I woke up in Duke’s car the morning after the prom with a surprisingly clear recollection of what had happened during the night. We smoked cigarettes and listened to shitty gangsta rap. He complained about his girlfriend Angie, and how she was so jealous. He told me I had the cutest, perkiest little tits he’d ever seen, and wanted to get a closer look. Piece by piece, compliment by compliment, my clothes came off. I ignored the fact that I found him kind of revolting. That his skin was too greasy, his eyes too close together, his hands too rough and too pushy. I ignored the fact that I had heard he screwed Char and Allie and a couple of the metalhead skid girls, and that Angie once ripped a chunk of hair out of another chick’s scalp in a fight. I ignored the fact that we didn’t have a condom and that the aim of his thrusts was one orifice off more often than not. He ignored me when I said ow, stop, and please.

After a few too many wayward pokes in the back exit that were starting to feel intentional, I told him to get the fuck off me, right the fuck now. He was livid, grumbling about blue balls and cock teases as he pulled up his pants, got out of the car, and stormed away. I put my clothes back on. The new-fangled “lock-up” jeans that had been such a nuisance when I needed to pee in the woods felt like a godsend all of a sudden. I locked the car doors, locked my pants, wrapped myself up in my hoodie, and slept until Duke came knocking on the window at sunrise, sneering, “Get your slutty ass outta my car, Crow.”

Had that been the end of it, it might have been okay. But it wasn’t.

A week later, on the night of the Safe Grad fundraising dance at the rink, where — surprise — everybody got hammered, Allie and I were outside having a smoke when Char came ripping around the corner of the rink, brandishing a crinkled sheet of loose-leaf. A copy of the hockey team’s infamous “Dirty Dozen” scorecard. Ratings and comments beside every girl’s name. The challenge laid out before the Loch Bhreagh Marauders was to have sex with and rate a different girl every month. To nail the Dirty Dozen. They all kicked in some money, and anybody who completed the challenge would get a cut. The only guy who pulled it off was Duke. The slimy little prick was five hundred bucks richer, and this was his list.

“I’m a two! He called me a freak and gave me a fucking two!” Char howled. “I’m gonna rip his floppy excuse for a penis off and stuff it up his right nostril with the toe of my fucking boot. That copsucker.”

Char had a way with words. And threats. She was also half deaf in one ear, so she often heard — and repeated — things wrong. The first time she said “copsucker” in junior high, she was met with a chorus of jibes. She stubbornly argued that it was more offensive to suggest that someone sucked cops than cocks. Copsucker became our preferred insult.