take another breath until I banged the cup against the side of the barn, empty, (thirty points), and Ruthie flashed her camera in my distorted face.
“Well fuck me,” Timothy said, staring at me and the cup in disbelief.
It was worse than any sips of moonshine I’d ever stolen from my father’s stash. But I was done. And I was going to get drunk.
As my eyes moved around the room, I realized how fake the entire thing seemed. The barn was barren and seemed like the only purpose it served was for parties like these. The room was filled with normal teenagers—kids who weren’t waiting until marriage, or taking creationism classes, or taught that drinking and drugs and touching a boy will send you straight to hell.
I took Ruthie’s arm. “Let’s dance!” I said, pulling her onto the dance floor, which was really a clearing of hay in the center of the room. We dropped our empty cups somewhere along the way so we could swing our arms in the air and move to a song I’d never heard before.
Maybe the alcohol was hitting me, or maybe this was God’s radioactivity beginning to strike me down, but it felt like Ruthie and I were the only ones in the barn. I could barely hear the music anymore. I couldn’t see or feel anyone around us. It was only her.
Flash.
Her brown hair, in salty untamed waves, flung around her head in every direction like a lion’s mane. Her eyes were a stunning purplish blue. Like the sky during magic hour. Captivating and calming all at once. When she closed them to hear the music, her smile got so big she looked like she’d never been happier. Like this truly was the best moment of her life.
This is how I try to remember her. This is the Ruthie I wish I could have known forever.
“I love you!” Ruthie yelled, not to me, or to anyone really. Into the ether. Into the night. Into the song.
“I love you!” I yelled back to her, and her alone, wrapping my arms around her neck.
“Let’s get another drink!” she said, once the song she liked faded into one she didn’t. I could have danced with her forever. I could have stayed in that moment forever.
I liked the weightless feeling I got from the pink drink. The way my forehead felt detached from my body, my brain acting on its own accord.
We drank another cup.
Then we danced. Catherine and Annie popped in here or there. Then the two hot guys who invited us. Then Catherine and Annie again.
We drank another cup, and time was nonexistent. I had no clue where in the night we were. I hadn’t seen Ruthie in ages. Or had I? Had we just been dancing? Or was that hours ago? How many drinks had I had? Did any of it really matter?
“Ruthie?” I knew I said it—loud, I think—but I couldn’t hear the words actually come out of my mouth. I was looking around, my lips moving the way I told them to, when I felt hands around my waist.
“You look amazing.”
Timothy was standing behind me, his chin pressing into my shoulder a little too hard, too much of his weight pulling me down.
I turned and before I could even fully register that it was him, his thick hands cupped my lower back and he started kissing the side of my neck. It felt, and sounded, like a suction cup; like he was pulling my skin into his mouth and then popping it back into place. His five-o’clock shadow felt scratchy but I stopped noticing when I realized his hands were moving down my body, from my back to my butt to between my legs. I could feel the heat building there, a sensation I’d only experienced to this degree once before. In a car, in a gas station parking lot, looking at a strange boy’s contorted face as he orgasmed for the first time.
“Kiss me on the mouth,” I told him, surprising even myself. I could feel him get hard at my demand and I pressed my knees together to get rid of the tingle, sucking in like I had to pee. He pressed against me even harder as he started to kiss me, with tongue, without tongue, his mustache scraping my upper lip. The pins and needles I’d felt in the car—the same I had when Timothy pushed me against the tree a few days ago—started to fade as we stood in the center of this barn, his hands gentle, careful, nervous even. I started to get bored and my mind started wandering to Ruthie—what was she doing? Was she seeing this? Or, even better, was she kissing someone, too?
He stepped back and took my hands in his. “Want to go outside?” he asked.
“It’s pretty cold out there...” I said.
He smiled. “Come on...” He pulled me close to him and my boobs squished against his chest. He wanted to go outside to be private, I realized. To have sex. He wanted to have sex with me.
He wanted to have sex with me.
My article Rolodex started spinning on overdrive: Ten Moves to a Guaranteed Orgasm—Blow Jobs for Dummies—Positions to Make Him—Condoms 101—
“Do you have a, um...” I started to ask then stopped myself.
Everything I’d ever learned about sex cascaded into my brain until it felt like it could explode. Condoms were bad. Sex is for procreation and condoms prevent procreation. But condoms are good. Sex is for pleasure and condoms prevent unwanted procreation. Blow jobs are bad. Sex is for procreation and blow jobs have nothing to do with procreation. But blow jobs are good. Sex is for pleasure and foreplay is important. Sex is bad. Sex before marriage is bad. Sex with someone you don’t love is bad. But sex is good. Sex is so mouthwateringly good.
