A few steps farther into the woods and a small patch of clearing opened up before us, just large enough for a green-and-gold picnic blanket, stolen (or so Timothy would claim) from Covenant’s bookstore. I could understand why they came here. The trees were so thick around us, there was no way we’d ever be found or heard. It was the perfect spot.

Catherine, Annie, and their two other friends, Nicholas and Andrew, looked up when we arrived and smiled, though they also seemed surprised to see us, as if we hadn’t been given an invitation. Maybe Timothy hadn’t consulted with the rest of the group first.

The whole thing was trippy, a term I learned from Cosmo that felt appropriate for me to use here, as everyone was getting high. Everything about the way they looked directly contradicted the behavior I was witnessing. The joint hung limply from Annie’s lips as she fixed her hair, a prim dark bob held back by a white floral headband I’d seen people attach a veil to during mass. Catherine was wearing a long paisley dress that looked like she might have sewn it herself while pressing her beer can’s ring back and forth and reciting the alphabet, a game to find her next potential hookup. Nicholas’s moppy blond hair and broad shoulders only seemed to highlight the two-inch golden cross hanging from his neck as he laughed about that time he hooked up with a girl who wore braces—“nearly ripped my tongue right off.” And Andrew had his balding head parted in what one might already consider a comb-over, while he created a pyramid with all the empty beer cans.

They were the last people I’d expect to see here, which I guess was how they got away with it all.

Timothy instructed us to sit down and we did, joining everyone in a circle around the school’s logo on the picnic blanket, in a pejorative hot seat. He lifted the joint toward me, and I was about to take it before Ruthie nudged my ribs so hard I let out an unattractive grunt.

“What?” I asked. I’d done it before, I’d assured her on the way there. I wasn’t as innocent as I’d seemed.

“We’re just drinking,” she said. “We have to be back by midnight. Brigid will smell the weed but not the vodka.”

That was a valid point I’d forgotten about. We’d always planned to be back by curfew, so we were only breaking a certain number of rules in one night, but I hadn’t considered the state we’d be in when we returned. We couldn’t be so inebriated that if we ran into Brigid in the hallway she’d be able to tell.