PLEASE NOTE: You MUST return this form if you wish for your student to participate in the Grade 11 HLE activities.

CHILD’S NAME: Delbert Rainey, Jr.

Directions: Please check ONLY those lessons in which you want your child to take part.

“Healthy Living” . . . was sex ed. Last year it was “Family Living” . . . but still really sex ed. Why they didn’t call it that had always puzzled me. And the lessons . . .

Below the instructions was a list of lessons, divided up over eight weeks. I skimmed phrases like “strengths of my interpersonal goals,” and “maturity and decision making,” and “A thorough review of STD prevention and contraception.” For some reason, that one was in bold type.

Rocking back in my chair, eyes rolled back, I groaned. Eight weeks of Purity Pledge and this?

Sitting up, I said, “Eight weeks.”

I set the permission slip aside and opened my Purity Pledge folder. The first page had a weekly breakdown of our purity lessons. Immediate phrases that jumped out: “strengths of biblical principles,” and “God’s will vs. my will” and “A thorough review of why Jesus wants me to abstain.”

In bold type.

Snatching up my Healthy Living permission slip, I held the breakdowns of the two classes side by side. Each week, each lesson, was like Bizarro World opposites. Whatever was on the books for Healthy Living, Purity Pledge went the other way. And vice versa.

What the hell?

Or what the heaven? I mean, this definitely wasn’t a coincidence. The parallels were too exact, right down to the fonts. The image that popped in my head . . . tug-of-war.

But, why?

This felt important. I would’ve pondered it more, but I got a text from Qwan.

Qwan: Got a new IG follow for you. MzIndependentNCS. She’s Nigerian, Colombian, and Swedish bro. Bikini shots are bananas!

And then I moved on to Instagram. To explore the nations of the world.

Chapter 4

MORNING

PERSON

THOSE WERE THE TOP and bottom captions in Kiera’s IG story, paired with a Boomerang of her flipping her hair back and forth like a shampoo ad. Back and forth, back and forth. Flip-flap, flip-flap.

It was the latest in a series that posted overnight. Some stills. Some video. A few with the goofy filters that made her eyes cartoonishly big and/or distorted her head. All positive, upbeat. Overly.

She was broadcasting to all of GCHS that everything was fine. Nothing to see here.

The views were in the hundreds and climbing.

I tapped my phone, intending to check Colossus’s story while barreling down the stairs loud enough to trigger a “Walk!” from Mom. At the front door, car keys jingling in my other hand, I felt the rush of unsupervised transportation that still hadn’t gotten old. Before I could escape, Dad’s office door slid open. “Junior, let me holler at you a sec.”

“Dad, I gotta pick up Qwan.”

“Just a few minutes. You’ll be fine.”

My backpack tugged tight on my shoulders, I flopped onto the center cushion of the couch inside his “home office.” Dad had a sweet job writing technical documentation for a company that made productivity apps. He never had to go into a “real office,” like he used to. Now he was “work from home” and a “telecommuter,” terms that he tossed around at family functions when folks asked how things were going.