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door before I collapse, face-first, onto my bed.
    â€œI slept with him, you know.” Sophomore year. Maggie and I were dipping our toes into her then-boyfriend Keith’s pool.
    We’d seen each other around freshman year. I was the new kid in town, she was the one who fit in, even with the seniors. But it wasn’t until that spring that she took notice and invited me into her world. A world with pools like Keith’s, overlandscaped monstrosities with fake boulders and a fire pit in the Jacuzzi. Maggie said it looked like a watering hole from
The Lion King
.
    In the house, Keith and Joey were playing video games with Keith’s older brother, Scott, online. Scott was stationed somewhere overseas where they still had Nintendo and Internet access twenty-four hours a day.
    â€œWho?” I asked. I felt like a child next to Maggie in her black one-piece, her butterfly kimono flared out behind her like wings. My toenails were unpainted. I wore no makeup. I was fifteen and looked like I was twelve. Maggie was my age, going on twenty-five.
    â€œScott. Corporal Punishment over there.” She pointedwith her chin, meaning the house where the boys were online, or maybe the country where Scott was stationed.
    â€œYou slept with your boyfriend’s older brother,” I said, deadpan.
    Maggie laughed. “Don’t be disgusting. Keith wasn’t my boyfriend then. We were just hanging out and there was Scott with those puppy-dog eyes, all ‘I’m going to war and may never come back.’ It was, I don’t know, exciting. The whole life-and-death thing. What if I was his last chance to get laid by an American chick? So I did it.”
    I took it all in without comment, resting my chin on my knees. When she didn’t say any more, I asked, “How was it?”
    Maggie sighed and stretched out on her towel. “Oh, you know how boys are. There’s the sensitive ones that get all weepy and ‘I love you’ if you let them touch you, and the douche bags that go all cold and stoic once they get their rocks off. I was kind of hoping for a douche bag. I mean, soldiers are macho, right? But nope, he was the other kind.”
    I looked at her, expecting a joke. “You’d rather have a jerk than a guy that loves you?”
    Maggie sat up on an elbow and turned her heart-shaped sunglasses my way. “Honey, if a boy only says he loves youafter you’ve screwed him, it ain’t you he loves, it’s your Bermuda Triangle. Much more honest to have a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am than a post-party love fest. Even better if they’re a little rough, so there’s no confusion.”
    â€œRough,” I repeated, swallowing my disgust.
    â€œYeah, why not?” Maggie smiled a little. “I’ve gotten a shiner or two in my day. It’s primal. You know, exciting.”
    â€œLike screwing your boyfriend’s brother because he might die in the war?”
    Maggie pouted. “Don’t get all high and mighty on me. Have you seen my parents? I can’t believe they ever did it enough to have me and Parker. It’s like they’re stone. I’d rather smack and get smacked every once in a while. At least I’d be feeling something.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with just love?” I asked.
    Maggie snorted. “God, you sound like a virgin. Seriously.” She shook her head.
    I tucked my knees back beneath my chin. Maggie looked at me over the rims of her starlet sunglasses. “Seriously?” she repeated. “You’re a virgin?”
    I shrugged, embarrassed, but I didn’t answer. She laughed, which hurt, but then she clapped me on the shoulder, which didn’t. “What’s that like?” she asked, as if she’d never been a virgin, a born Venus, unable to relate.
    I pulled my legs closer and sniffed at her.
    She laughed again and hugged me. “Don’t let the bastards touch you,” she said.