Jeanette’s mother had tried to talk to her about sex once. She’d found a condom in Jeanette’s purse. Her mother had tried to borrow her purse without even asking, which had angered her. It was a vintage quilted Chanel, her father’s gift to her on her thirteenth birthday. Her father gifted his love, her father who never bought her mother anything. Jeanette sensed an attempt at reclamation when her mother borrowed her purse without asking.

Jeanette liked that her mother thought boys were fucking her when she found the condom at the bottom of the Chanel bag. The truth was that she had been flirting with Manny, one of the popular boys, one of the boys who would flunk out in a year, who sat next to her in chemistry and copied her answers. She was good at chemistry.

“Do you like it raw?” Manny had said to her in class one day. Jeanette had no idea what he meant, though now she knew. But she had feigned knowledge because she liked that Manny thought she was the kind of girl who’d know. She liked that Manny pinched her waist and winked when he said it.

“Yeah,” she said, popping her gum and shrugging.

“Damn, girl. Me too,” said Manny. “Guess neither of us needs this then.” He handed her the condom and cracked up in laughter.

The teacher scolded them both, and the pathetic girls, the ones nobody wanted, looked toward them with disgust. Jeanette kept the condom and placed it in every purse or backpack she used each day or night, a reminder that she was wanted. And she pictured that when it finally happened, the fucking, she’d pull it out and the guy doing the fucking would know that other people wanted her too.

“Look, I’m not going to pretend I can stop you from, you know, doing … you know…,” her mother had said, refusing to meet Jeanette’s eyes. “I just want you to know that nobody is going to want you—for serious things, things like marriage—if you are, you know, if you’ve been, well, if you’ve been used already.”

Jeanette had giggled. Nobody looked more used up than her mother. She’d never have said it to her, but Jeanette knew her mother was just jealous her father didn’t want to use her anymore. That nobody wanted to use her mother. That her mother was useless.

On the car ride to South Beach, Johnson told Jeanette his name was Johnson. Jeanette was embarrassed she hadn’t thought to ask. She didn’t give her real name. She told Johnson her name was Caro. Caro was the hottest, most popular girl at school. Caro was Manny’s girlfriend the year before, which meant Caro liked it raw.