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  Everybody laughs a little drunkenly. There are maybe a dozen people in the living room. There’s a group on the floor passing around a small pumpkin. Someone has outfitted it with two pipes that stick out of either side. It’s a pumpkin bong.

  You’re supposed to take a puff and pass it on. I never have, though. Up until last month, I’d only seen weed in movies. I’d smelled it in Dylan’s truck, without knowing what it was.

  College is very educational.

  My gaze snags on the couch, which is also occupied. The people seated on it aren’t listening to Dylan’s story, though, because they’re too busy making out. This wouldn't be all that interesting except there are three of them. Two girls and a guy. It hadn't occurred to me before that three people could kiss at the same time, but they seem to be managing just fine.

  I can’t tear my eyes away. The view is both beautiful and complicated. The boy’s eyes are closed. I briefly spot his tongue as their lips reconfigure. His hand is up one of the girl’s shirts. And that girl has her hand on the other girl’s breast. As I watch, she passes her thumb over the nipple slowly. It’s a hard peak through the T-shirt covering it.

  Okay, wow. I wouldn't have thought that would turn me on, but there you go. The truth is that a lot of things turn me on. And they always have. Ever since I turned thirteen, there’s been a raging battle between what I’m supposed to be thinking about and what I actually think about.

  I really hope nobody can read minds.

  Music throbs in the background while Dylan finishes his story about the goats. His mother is mad because they ate her garden greens. “And you practically can't call yourself a Vermont farmer without a nice patch of kale. What will the neighbors say?”

  Everyone laughs. My eyes come to rest on Kaitlyn as she passes the bong after her puff. My evil roommate is looking up at Dylan with stars in her eyes.

  It’s hard to blame her for that, because I probably look at him the same way. It’s literally the only thing we have in common.

  Kaitlyn gets to her feet as he wraps up his story. She takes the beer out of his hand and takes a swig. It’s a way of claiming him, I guess. It makes me want to smack her. “Come on, Dyl,” she says the moment he stops talking. “You said you’d let me play something for you.”

  “Yeah, okay. Cool.” They both take a step in my direction. That’s when Dylan lifts his chin and spots me. “Chastity! Hey!” He pulls me in for a Shipley-style, full-body hug—the kind I’m never quite ready for. “God, I’m sorry about this afternoon. Rickie said you waited.”

  Ouch. I wish Rickie hadn’t mentioned that.

  “It was f-fine,” I stammer as his arms encircle me. There’s a quick press of his hard chest against my body. The flannel shirt he’s wearing doesn’t disguise the muscle underneath.

  His hugs always fluster me. I count to three and then step back, so I don’t find myself awkwardly patting his back for too long. That happens sometimes.

  It’s been two years since I came to Vermont, and while I’ve figured out a lot of things—like Netflix and nail polish—these little interactions still tie me in knots. On the compound, no man ever hugged a girl who wasn’t his wife. We didn’t even shake hands.

  These days I’m a decent hand-shaker and there are several people I can hug without difficulty. But Dylan isn’t one of them. I’m so attracted to him that each hug makes me flush like a nervous loser.

  “I called,” he says.

  “W-what?”

  “I called the land line in your suite. Kaitlyn said she’d leave you a note.”

  “And I left it,” Kaitlyn snaps. “On the desk. Weren’t we going upstairs?” She gives Dylan a little tug.

  “Hang on.” Dylan untangles himself from her and puts a big hand on my shoulder. “Come into the kitchen a minute. Did you eat? Mom sent me home with lentil soup.”

  My stomach growls, but the party is too loud for anyone to hear, thank God. With Dylan, I turn toward the kitchen. I can almost feel Kaitlyn’s anger radiating toward me.

  It’s weird, but I feel no guilt. Guilt and I are usually very close friends. But when it comes to Kaitlyn, I live for these little moments of irritating her. Probably because I know they don’t matter. She has what I want, and there’s a zero percent chance that I’ll ever get it.

  “Look who’s here!” Rickie says from the stove where he’s stirring a pot of steaming liquid. It smells like heaven. “The cider is ready, guys. Who’s in?”

