“That’s all you need,” I interrupted. Ruthie looked up, squinting through the flashlight. “I—I don’t know, Ruthie. I can’t get caught at a party,” I said. “If I get sent home, that’s it for me. I’m done. I’ll never get out.”

“We’re not going to get caught!”

“You don’t know that. You just said other people have been. I don’t know if that’s worth it to me—”

“I didn’t come to college to sit in my dorm and play cards or whatever every night. That’s not the college experience. The whole point is to do things—to drink and dance and date. To...to have sex,” she said, out loud.

Our heads bolted toward the door. I wasn’t sure what the violation was for talking about sex, but having premarital sex was impossible to come back from—in every way, I guess. I wasn’t afraid of sex because of all the reasons I was told to be—that I would descend straight to the fiery gates, that I’d get an STD and then get sent straight to the fiery gates, that I’d get an STD and pregnant and it would hurt and I’d bleed and no one would want to marry my impure body and then get sent to the fiery gates.

I was afraid of sex because of the violations.

Big things like that are often covered by multiple violations and you better believe they give you all of them. Premarital sex? Well, you were inappropriately dressed (five points) + you entered, or allowed someone to enter, the residence of a person of the opposite sex (ten points) + you deceived (ten points) + you participated in inappropriate contact with the opposite sex (twenty points) + you created a disruption to the community (twenty points). They’ll also probably throw in a couple bonus violations like late for curfew (one point), falsification of information (twenty points), failure to identify oneself (twenty points). And next thing you know, you’re expelled, paying the school almost a thousand dollars in violation fines, and living on the farm with your parents going on chaperoned dates with an older man they’ve arranged for you to marry in exchange for a few farm animals.

“Why did you come here?” I finally asked, after a few seconds of silence. “Why didn’t you go to a normal school?”

Ruthie sat up straighter, her head resting on the wall behind her. “My stepdad thinks I’m a fuckup,” she said. “He’s from all this—” she waved her arms around “—and he thought it would be good for me. Some discipline or whatever.” She got quiet and looked down at her hands, nails bitten down to their core. “I’m not a fuckup. I’m just not like his other kids...”