“It’s hard to believe you’re Penny’s sister,” he said, downing the rest of his beer in one long glug. “You’re so much hotter.”

With this he leaned in and kissed me, his huge hand moving inside my shirt in one swift motion. The thrill and horror hit me simultaneously. First there was the delirious fact of being kissed by Matt Berman, but then there was the insult to my sister, the aggressive grope. I shoved him off me. Hard. He was drunker than I realized, and he stumbled backward dumbly, toppling over. His face went quickly from embarrassment to rage to amusement.

“Oh! Damn,” he said, “You hit like a dude, Cleary. Guys,” he said, hollering to his friends who were several yards away by the firepit, deftly transferring his own embarrassment onto me, something boys like him become adept at early on. “Don’t mess with Manly over here.”

The nickname was neither clever nor accurate—my height had briskly outpaced my weight and, ironically, my main focus with my coach at that point was building muscle—but it didn’t matter. Matt was popular and beloved, and the nickname had the advantage of being perfect for chanting whenever I walked into a room, ensuring that I was greeted with “Man-ly, Man-ly” wherever I went thereafter.

That night, all I wanted to do was leave. I searched the house for Penny, feeling disoriented. She’d be fine with leaving early, since her current boyfriend went to another school.

“Emily,” I said, finding her in the kitchen talking to some other girls from her class. She’d always been well-liked, the perfect combination of pretty and nonthreatening, the girl next door.

“Little sis!” she said. Her voice was high and excitable, as it always was when she’d had a beer or two.

“Have you seen Penny? I want to get out of here.” I was trying to hide the fact that I was on the verge of tears. “This party sucks.”

Emily shook her head, “I haven’t seen her in a while, but let me know when you find her and we’ll go. Are you okay?”

I nodded, but the sympathy on her face made my tears spill over. “Fucking boys,” was all I could manage.

“Oh, sissy,” she said, launching herself into my side, under my arm. By that time Emily came up to my shoulder and fit perfectly into the nook of my armpit.

I scoured the house for my sister. No one had cell phones then, only Zack Morris on Saved by the Bell and the occasional city person out for a weekend in CDA.