  “I’d love some,” I say. That’s the scent of Vermont—apples and cinnamon. And weed, I guess.

  “Kaitlyn?” he prompts.

  “Why not?” She sniffs. “I have to, right? So long as I’m at Moo U, I guess I’ll drink the cider and wear a beanie and always use the pronoun of your choice.”

  “You should be so lucky,” Rickie says cheerfully. “Just don’t burn your tongue. You’re probably gonna need that later.” He ladles cider into a row of mugs on the counter. “Here, Chastity. Hey—nice top. Vavoom! Love the fall-themed cleavage.”

  My face heats instantly. I take a big sniff of the cider to cover my embarrassment. “Smells great, thanks.”

  Dylan is already microwaving the soup and grabbing bowls from the cupboard. “Soup? Rickie? Kait?”

  “Too carby,” Kaitlyn says.

  “Cider is carby,” Dylan points out.

  “But I can pour rum into it,” she says, taking a mug.

  “More for me.” Dylan shrugs. “Have a seat, Chastity. Ooh, guacamole.” He grabs the serving bowl and plops it onto the table with a bag of chips.

  Dylan and I take opposite seats at the table. Rickie parks his hip against the kitchen counter and sips his cider, while Kaitlyn circles, visibly humming with impatience that Dylan seems not to notice.

  I will never get over the two of them as a couple. Never. According to his friends and gossipy family members (never underestimate Grandpa Shipley’s powers of observation), Dylan has always been a ride-or-die single guy. Until Kaitlyn ensnared him, that is.

  Dylan is the kind of guy who sees the best in people. So while it’s obvious to me that she’s a shrew, he only sees her shiny hair. And her shiny lip gloss. And her skinny little body clad in expensive clothes.

  That’s the best explanation I can come up with. Not for lack of trying. And I’m not supposed to care.

  Whoops.

  “Chass, can we maybe do algebra at breakfast tomorrow?” he asks me now. “I don't have class until ten.”

  “Sure. Okay. At the dining hall?” Kaitlyn never goes to breakfast, so I won’t have to deal with her. It’s hard enough looking stupid in front of Dylan. I don’t need her scowl, too.

  “Yeah, that works.” He picks up his soup bowl and drains the last bit.

  “Come. On,” Kaitlyn urges. “I’m waiting.”

  I look away, because I know what’s going to happen next.

  “Coming,” Dylan says cheerfully. He pushes back his chair and carries his soup bowl over to the sink, where he rinses it carefully before tucking it into the dishwasher. “Back in a bit,” he says to me on his way out of the room.

  I dip my spoon in the soup and take another bite. It was nice of Dylan to feed me. He’s a good friend. And it’s hardly his fault that I want things I can’t have.

  A moment later, two mugs land on the table in front of me, and then Rickie takes Dylan’s seat. “Those two are hard to watch, right?”

  Ouch. Either I’m a terrible actress, or Rickie shares my opinion that they’re an awful couple.

  “She won’t last,” he says. “I’m sure the sex is great, but he gets easily bored.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” I mumble before shoving a chip in my mouth.

  Rickie flashes me a smile. I like Dylan’s roommate, but he’s a little intimidating. He speaks German and French, and he has an earring. His clothes aren’t anything like Dylan’s. Tonight he’s wearing ripped jeans with black leather boots that would never stand up to farm work. His vintage dress shirt is unbuttoned practical
ly to the navel, exposing some elaborate tattoos.

  Some people make my naiveté stand out. Rickie is one of those people.

  He pushes a mug of cider toward me. “So what’s your story?”

  “What do you mean? I’m just here for the algebra.”

  “Uh-huh.” He uncaps a bottle of rum and pours generous dollops into both our mugs. “I mean your real story. Tell me how you got here to Moo U.”

  “Don’t you know that part?” I just assumed that Dylan had mentioned my strange story. Don’t mind my dorky friend. She grew up in a cult and can’t help it.

  “I want to hear it from you,” he says.

  “Well it’s your Wednesday night. I guess you can spend it on my bullshit if you want to.”

  He laughs suddenly, and he looks about five years younger. “I fucking love other people’s bullshit, Chastity. Lay it on me.”

