After that party, we fell out of touch. I stopped talking to almost everyone. I got a new roommate, a soccer player named Inez who created a cloud of body odor in our room every day after practice. I became reclusive. I went to class and back, that was it. I stopped seeing Timothy or answering his calls. When I spotted him a few weeks later walking with his arm around another girl I felt relieved. Maybe we could pretend that losing my virginity never happened. Maybe if I could have that night back, Ruthie could, too.

I didn’t answer Catherine’s and Annie’s texts. I didn’t open the door when they knocked to invite me to dinner and eventually the knocks stopped coming. I didn’t meet them in the forest one more time. Instead, I lofted my bed and created a childish fort underneath, pulling my sheets over the wood siding until I could sit on the floor unseen. Down there, I’d eat fistfuls of Doritos and drink queso straight from the jar. I’d let ice cream melt in the gallon and then lap it up like a cat with milk. I’d buy family-sized bags of caramel M&M’s and eat them one by one until my jaw was throbbing, until I’d counted every single piece.

God didn’t exist. I didn’t care about looking good for Him, about treating my body like a temple, like something He created in His likeness. I didn’t want anything to do with this place, these people, this religion.

Ruthie was the only person I wanted to see. The only person I wanted to talk to.

But she was gone. And no one would listen to me.

I’d taken a double shift at the diner that day, figuring it was better to have something to do as all my former classmates strolled back into town. I didn’t leave until after 2:00 a.m., when we closed for a few hours so a cleaning crew could come in and scrub the grease from the floor. I locked up quickly—it’s routine at this point, transferring the cash from the register to the safe, making sure appliances are off, the freezers are shut, the lights dimmed. Then I stopped just inside the door and looked at the poster on the community bulletin board, which I also did every night. MISSING: BERNADETTE WARD. I noticed the one-year reunion poster hanging next to it and tore it down, letting it crumple to the floor and get swept up with all the day’s other garbage.