When we arrived at Minella’s Diner, Liam also made the point of sitting next to Dean, and not me. For forty-five minutes I feebly laughed at everything the boys said and did, yes, those two pancakes that got stuck together sort of do look like balls—swallowing and swallowing to keep from vomiting into my short stack. It felt like hours before we paid, before it was safe for me to call my parents and tell them, perkily, that I’d grabbed breakfast with Olivia and Hilary in Wayne, and could they come pick me up? Then I sat on the curb between Minella’s and the Chili’s next door, my head cradled between my knees. I could smell something sour in the narrow gap there, and that’s when the paranoia really started to set in. Did I have AIDS? Was I going to get pregnant? I was racked with this feeling like I needed water, only I wasn’t thirsty, had drank an entire pitcher of water at the diner trying to quench a thirst that wasn’t really physical. Years later, I still experience this same sensation. I’ll slam water, liters of it, my agitation swelling along with my bladder as relief isn’t found at the bottom of the Fiji bottle. I once asked a psychiatrist about it—I always volunteered for our monthly rape-scare story (“A man on the street offered to help me carry my groceries home and then he assaulted me!”), slipping in my own questions and concerns as though they were pertinent to the article, turning it into my own personal therapy session—and she pointed out that thirst is a basic, biological instinct. “If you feel thirsty when you’re not actually thirsty, it could indicate that an important need isn’t being met.”

Forty minutes passed before Mom’s car slowed in front of the Minella’s sign. I waited for her to circle the parking lot and settle to a stop next to me. When I finally opened the door, heard her Celine Dion CD whining and smelled her putrid Bath & Body Works vanilla lotion, I practically crumbled into the front seat. At least there was something comforting in this, her annoying choices in music and grooming, their safe familiarity.

“Is Olivia’s mother here?” Mom asked, and I actually looked at her and realized she was fully made up and ready to socialize.

“No.” I slammed the door shut.

Mom stuck out her lower lip. “How long ago did she leave?”

I put my seat belt on. “I don’t remember.”

“What do you mean you don’t—”

“Just drive!” The hot rage in my voice was as much a surprise to myself as it was to Mom. I covered my mouth with my hand, heaving one silent sob into it.

Mom wrenched the gearshift into reverse. “You’re grounded, TifAni.” She peeled out of the parking lot, her mouth set in that thin, hard line that always terrified me, that I would find myself mirroring in my fights with Luke, realizing I probably looked pretty scary too.

“Grounded?” I laughed sarcastically.

“I’m so sick of this shit attitude! You are so ungrateful. Do you even know how much this school is costing me?” She slapped the steering wheel with an open hand on the word “know.” I began to gag. Mom’s head snapped in my direction. “Have you been drinking?” She took a hard right and swerved into an empty parking lot, slamming the brakes so hard the seat belt stabbed me in the stomach and I finally vomited in my hand. “Not in the BMW!” Mom shrieked, leaning across me and pushing my door open and me along with it. I emptied the contents of my stomach right there in the parking lot of Staples. The beer, the whiskey, Dean’s salty semen—I couldn’t get it out fast enough.

By Monday morning, there was nothing in my stomach but acid, scalding my innards like the surprise whiskey in that late-night round of quarters. I’d been up since 3:00 A.M., when my own heartbeat, pounding like an angry parent’s fist on his teenager’s locked door, woke me. A small, pathetic part of me hoped that what I’d done would just be dismissed as run-of-the-mill party antics. Mark ate a mayonnaise sandwich and TifAni made the rounds with the soccer team! But even then, I wasn’t that naive.

It was subtle—the crowds didn’t part and no one pinned a scarlet letter on the lapel of my shirt. Olivia saw me and pretended she didn’t, and some older girls flew past in a giggling huddle, laughing loudly once they were a safe enough distance away. Yes, they’d been talking about me.

When I walked into homeroom, the Shark clutched the edge of her desk and swung her round bottom out of the seat. She caught my neck in her arms before I could sit down. Everyone in the classroom pretended not to hear, even managed to carry on their conversations, as she said, “Tif, are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay!” It felt like there was dried clay on my face when I smiled.

The Shark squeezed my shoulder. “If you need to talk, I’m here.”

“Okay.” I rolled my eyes at her.

Once I was at my desk, in my seat, dutifully jotting down everything the teacher said in my notebook, I was fine. It was the moment the bell rang, when everyone scattered like bedbugs from the light, that the panic stretched its arms and yawned big, rousing from its fitful sleep. Because then I was roaming the hallways, a wounded soldier on enemy territory, aware of the red light between my eyes, that I was injured and slow, could do nothing but keep moving and pray they’d miss.

Mr. Larson’s classroom was like finding the trenches. Arthur had been salty with me lately, but surely given these extenuating circumstances, he would have some compassion for me. He had to.

Arthur nodded at me as I sat down. A solemn nod, an “I’ll talk to you about what you’ve done in a moment” nod. This somehow made me more nervous than lunch, which was next period. I’d been sitting with the HOs regularly for the last few weeks, and I couldn’t decide which would be worse—showing my face in the cafeteria and claiming my chair at their table only to have them refuse me, or chickening out and going to the library, sealing my expulsion from their company when there was the off chance that if I could prove I had a pair of balls, they might forgive me. Welcome me back, even.

But if Arthur thought this was bad, then it was far, far worse than I originally thought.

When the bell shrieked, I gathered my things slowly. Arthur paused by my side, but before he could say anything, Mr. Larson did. “Tif? Can you stick around a moment?”

“I’ll talk to you later?” I asked Arthur.

He nodded again. “Come over after practice.” Arthur’s mom was the art teacher at the middle school, and together they lived in a ramshackle old Victorian catty-corner to the squash courts, where the headmistress used to reside in the fifties.

I nodded back, even though I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t have time to explain that I was grounded.

The English and Humanities wing settled into its late-morning nap as the students stampeded to the cafeteria for lunch. Mr. Larson leaned against the edge of his desk, crossing one leg over the other, the cuff of his khakis hitching up, revealing one tan, fuzzy ankle.

“TifAni,” he said. “I don’t want to make you upset, but I’ve been hearing some things this morning.”

I waited. I understood, intuitively, not to speak until I knew what he knew.

“I’m on your side here,” he promised. “If you’ve been hurt you need to let someone know. That person doesn’t have to be me, by any means. But someone. An adult.”

I rubbed my palms on the underside of the desk, feeling the relief blossom like a budding flower, sped up to reveal the petals unfurling, multicolored, on a Discovery Channel commercial. He didn’t want to call my parents. He didn’t want to involve the administration. He was giving me the best gift a teenager could ever ask for: autonomy.

I chose my words carefully. “Can I think about it?”

I heard the Spanish teacher, Señora Murtez, in the hallway. “Yes, diet! If they don’t have Dr Pepper then Pepsi!”