  I pull the mug of cider closer to me, considering what I might say. “When I was nineteen, I ran away from the religious compound where I grew up out West. I could only afford a bus ticket to the New York border. And then I walked and hiked the rest.” Thank God it had been summertime, or I would have frozen to death.

  “What was that place like? The compound.”

  “Um…” What to say? I don’t talk about it that much, because it’s weird and embarrassing. “Let’s see. The only clothing I’d owned before I left was something called the Paradise dress. Picture Laura Ingalls in pastel polyester. Long sleeves, long skirt. With a high collar.” I put my hand up to my throat. “You couldn’t show any skin, because that was sinful. We wore the dresses with hiking boots from Payless.”

  “Oh fuck,” he says, blowing on the surface of the cider in his mug. “So the place was a fashion disaster. But what was it like? What did you do all day?”

  “I worked at home. Cooking, cleaning, and sewing. I didn’t go to a real school after third grade. Nobody wanted us to be smart, anyway. They only cared about obedience. They didn’t want us out in the sinners’ world, wondering why we couldn’t have all the things that other kids had. Too many big ideas. When I was seven, I asked for a pair of new shoes, like another girl at school had. I got a slap on the face, instead.”

  “Wow.” Rickie watches me with obvious fascination. He has hypnotic eyes. They’re gray, with a darker circle around each iris. “So they thought you might figure out that polygamy is illegal?”

  “Maybe,” I hedge. “But it wouldn’t matter all that much if we’d known. That’s what brainwashing is for. We sat in church for six hours on Sunday. The preacher spent a lot of time telling us how special we were.” I roll my eyes, although my nonchalance is forced. Two years isn’t all that long, and part of me still believes some of the things I was taught.

  That’s the part I can’t explain to outsiders. Everything our Divine Pastor ever said was a big load of bullshit. But some of it was really appealing bullshit. I’ll never go back, and I don’t miss the place at all. But I liked hearing that I was part of a special mission from God, with a unique purpose in the world.

  Say what you will, but it was easier living in a world where I knew the rules. Even if I didn’t always follow them.

  “How did you eventually decide to run away from this special, special place?” Rickie measures me with his serious eyes.

  “Now there’s a story.” I let out an uncomfortable laugh. “When I was sixteen, I got in some trouble. I got into the back of a car with a boy.”

  “You hussy!” Rickie snorts. He’s kidding, but I get tense anyway. Because the boy and I got caught, and the things they called me afterward were so much worse.

  “He got thrown out,” I say.

  “Out of the car?” Rickie sips his cider.

  “No–out of the compound.”

  Rickie stares. “Forever?”

  “Of course. The sons can’t ever be alone with the daughters. It’s forbidden. But I, um, wanted to know what all the fuss was about. When they preach at you every Sunday about sin…”

  I don’t think I can finish the sentence. My face heats just from the memory of sitting in that garage, kissing Zachariah. His hand had been on my bare thigh. I’d really wanted him to take it further. And then? Disaster.

  “Sin has always yelled my name, too,” Rickie says with a smile. “Every stupid thing. I did it.”

  I can’t help but smile back at him. I take a big gulp of the steaming cider. The rum gives it a sharpness I’m not used to, but I kind of like it.

  “So what happened to you? After you kissed the boy?”

  “Oh.” I set the mug down.

  This part of the story isn’t much fun. After several blissful minutes, we’d been discovered by the worst possible person—my vindictive uncle Jeptha. There had been no chance of him brushing it under the rug. He’d summoned the elders…

  “We were punished,” I say, and it comes out as a squeak.

  “Shit, Chastity,” says Rickie. “I’m sorry to bring up something painful.”

  “Oh, it’s fine,” I say, but my ragged voice makes me a liar. I take a gulp of my cider. “I didn’t see Zach again for three years. The worst part was wondering if he was still alive.” Every night I’d lay in bed trying to imagine what a homeless Zach would do. “I knew nothing of the outside world, so I pictured things I knew from the bible—beggars at the side of the road trying to fill their bellies.”

  Rickie’s eyes are round. “What did he do?”

