I came home from school one afternoon to find my dad waiting for me in the living room, where he sat me down and forced me to tell him about the whole thing. Even though I warned him not to look at the photos, I think he did. He couldn’t meet my eyes for days after that.

That might have been the end of it, except my dad then called my mom in Vienna, where she was playing the title role in Tosca. My parents divorced when I was six, and I suppose it was my dad’s duty as a parent to tell her what had happened, but the second he told me he was calling her, I knew it wasn’t going to end well. I had to listen to her yelling at me over the phone about how I had no respect for myself and she was ashamed of me.

“It could’ve been worse. At least it’s just my top,” I said flippantly.

“I don’t know how you can joke about this,” my mom said. “How could you let your boyfriend take pictures like that?”

He’s not my boyfriend, I thought. But I said, “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.”

But I couldn’t.

After that call, my summer plans completely unraveled, and before I knew it, I was on that plane to Woodacre, to spend the summer before college under my grandmother’s supervision.

I’m telling this all wrong. I should start over.

—

The boy’s name was Jacob Krieger. He took the photos during Haley’s big party in mid-May. Haley Pierce was one of my best friends, along with Tasha Lewis. I’d known Tasha since second grade, and Haley since she moved to Wellesley in seventh grade. In eighth grade, we became a trio. Because Tasha was Black, I was Asian, and Haley was white, Haley’s parents treated us like the multicultural promised land and were always encouraging us to do things together. But the three of us moved in somewhat different circles in school (Haley was a swimmer, Tasha was a debater, and I did Science Olympiad), although there was always an overlapping area—the intersection of our Venn diagram. In March of our senior year, Tasha and Haley had a falling-out I didn’t understand, and for a while we no longer overlapped. Our intersection was empty.

Then Haley had the idea to throw a house party before prom and senior week—the last party of our high school years, the kind we’d all remember at reunions to come. And we intersected again. It felt like old times, with the three of us lying on Haley’s king-sized bed, making a YouTube playlist on our phones while talking about who to invite.