He took my hand and I followed him outside, unable to process all my learned contradictions. Everything I’d read belied everything I’d been taught. The only thing I knew for certain was that since I arrived at Covenant, everything I’d been told was a grave sin—something for which I’d never be forgiven—seemed small and unimportant. I’d been doing some of these things for months and I was still alive. We all were. So what was the big deal?
I was drunk, but I was sober enough to say yes. I was sober enough to take his pants off. I was sober enough to put his penis in my mouth and then take my pants off and then lean against the outside of the barn while he put it inside me. I was sober enough to know it felt bad and then it felt good.
As I pulsed back and forth, our bodies moving in tandem as he moaned and repeated “you’re so hot, this is so hot,” I became quickly uninterested and, frankly, found the whole thing boring. He was touching my boobs under my shirt, and I was looking at his face, contorted with each pulse until finally he moaned so loud, I was afraid someone was going to hear us, and he fell on top of me.
“Holy shit,” he said, out of breath. “That was amazing.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, panicking for a moment that I’d been so bored I’d forgotten to fake an orgasm like Cosmo had told me to. But my panic was relieved when I realized he didn’t even notice.
“Was that good? For you?” he asked.
I nodded and kissed him, more out of obligation than desire. “So good,” I said, playing it off though I probably didn’t need to. He wasn’t thinking about me anymore.
Once he caught his breath he stood up and pulled the condom off, tossing it with a flick of the wrist. It landed in the cold dirt about an inch away from my face and I felt a wash of relief that he’d put one on in the first place. I had been too caught up in all the other unknowns to notice.
He was standing over me, pulling his pants on, staring at me with an exhausted smile. “You’re seriously so hot,” he said. “It’s wasted in those stupid Covenant clothes.”
The more he said it the less meaning it held. It was just a temperature, really. It meant almost nothing anymore.
He kissed me again, only for a second, like a thank-you, and then walked back into the party, leaving me lying there half naked, dirt covering my back. But I was grateful to be alone. To make sure I was okay. I reached for my face, felt my cheeks, hollower than usual but still there, my eyes, my nose, my ears. I felt my shoulders and elbows, my breasts and belly button and hip bones. Nothing had changed. The forest was exactly as it was before, silent and still. The barn was exactly as it was before. I was exactly as I was before. I looked down at my underwear, looped around one ankle like a Hula-Hoop. The same.
It wasn’t the romantic moment I had pictured—slow and gentle with kisses and whispers asking if I was okay. It all happened so fast. And then he was gone. It seemed more function than form. We were no longer virgins. We helped each other cross that mighty uphill bridge. And now that we were on the other side, we could just have sex without worrying about whether anyone will know how inexperienced we were; whether there will be proof. I became just a girl. A non-virgin girl.
I stood up slowly and pulled on my underwear, then my jeans. Then I waited, again, to give God one more chance to strike me down. But nothing happened.
Once my head cleared, the fog of fear washing away with every moment of inaction, I remembered an article I’d read: Why You Must Pee after Sex, from a Gyno!
Pee after sex, I reminded myself.
I made my way around the side of the barn, to the open sliding doors, and was stopped in my tracks the second I spotted Timothy, next to the Gatorade cooler, pouring himself another drink and talking to Andrew and Nicholas. They were laughing and I could feel myself blush, my face was hot, stinging almost. Were they laughing at me?
The image of Timothy’s contorted face, his eyes bulging and the vein in his neck popping out as he collapsed on top of me flashed in my mind and I immediately felt my shoulders drop from my ears. I almost started laughing, too. If anyone had been inhabited by the Devil this night, it was surely him, in that moment, with that wild face.
Then I thought about Ruthie. I needed to find her. I needed to tell her everything. Every. Single. Detail. I couldn’t wait to see her face—how excited she’d be for me, how we’d laugh together about what a big deal we both made it. It really doesn’t hurt, I’d tell her, assuaging my own concern. I did kind of feel like a different person—but in the same way you might after a milestone birthday. Nothing has actually changed, it’s just another day, but I felt oddly wiser. Like I finally had an experience Ruthie didn’t. I had something she could ask me about.
I turned and walked out the door through which I’d entered. I wasn’t sure if Timothy had seen me, but I didn’t care. First stop was the bathroom—peeing was either supposed to prevent STDs or UTIs or pregnancy, I didn’t remember which, but I wanted none of those. Second stop was Ruthie.
Torches lit a long path from the barn toward what looked like some kind of pool house—a small structure beside the covered pool with a kitchen and bathroom inside. It had started snowing—the thick kind of flakes that melt the second they touch the earth—and when I reached the pool house door I leaned my head into the sky, feeling the snow land gently on my face before turning into water.
