Scoreyourscore.com.

It’s a website designed for people to rate their sexual partners. You can sort by campus, age, gender, sexuality, kinks, etc. It’s sexual Yelp. Too much nipple play. Nimble tongue. Sloppy kisser. Ridiculous stamina. Micro penis. Two-pump chump. Meat curtains. Do. Not. Google. That! It goes on and on. Men and women both detailing their exploits. This handy website is a goldmine of data.

I don’t know how to read people, but data I get. Data speaks to me in a language I can understand. Right now, it’s telling me, somewhere in all this hay, I will find my needle. That special someone to take my virginity. A brilliant if slightly deranged idea begins to form in my twisted brain. I don’t need a professional—more of an experienced amateur. I open up a spreadsheet and go to town, more optimistic than I’ve ever been about taking the next step in my womanhood.

Chapter Two

Elizabeth

I’ve always hated my father’s study. It’s too big and it smells stale. It makes me feel insignificant. Decisions about my life were made in this room and I was never the one making them. Stepping across the threshold, I’m twelve years old again.

‘Stop fidgeting, child,’ my mother’s stern voice calls out.

‘Richard, are you listening to me? Your daughter has made me the laughing stock of Montgomery Preparatory Academy.’ She taps her foot. It’s her rattlesnake tail, warning that a strike is coming.

‘How so?’ my father asks, his eyes focused on the papers in front of him.

‘Percilla Ellison ambushed me in front of the entire Council of Concerned Parents! She claims our daughter is a threat to the other children. That she is obsessed with the gruesome and morose.’

In biology lab, I told Becca Ellison a severed head can remain conscious for up to twelve seconds, which is both accurate and cool. Becca thought it was a threat. I don’t know how to be normal, but for my mother, I try.

‘I thought it was interesting.’

‘Hush, child.’ I hate when she calls me that, like I’m not hers. ‘Why is she so odd?’ my mother asks the universe. She looks me over with a sigh, her forehead wrinkling in disapproval. ‘Posture, Elizabeth. Do you want to grow up a hunchback?’

I pull my shoulders back and stand up straight.

‘Harriet, I have a conference call in five minutes.’

‘I am withdrawing her from that school. I refuse to subject our family to gossip.’

‘But I li—’ My mother silences me with a glare that could turn a saint’s heart to stone.

‘She can have tutors here at the house.’

‘Fine, dear.’

‘People will ask why she isn’t attending school. I can’t claim she is gifted. Perhaps she is ill? Too morbid. Delicate.’ With one simple word, my life is changed.

Banished to my room for the rest of the night, I log into my computer and get lost in another world. A world where I have friends. Where I’m not a disappointment and a mistake.