  “Oh—he hitchhiked to Vermont. You know the Shipley’s neighbors, Leah and Isaac? He knew where they’d run away together, and it wasn’t too hard for him to find them.” But at the time I hadn’t known this—I’d thought he was dead. “Zach says getting kicked out was the best thing that ever happened to him. And now he’s one of the happiest people I know.”

  “Uh-huh. But what about you,” Rickie asks. “They didn’t throw you out?”

  I give my head a slow shake. “I got a beating. They had to make an example out of me. If you get into the back of a car with a boy, you’ll be beaten until you bleed. There were at least ten men taking turns with the strap. I didn’t sit down for a week, my ass was so sore.”

  Rickie’s eyes bulge. “Jesus Christ.”

  But I can’t bear to tell Rickie the worst part—that I’d been naked for the beating. That was the real punishment, I think. The toxic cocktail of pain and total humiliation. I don’t mind telling Rickie how badly they hurt my skin, but I can’t talk about the sound of their laughter. Slattern, they’d called me. Harlot. Whore. I will never stop hearing those voices.

  “I still have the scars,” I say with forced cheer.

  “And so you ran away after that?”

  “Nope. I hadn’t figured out that I could. But when I turned seventeen, nobody wanted me for a wife, because I was compromised.”

  Rickie makes a noise of disgust.

  “It wasn’t, uh, true. But that didn’t matter. And here’s where it gets interesting—I realized I was going to be a leper, basically. So I asked my stepfather for a job, and he set me up with a really unusual thing—a job off the compound. I became a cashier at Walgreens.”

  “Now that’s living.” Rickie grins.

  “No—it was! I got to leave every day and spy on the rest of the world. You have no idea how much fun I had selling candy and aspirin. And magazines—I read Seventeen and Allure behind the counter. I didn’t get to keep the money, though. My father deposited my checks into his account. I never saw any money until I finally learned how to steal some.”

  “You are a fascinating girl, Chastity.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “I mean it.” He reaches for my empty mug. I don’t even remember drinking all that cider. It was gone so fast. “What would your life have been like if none of that happened?”

  “They would’ve married me off to an old man on my seventeenth birthday. I’d get a five-minute wedding during Sunday services. And then I’d leave my parents’ home to live with whomever the elders chose for me.”

/>   “And then the wedding night.” He watches me over the rim of his mug. “I’m guessing birth control was not an option, either.”

  I shake my head. “I’d never even heard of birth control until I started reading packages at the Walgreens where I worked. Bearing children was our number-one job. They told me that every Sunday.”

  What I don’t add is that I’d been looking forward to it. I used to sit up straighter on the bench when our Divine Pastor spoke about wifely duties. Lie beneath your husband and give your body to God. Accept his love. Accept his seed. Bring forth a new generation to worship at our tabernacle.

  I couldn’t wait to lie beneath my husband and accept his seed. When I was six, I asked another little boy to practice with me. He tattled, and we both got spankings. That little boy got tossed out of the compound when we were fifteen. (Not because of me, thank goodness.)

  But I still remember his smile. His name was Jacob, and he had clear blue eyes. I always liked the boys too much. Eventually I learned to conceal it, but that was my secret shame. My cross to bear.

  It’s still true, too. Since those kisses with Zachariah in the back of a car, no other man has touched me. But I wish one would.

  Dylan, specifically.

  But now I’m very tired of my own bullshit. “It’s your turn, Rickie. What’s your story?”

  He pushes my refilled cider mug toward me with a teasing smile. “I grew up an army brat. Lived in ten places by the time I turned eighteen.”

  “Is that why you speak German?”

  “Das ist richtig. And here’s the part you won’t even believe—I won a spot at the U.S. Military Academy. I did my first year of college there. With the buzz cut and the uniform.”

  “And saluting?” I can’t picture Rickie as a soldier. I just can’t.

  “The whole thing.” He chuckles wickedly.

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “I don’t talk about that part.”

  “Hey!” I argue. “I told you my story.”

  “Did you really?” His intelligent eyes hold mine. “Or did you leave out all the shame?”

  Well, heck. I guess I did. We consider each other across the small table. Then he smiles, and it’s very kind. As if we understand each other. “A professor basically said the same thing to me this week. Did you take freshman composition?”