The dormitory phone has a long curly cord that stretches just far enough into the bathroom. So I can listen to all Leah’s worries and check my look at the same time.

Squinting at my reflection, I button the second button on my blouse. But then I unbutton it again. I want to look attractive, but I don’t need my top to shout: HERE ARE MY BOOBS FOR YOUR PERUSAL.

It’s a fine line.

“Don’t go into the basement,” Leah says. “That’s where all the bad ideas happen.”

“What kind of bad ideas?” I ask, perking up. I don’t remember Dylan’s house on Spruce Street even having a finished basement. But if it did, I’d probably go into it, in spite of Leah’s warning. I’m more interested in bad ideas than anyone seems to understand. And I always have been. It’s just that my life hasn’t afforded much opportunity to try them out.

“Just be careful. Trust your gut. There are men who would get you drunk or high just to take advantage of you.”

“I’ll be very careful,” I promise, just because it’s the fastest way to end this conversation.

Leah means well. She’s only nine years older than I am, but she considers herself my guardian. Two years ago—when I was nineteen—I ran away from the cult where we both grew up.

I owe her a lot. She took me in, no questions asked, even though we’re only distant cousins. Leah cares about me and my future, which is a lot more than I can say about my actual parents. If I’d stayed on the Paradise Ranch I’d be married by now to a fifty-year-old man with four other wives.

Sometimes when people hear this story they say we have a “colorful history.” But it’s just the opposite. It wasn’t colorful at all; it was really drab. And that’s why I’m standing here in a burgundy silk blouse I bought secondhand and a pair of tight jeans that would have earned me a beating at the compound.

Leah bought me my first pair of jeans two years ago. I’d put them on immediately, feeling very defiant. Then I’d looked in the mirror and thought: whore. Because that’s what they used to call me.

I still hear their voices in my head sometimes. I was a whore to them. And all because I kissed a boy.

“Are you coming home this weekend?” Leah asks. By home she means her farm in Tuxbury, which is about an hour’s drive from the university in Burlington.

“I think so?” I uncap my only tube of tinted lip gloss and touch up my lips in the mirror.

“Did you tell Dylan your idea?”

“Not yet.” And that’s one of the reasons I’m going to this party at his house.

It’s Wednesday, when we have a standing tutoring date. But today he didn’t show. I don’t have a cell phone, which is probably why I didn’t hear from him. He must have called the land line while I was out.