On top of that, no one was dying. None of us dropped dead after taking a sip of vodka. None of us got so high we fell to the floor foaming at the mouth. None of us experienced anything that I’d been told I would my entire childhood. Life went on as usual. But it was way more fun.

As the weeks went on, Timothy and I started getting closer. He was a freshman, too, but he acted much older—he was generally calm and unconcerned, like he was so confident in his decisions he never needed to second-guess anything. He was studying criminal justice—a major you’d think only the RAs and narcs on campus would lean into. Brigid was being primely trained for the job.

I was ever impressed by him and the more I watched him move and listened to him talk, the less my mind focused on what he was doing and saying and the more I thought about what it would be like to be with him.

While he stood in front of the group, acting out a scene from a movie called My Cousin Vinny that I’d never watched, I thought about eating pizza with him on a date, laughing at a joke he made about one of his professors. While he pulled my hood playfully over my head and squeezed my shoulders after I said I was cold enough to go home, I imagined going to the homecoming dance with him, then sneaking out here and dancing together, our bodies touching in ways they couldn’t in the Covenant ballroom.

While he sat next to me and our knees grazed as he reached to the cooler to get me another drink, I thought about him in my bed, on top of me, asking me if I was sure I wanted to do this, he’d be gentle, he’d go slow.

I started blushing when I was with him, not because of anything he’d done in real life, but because of the things I’d imagined we’d done together. Things that sent a flash of heat to my cheeks, my chest, in between my legs. An entire life I created in my head with a boy I knew little more about than that he liked to snack on crunchy pickles and, like Ruthie, his parents had sent him to Covenant as penance.

“Tim definitely likes you,” Ruthie confirmed one night after she caught me blushing about him. “What’s the most you’ve done...with a boy,” she asked.

I thought about what I wanted to admit. I didn’t keep secrets from Ruthie, but the story of my first kiss felt like something to strategically leave out. Though was saying I’d done nothing even worse?

“What have you done?” I shrugged and turned the question back on her.