Hope agreed to go.

They went up to Calgary’s bedroom. He had lit candles and had music playing—John Mayer. Hope wondered if Calgary had consulted Brick about these details. Allegra loved John Mayer and had intimated that she and Brick had sex while listening to “Your Body is a Wonderland” all the time. Hope decided that the candles and music were nice, the empty house was nice, and Calgary had made his bed and plumped the pillows.

All systems go, then—kissing, Hope’s shirt off, Calgary’s shirt off, Hope’s bra unhooked, Calgary’s mouth on her breasts, Hope’s hands in his hair. Eventually Calgary began fiddling with the button of her jeans. She helped him unbutton and unzip, then sucked in her breath to create room for him to slip his hands down inside her underwear (lacy thong, borrowed from Allegra, for the occasion).

This was where, somehow, things went wrong. Hope didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe it. Calgary was rough. He poked where he should have rubbed, he stabbed where he should have gently explored. Hope cried out, wriggled in pain, tried to pull her jeans off even farther so he could see what he was doing. He said, “Oh yeah, you like that, you like that, baby,” in some desperate and nearly violent tone she didn’t recognize. She did not like it, not at all, but she was afraid to say so. She was aware that most teenage boys found the female anatomy perplexing, but Calgary was treating her delicate parts like something he needed to tame.

“Stop,” Hope finally said, when his fingernail scraped inside of her. “Be gentle.”

“Gentle?” Calgary said, as if this were the last word that might apply to the sex act. He pulled his finger out and delivered it straight to his mouth, where he sucked it clean. “You taste…,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Hope lay on his bed with her jeans and the lace thong binding her midthigh. “You don’t know what?”

He said something in Japanese; it sounded like he was ordering sushi.

Hope stared at the ceiling. “You don’t know what, Calgary?”

“I think you should leave,” Calgary said.

Embarrassment, humiliation, shame, anger, a sense of gullible stupidity all collided. Hope’s feelings for Calgary had immediately changed from the blandly positive to the blackest negative.

He’d driven Hope home in silence. She tried to turn the radio on, but he snapped it off. As she got out of the car in her driveway, she said, “Is it over, then?”

“Oh yes,” Calgary said. “I’m asking someone else to the Christmas formal.”

“Wow,” Hope said. “Okay.”

“You can think I’m a jerk,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“I don’t think that,” Hope said. She absolutely did think that, but the bigger question was: what had gone wrong back at Calgary’s house? She hadn’t liked the way he was touching her, and maybe he didn’t like what he was touching—or tasting. The mortification was enough to make her want to vaporize.

“Whatever, Hope,” he said. “See you around.”

She was being dismissed. Okay, fine. It happened between teenagers, she supposed, all the time, every day.

Now here she was, retracing her steps of that awful night, to pick up her sister. And why? Allegra was capable of finding a ride home, but she had asked and then begged Hope, and, as perverse as it was, Hope enjoyed being called upon to save the day. Hope herself had very lame social credentials; her only entrée to the cool people was through her sister.

She pulled up in front of the McMann house and honked. There was no way she was going inside.

She waited in the dark car, playing Cage the Elephant at ten thousand decibels. She wanted to seem like she’d arrived here from a different party, a party with college kids, where the music was better and the conversation was elevated.

Nobody appeared.

Hope texted Allegra. I’m out front. Hurry.

Still nothing. Hope laid on the horn.

Finally, the front door opened, and out came—Brick. Hope swallowed. He stumbled down the front steps and over to her car. He opened the passenger door and climbed in.

Hope said, “Where’s Allegra?”

“She’s not coming.”

“She’s not?”

“No,” he said. His head fell forward on his neck like a wilting flower. “I was the one who texted you. I stole her phone.”

“You… okay. Wow,” Hope said.

“Ian Coburn showed up here, and Allegra was so excited to see him that she left her phone on the coffee table. And I texted you.”

That explained use of the word please. Hope focused on backing out of the driveway with caution. Reverse wasn’t her strong suit.

Ian Coburn, she thought. Then she spied the red Camaro parked down the street.

Hope didn’t know what to say. She took one last look at the gray shingles and white trim of Calgary’s house, which was almost as nice as the house Hope and Allegra lived in. Dr. Andy made a lot of money as a dentist. “So, Ian showed up. Who else was there?”

“Calgary, obviously, Bluto was there, Hannah, Hollis, Kylie Eckers…”

“Ew,” Hope said. “How is Allegra getting home?”

Brick shrugged. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

“Maybe you should stay?” Hope suggested.

“I hate Ian Coburn. If Allegra wants to be friends with him, fine. Maybe she thinks he’s cool because he’s older or because he goes to BC or because he buys her beer. Whatever, fine, I’m not going to stop her. I can’t. But I’m not staying. I can’t stand Bluto or Hollis. Hannah is okay because she plays hockey, so at least she has an interest other than Us magazine, movie stars, and what they’re wearing. Kylie Eckers is… geez, I can’t even speak my true feelings about Kylie.”