As I twisted the doorknob, I felt familiar hands wrap around me. “Where have you beeeeen!” Ruthie sang, her head bobbing around mine, her breath sour in my ear.
She pushed me into the pool house bathroom and was sitting over the toilet, pants off, before I could even lock the door. “Oh my gosh, I have so much to tell you.” She tried to speak over her river of pee, but it came out as shouts. I was sure everyone within five miles could hear us.
“I hooked up with one of the guys—the one with the brown hair, the super freaking hot one. Oh my God, he’s so hot. It was so hot.” She wiped and stood and zipped and went to the sink, repeating how hot he is, how great of a kisser he is, how she wants to see him again.
I listened impatiently, not remembering whether there was a time limit for how close to sex you have to pee for it to work. Two minutes? Five minutes?
“And he’s older than us. He obviously doesn’t go to Covenant because he knows what he’s doing.” She turned from the sink and nodded at me for emphasis as I took my turn. Then she grimaced. “Eww don’t sit on that toilet. You should always squat in public, has no one taught you that?”
“I had sex,” I blurted out, trying to balance as my butt hovered an inch over the seat. “I had sex.”
If you didn’t know Ruthie, you wouldn’t have noticed the way her face changed. It looked like she was psyched, the way she was leaning toward me, eyes wide and thrilled. “I’m sorry. What?” She had on a smile now, a big, shocked smile. But in the millisecond it took her to register what I said, she was not smiling. She was not excited. She was angry.
I finished peeing and stood up, desperately reaching for the wall next to the toilet to stay balanced. It felt like all the blood rushed to my head, and then rushed away as I pulled my pants on.
“With who—”
There was a heavy bang on the door. Then another.
“Open up!” Annie yelled.
“We know you’re in there,” I could hear Catherine adding a little farther away.
I didn’t want to talk to them. I didn’t want to tell them. I wanted to talk to Ruthie. But she clearly did not want to talk to me.
She reached for the door but I grabbed her arm—“Wait, I want to”—but she twisted the lock and the door pushed open before I could finish. Before we could have a moment. Before I could see her face again.
Catherine and Annie stood at the threshold, staring at me, heads cocked, sly smiles widening on their drunken faces, holding the camera. Flash. The zzzzzz sound as they twisted the shutter. Flash.
“You’re a woman now,” Catherine said.
“Tim,” Annie added, a statement of fact. With one word, she was telling me she knew everything. They both did. More than I was able to tell Ruthie before they burst in.
Annie grabbed my arms and pulled me out of the pool house bathroom and into the cold. It was snowing more outside now, sticking to the dirt and the shriveled grass. As we walked back toward the barn, the ground felt cold through my sneakers, and my brain fixated on it.
Annie was going crazy with Ruthie’s camera. Flashes darting into the darkness like lightning. Flash. Flash. Flash.
“You’re a woman,” Catherine repeated, sidling up to my other side and entangling her arm in mine. “How do you feel?”
I could feel Ruthie lagging behind and I tried to turn to look at her, to make eye contact, to tell her how I felt, not them. But they pulled me forward, kept me moving.
“The same, I guess,” I finally said. “It all happened so fast.”
I could feel myself blushing as I talked about it, not because I was thinking about the moment or the intimacy, but because I felt an embarrassment start to curdle in my chest. I’d never felt it like this before—like I wished I could go back and not tell anyone. Not have sex in the first place. Keep this as a memory for only me, like I had done with my first kiss.
Why did I do that? If I had just stopped and thought about it with a clear head—would I have still agreed? If I took a second and realized that I was about to have sex on the dirty ground outside a barn in the freezing cold at a stranger’s house, would I have done it? Or would I have asked him to take it slower? To just kiss me. To be my boyfriend first.
My head felt hot and I was getting dizzy. I felt like a slut. How did that happen? An hour ago I was the most prudish virgin they’d ever met and now, just one spin around the clock later, I’d had sex? They were asking me how I felt?
Not okay. I didn’t feel okay.
I don’t know why I did it.
I wished I could go back. I wished I could blink, and we’d be back at school getting ready, or in the car, Ruthie’s hair blowing in the freezing wind. I wished I never came here. I wished I never met any of them.
Back inside the barn, we walked up to the boys and Timothy handed me a drink with a wink that made me gag a little. I hated that I’d let him do that. I hated that he’d let me do it.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
I turned to Ruthie, who was standing next to me, staring into her cup like she was trying to figure out once and for all what alcohol was actually inside.
“Ruthie, can we—” When she looked up at me, she wasn’t smiling anymore. She wasn’t trying to seem interested or happy. She looked emotionless. Dead.
