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Want some gum?”
    â€œI mean it, Sammy. You have to believe. How can I be happy up in Heaven if you’re burning in Hell?”
    Needless to say, I tried to avoid her after that. Only Andy told me I was crazy, that she was really into me, andhe’d heard stories, and I should go for it. I’d never had a girl after me before—or since—so I’m thinking, hey, maybe he’s right. And next time I bike by her place and she waves me over, I stop.
    â€œWant to come in for some Ben and Jerry’s? Meet my mom?” she asks.
    The mom part freaks me out, but I’m up for the ice cream. Only Mary Louise takes me in through the attached garage. Before she opens the side door, she turns to me. “Sammy,” she says, “would you like to touch my boobs?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIf you promise to come to the Living with Joy Club, you can touch my boobs.”
    â€œIsn’t that against the rules or something?”
    â€œNothing’s a sin if you have a pure heart and do it for Jesus,” she says.
    Next thing I know, my hand’s up her sweater groping her bra, she’s speaking in tongues, and I’ve developed this Seriously Big Problem. Which is exactly when Mrs. Prescott opened the garage door and caught us.
    Well! Mrs. Prescott made Mary Louise confess her sin to the Living with Joy Club. Mary Louise cried, and everyone said a prayer, and apparently God forgave her.
    I, on the other hand, was some heathen sex pervert. For months, any girl seen within a mile of me lost her reputation on the spot. Andy and Marty thought it was stupid; I hadn’t even touched skin. But the rumors were way more exciting than the truth, so they’re what people believed.
    My parents included. Mrs. Prescott called them immediately after chasing me down her driveway with a rake. According to her, it was only a matter of time before I’d end up in a juvenile psych ward. I got sat down at the kitchen table and screamed at for what seemed like forever. The same old blah, blah, blah about how I’d shamed the family, ruined our good name, and made it hard for Mom and Dad to show their faces in the neighborhood.
    I thought I’d get off the hook by telling Dad that Mary Louise had tried to convert me. It just made him madder: “How dare that school have a club for religious recruitment? And how dare you try to use that to shirk your responsibility? You know what the Prophet says about fornicators!”
    Excuse me? I touched a bra. On invitation. You’d think Dad was Mrs. Prescott.
    Mom tried to remind Dad about “the challengesof puberty,” but he went on this rant about Girls and Temptation, and how I needed to learn Discipline and spend less time with Bad Influences—meaning Andy and Marty, only he couldn’t mention them by name because they’re neighbors, and he had no intention of moving.
    Long story short, I got stuck at this dump, a school supposedly free of Distractions, i.e., girls, that lead to Impure Thoughts That Defile the Soul.
    The clock tower blasts “Reveille.” Five minutes to homeroom. Then English, Math, lunch, Science, History, and finally the bell—freedom.
    I bust my ass up Academy Hill. And into Academy hell.

Six
    L ast period. History. Cottage countdown.
    Mr. Bernstein’s at the front of the class, trimmed and gelled, in a cream suit and a yellow-striped tie. As per usual, he starts with a short lecture full of personal opinions guaranteed to get us talking. Sometimes he gets heat from parents for straying off the course curriculum or saying stuff that’s controversial, but he doesn’t care. “I’ve taught here since the dinosaurs,” he jokes. “You’re stuck with me.”
    Today he’s riffing on witch hunts in colonial Salem and medieval Europe. “Terrifying times for anyone different,” he exclaims with a sweep of his hand. “Leaders traded in fear. People spied