Joe, though, was nonplussed. “Look at her. She’s beautiful. There’s gonna be boys hanging around her like wasps to sugar water, and she needs to know how to protect herself. She needs to know what to expect. That’s all I was trying to do, explain the ways of the world.”

Still, it felt wrong to everyone, and the household was filled with tension. Siobhan, instead of getting them out of there, was jealous, unhappy that her catch was eyeing her kid.

Sutton was forever aware of how Joe looked at her, his eyes sliding over her nubile form like he was taking stock. Sutton decided a room of her own wasn’t worth what was surely about to come, and began acting out. It was logical to her. If she became a bad kid, he’d get mad and ask them to leave.

She started hanging out with a crowd of tattered boys who kept rolling papers in the glove box and fifths of Jack under the front seat, and the fights started almost immediately. She was grounded. She snuck out. Her phone privileges were taken away. They forced her to ride the bus, but she cut school anyway.

Her actions worked wonders. As her home life (happily) deteriorated, her street cred rose. She was willing to do most anything she thought would piss Joe off, and soon she had herself a you can call me your boyfriend, if you want.

His name was Hayden. He was seventeen. She thought she might even love him.

She’d had her eye on him from the start of her rebellion, certain he could help her on her path to fury. Hayden did his own tattoos, and they weren’t bad, considering. Secondhand Doc Martens, too-long black hair falling in his eyes, teeth as askew as scattered dominoes. A fog of cigarette smoke clung to him, and sometimes patchouli, just so everyone could know what he was really doing when he cut class.

He had a beat-up Jeep Wrangler and a certain way of talking about Kerouac and Proust that made her crazy with longing. She rode in his Jeep without a seat belt, drinking beer out of brown paper bags and smoking cigarettes. They made out in the cramped back seat, squirming around, taking things almost too far.

She didn’t want to live a biscuit-colored life. She wanted excitement and joy, pain and exhilaration. She wanted it all.

So when Hayden suggested she come to a party at his friend’s house, she jumped at the chance. Accepted the upperclassman-only party invitation with sheer delight and excitement coursing through her teenage veins. She knew exactly what was going to happen. She’d been planning this for a while. Finally, they would have the proper privacy to do all the things she’d been dying to try.

God bless that little idiot.