Something about that look—her stagnant eyes, her bleak expression—made me want to rip her head off. This was not right. She was my best friend. Fuck her if she’s going to make me feel guilty for something I wanted to do. Something I had been more excited to talk to her about than anything else in my life.
She was the one who brought me to this party. She was the one obsessed with finding our party group, becoming party people. She was the one excited—desperate, even—to meet boys, to lose her virginity. Why was she acting like I shouldn’t have done the same?
“Come with me,” I yelled, grabbing her arm and swinging us both toward the barn door. Catherine and Annie started to follow but I stuck my hand out at them—“Not you, only Ruthie”—and they stayed put.
Outside, she stood there staring at me, thick snowflakes getting stuck in her hair as she waited. “What is wrong with you?”
She took a long sip from her red cup, finishing whatever was left in there, and then tossed it to the floor between us.
“I’m just surprised, I guess,” she finally said.
“Surprised by what?”
She shrugged.
“What’s wrong with you?” I repeated. “I was so excited to tell you about this. You were the one who thought Timothy liked me. You were the one who told me to get him alone. What did you think was going to happen?”
I was right. I knew I was right. I just wanted her to acknowledge it.
“Good for you,” she said, placating me with a smile. “Glad you got over the hump. Hopefully God doesn’t find out.”
She turned away from me again, but I grabbed her by the shoulders, the cup in my hand falling to the ground, spraying our feet with sticky pink liquid. This wasn’t like her. Maybe it was the alcohol—we were certainly drinking more than we normally did at our weekly jaunts in the woods—but it felt like more than that. Like maybe the alcohol was giving her the liquid courage she needed to say how she actually felt. Naive, silly little me did something first. And she hated it.
“You’re jealous,” I realized.
She shrugged my hands off her shoulders. “Don’t be ridiculous. I—”
“You’re jealous that I did it first. I’ve one-upped you and you can’t stand it.”
“I’m not—”
“—you’re mad because someone wanted to have sex with me and no one wants to have sex with you.”
She took a step back, and I did, too. Her face was shadowed, the moon only lighting her forehead and nose, but I could tell she was just as shocked as I was. Her jaw was tight, her eyes slim and harsh. Then her face lowered, looking down at the ground. The snow had accumulated at our feet in thick, uneven clumps, bumpy like the dirt below it.
My necklace was shining on her chest, like it was trying to remind me who I was talking to. It’s Ruthie. You gave her this. You love her. What are you doing?
“I’m sorry, Ruthie. I—”
She turned away before I could finish but I immediately moved to follow her. I didn’t mean it. This was all a mistake.
“Ruthie—” I called after her, but once we were back inside the barn it was no use. The music was too loud; the talking and excited yelling overtook all my attempts to get her attention again.
I figured she was getting Catherine and Annie, and we were going to go home. She was done with this party, and honestly, so was I. But she walked right past them, not acknowledging Catherine’s overuse of her camera, and instead ended up at the Gatorade cooler. She snatched a cup from the stack and filled it. Then she put her head back and gulped the entire thing, throwing the cup onto the floor as she finished. She seemed for a second like she was going to throw up—mouth pursed, her eyes watering—but I think it was just a burp instead.
She turned her back to the cooler and looked around the room and when she spotted whatever she was looking for, she took a deep breath, pulled at her shirt, at the necklace around her neck, and then walked silo-visioned to a group of guys standing in the center of the barn, not dancing but not standing still either.
She tapped one on the shoulder—the taller of the two guys who greeted us when we first got here. I think the one she said she’d hooked up with, but I couldn’t tell the difference. Everything was blurry—from alcohol, from anxiety, from anger. When he turned around, she pulled him by the collar and kissed him. Hard. Sloppy and messy and hard. I could tell Ruthie didn’t like it, but she kept going, letting her hands get caught in his hair, letting his roam down her back.
When they finally parted, Ruthie smiled and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then got on her tiptoes to say something into his ear. He smiled, wide, then nodded and took her hand.
As he led her out of the barn, out the back exit I used with Timothy, Ruthie turned back and looked at me. She didn’t seem excited or happy. She didn’t seem like she wanted this at all. She seemed vengeful. She looked like she hated me.
And then they were gone.
I ran after her. I ran to the barn door and pushed it open. I wanted to say I was sorry. Tell her not to do this unless she wanted to. Make sure she knew I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.
When I got outside the snow was really coming down. Thick white flakes reflecting the moon as they sprinkled the entire world, falling on my hair and my shirt and my nose.
She wasn’t out here. She was in the woods.
They were gone.
And I never saw Ruthie again.