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.”