I’d been drunk before. Once by accident, then on purpose. I knew my father hid bottles of moonshine around the house and in the barn—on the top shelf of the pantry, behind the stack of broken rakes in the shed, inside the old brick fireplace that no longer worked—and I found a bottle under the sink in the hall bathroom when I was looking for hydrogen peroxide. It was in a blue glass canister, which made it look like it could be mouthwash. When I took a sip, it tasted like what I imagined mouthwash would if you swallowed an entire bottle in one gulp, accompanied by the same burning sensation in your throat and ears and eyes. I started coughing and threw up into the sink. I watched my orange bile circle the drain until there was nothing left. Then I shut and locked the bathroom door and did it again. I kept it down the second time.

“I know you,” Ruthie said, to herself more than me. She took a step forward, toward the two girls. “You’re in Willits?”

That’s where I recognized them from. I was impressed Ruthie could get it so quickly. They were at orientation. They were the ones sitting on the floor next to each other, scanning the Covenant Code in the same fashion I had, afraid we’d be quizzed or given a violation if we didn’t have a certain passage memorized.

The blonde one came forward, her hair in a long braid. She had thick dirty-blond eyelashes that made her big brown eyes stand out on her freckled face.

“Yeah. 108,” she said. “They call me Catherine.” Even the way she introduced herself was rebellious. Who says it like that?

“Ruthie,” she said. “We’re in 314.”

“I’m Elizabeth,” I added.

The one with the dark bob joined her roommate, her eyes friendly but removed, like she didn’t want to get too close or too comfortable without knowing more about us first. “Annie,” she said, quietly. If you weren’t attentively listening, you wouldn’t have heard it. Maybe that was her first test.

“We’ll see you around,” Annie said, finished with the conversation before we realized it was over. She started making her way down the steps toward the woods. Toward the campus’s edge, the area that was dark and shadowy and no doubt camera-free.

To Ruthie’s disappointment, the rest of them followed, except the lanky guy, the one who gave me the joint last time. He stood there looking at us. It wasn’t until later that night I realized he wasn’t looking at us, he was looking at me. Only me.