The cabdriver who drove me to Dean’s party, unlike the ones who would later whip me up and down the West Side Highway on mornings I was late for work and nights I stayed past 8:00 so I could expense the ride, was a patient man. He watched in silent amusement as I piled a ten, nine ones, eleven quarters, six dimes, and one nickel into his palm. $22.40. That’s how much it cost to chauffeur me from school to Dean’s house in Ardmore. That’s how much I paid to lose my dignity.

The sun was slinking behind the trees when I climbed out of the cab, my sports bag pulling one shoulder low. I was still wearing my sweaty running clothes, but Dean said I could shower at his house. I was terrified someone would burst in and discover the secret of what my body actually looked like, so once Dean led me inside and showed me the guest bedroom, the one with its own bathroom, I was in and out in record time.

I ran a brush through my new blond hair and aimed a blow-dryer at it for a few minutes. I was years away from understanding how to “do” my hair, which was thick and wavy but would have answered obediently to a round brush and a straightener, had I known those were tools I needed to have. Fortunately, the look of the early millennium was a messy half loop high on the head, so I threw my hair into a damp knot and patted my chin and nose with Clinique concealer. Some mascara and I was ready. I’d begged Mom for money to buy new underwear specifically for this occasion, taking scissors to the pairs I owned and telling her that running was causing them to unravel at the seams. In the lingerie department in Nordstrom I purchased the sexiest thing I saw: three pairs of silk, leopard print bikini briefs. When I got home and tried them on I discovered the waistband came all the way up above my belly button—it was pre-Spanx control top, really—but I just shrugged and rolled them down to my hips, figuring the material and the print were all that mattered. Nothing sadder than the adolescent rite of passage to have sex before understanding what sexy is.

“Hey-o!” Dean gave me a high five as I entered the kitchen. He was crowded around the granite island with Peyton and a few other guys, all soccer players, dinging quarters into cups of beer. I was the only girl in the room.

“Finny, make a cameo for me.” Dean kissed the quarter. “You’re my good luck charm.”

Peyton whispered something to his partner and they laughed. I knew it was about me. Probably something rude and sexual, and I burned with pride.

I had no technique, just the momentum of the moment, and I angled the quarter, the edge closest to me facing down, slamming it against the sticky marble of the countertop. It bounced high, spun in a dizzy blur, and thunked into a glass, the beer erupting into angry bubbles.

A roar from the crowd and Dean slapped my hand again, this time clamping his meaty fingers around mine when our palms met, pulling me toward him and hugging me so hard I could smell the spicy deodorant he’d generously applied in lieu of taking a shower after soccer practice.

“Fucking awesome,” Dean bellowed at the opposing team.

Peyton cast those blue eyes on me, approval warming me from the inside out. “That was pretty sweet, Tif.”

“Thanks.” My smile reached my ears. Dean handed me a beer, and I took a pull, relished the sourness fizzing in my empty stomach. I wasn’t in the habit of skipping meals yet, but that night I was so giddy, so hot to the touch with excitement, that it didn’t take any effort to forgo dinner.

I felt two hands on my shoulders, squeezing the muscles just a beat too long. Liam smiled and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. I was barefoot, and I fit perfectly into his armpit, which thank God smelled nothing like Dean’s. “Look at what a midget you are,” he said.

“I am not!” I protested giddily.

Liam took a sip of his beer and fixated on a spot above my head, contemplating something. He looked back down at me. “There’s a table on the porch that would be perfect for beer pong.”

“I’m really good at beer pong,” I said, putting more of my weight on him. The side of his body was hard with lean teenage boy muscle.

Liam took another sip, a long one this time that emptied out the contents of his beer. He made an ahhh sound when he brought the can away from his lips. “No girl is good at beer pong,” he declared. He walked me to the sliding glass door. The deck was damp and slimy beneath my naked feet, but I didn’t want to go back in the house and find a pair of shoes, risk Liam asking someone else to be his partner in my momentary absence.

Dean and a few others trailed us outside. Teams and rules were set. Liam and me against Dean and Peyton. Hoes could blow and a bounce knocked out two cups. Five minutes in, Liam and I were winning.

It didn’t take long for Dean and Peyton to catch up to us. I lost a little bit more of my touch every time it was my turn to raise the red Solo cup to my lips. When Peyton and Dean beat us, I thought that was it and we could just walk away from the table, but Liam said that where he came from, it was good sportsmanship to drink the last cup. It was my turn and I obediently swallowed the remaining contents in small, sickening waves.

“Holy shit!” Dean clapped his hands. The stern October air caught a few words before releasing them into the night—“Never seen a girl take it down like that”—their effect as good as an A in English class, as the pride I felt years later when I landed a desk in that glossy honeycomb tower. Who are the pussy girls they’re hanging out with? I smiled smugly, knowing it was Hilary and Olivia. I accepted the cocoon of Liam’s odorless armpit again, leaning into him so heavily he stumbled.

“Easy there,” he said, but he laughed.

Then we were inside, sitting cross-legged around the living room table, playing quarters again. Only this time whiskey scorched my throat when it was my turn to drink. Dean said something so funny I fell over from laughing. Liam—no, wait—Peyton was next to me and he propped me back up, telling me maybe I should sit this next round out. I looked past him, searching for Liam. I wanted Liam.

“She’s fine.” Dean tipped the bottle over the glasses again.

Someone called Peyton a pussy, and he said, “Look at her. I’m not taking advantage of her like that.”

That must have been when I fell asleep. Because the next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor of the guest bedroom, my gym bag by my side. I groaned and lifted my head and so did the boy between my legs. Peyton. He stroked my thigh and went back to doing whatever he was doing that he thought was making me feel good. I couldn’t feel a thing.

There was activity by the door, someone poking his head in and urging Peyton to do something, go somewhere. I was too tired to cover myself.

“I’m coming,” Peyton snapped. A laugh and then the door closed.

“I have to go.” I looked at his beautiful face in the valley of my legs, meticulously shaved on the off chance something like this would have happened with Liam. “Let’s hang out for real, okay?”

I fell asleep.

“Ow, ow,” I was moaning this before I opened my eyes, before I could locate the source of the pain. Liam. There he was. And there was his face above mine, also twisted in pain, his torso immobile but his hips pressed close to mine, pressing closer still in an agonizing rhythm.

I was hunched over the toilet in the guest bathroom, the tiles cool beneath my knees. Was I throwing up blood? Why was there blood in the toilet?

A few months after this, when I stopped lying to myself long enough to admit that I’d become the cautionary tale mothers told their daughters, I pretended like I was asleep when the train lurched to a stop at the Bryn Mawr train station. I rode the R5 the rest of the way into Philadelphia and called the school when I arrived. “Oh my God! I fell asleep on the train and ended up in the city.”