“It’s fine. It is.”

“Timing.” I said it, hoping for, I don’t know.

She shifted her weight foot to foot. Then her phone buzzed, and when she looked at the screen, her mouth turned up a bit. “Hey, I’m going to—” She pointed at it, made some jerky gestures that I took to mean she wanted to address whatever text message had come through. Alone.

Inside the study room, it was all eyes on me. Mya asked, “Where’s Kiera?”

I did a rough approximation of the gestures Kiera showed me a moment ago, and Mya was like, “Are you having an episode?”

I sat without answering and Jameer said, “We didn’t get very far on the purity presentation. After you left someone”—he looked directly at Shanice—“wondered if you answered the last batch of questions I gave you.”

“Dude.” Maybe I should point out how I was the only one holding up my end of the bargain. Fix my Kiera situation if you want your answers. What I actually said: “That is the opposite of what we’re here for.”

Bobby spoke up. “Yeah, but we were all arguing about the presentation, nobody argued about this.”

Jameer nudged my concession. “Do you have them with you?”

“No. I bet you do, though.”

Jameer flipped his phone out.

I said, “Thought y’all wanted this anonymous.”

“The questions are anonymous,” Jameer confirmed. “No one here knows who asked what. It’s like what Sister Vanessa says in class. A lot of times we’re all thinking the same thing, so no one should be ashamed of what we discuss in our group. Every topic can help everyone.”

She did say that. Sounded, oddly, like MJ, too.

“Fine.” From my seat, I dug out my laptop. “If this is what y’all really want?”

Kiera returned, beaming. “So, did we decide? Fashion show?”

Jameer broke the news. “Not exactly.”

“No!” I spun my laptop toward the group, scrolled through a MythBusters-styled medical website in case someone needed proof. “It will not fall off, you won’t go blind, or grow hair on your palms.”

The girls laughed hysterically. The Burton Brothers blushed. The anonymity of these questions didn’t hold up well to context clues.

We’d worked through half their list, body curiosity stuff mostly. Kiera, disappointed that the group wasn’t more focused on Purity Pledge Squad Goals, zoned out fairly quickly. Earbuds in ears, eyes on phone.

Twenty minutes and we’d burned through the list Jameer provided. Eyes were lit with the madness of forbidden knowledge, and no one was interested in resumed purity presentation brainstorming. Jameer proposed we used Ralph’s Lakers cap as a repository for everyone to toss in more anonymous questions on torn slips of paper. Ten minutes after that, a dense puddle of paper filled the hat.

I plucked the first one up. “Am I supposed to shave my hair off down there?”

“I think, only if you want to,” I said. The thought of a razor anywhere near my junk freaked me out, but I knew from . . . other internet research, some people were into it. As was our habit, they didn’t take my word for it. I entered the question in a search engine, and got several articles that echoed my answer, but also gave tips on how to accomplish the “landscaping” safely if it was your thing.