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the whistle and the collective groan of the fans; my screech was so violent it practically diced up my throat like a Ginsu knife.
    “That puke better not smell like booze, Wilcox,” Hank yells, just like he does every year, smashing a different last name onto the end of the sentence. He stomps out from the kitchen, his face flushed and dripping with sweat. The football team moans and points; a chorus of I didn’t bring a bottle, not me, no way, climbs into the air; chairs scrape; the bell on the 33/262
    entrance starts jingling. The Wild Turkey is carried out tucked under a football player’s enormous biceps. My own table is emptying, too, as Gabe nudges me, sticks his nose against my ear. “Come on,” he murmurs, his breath warming my neck. “Let’s go.”
    We step outside, stop in a clump just beyond the enormous slice of pepperoni painted on the plate glass window. The front door of Hill Toppers’ does an excellent imitation of a playground swing, flying open and shut again in rhythmic bursts. We—the former Lady Eagles—linger on the sidewalk, awkwardly toeing pebbles with our sandals, as they—the former Fair Grove High seniors—start piling into the cars lining the curb, ready for the hilltopping and stomach-pumping and babymaking portions of the night to officially begin. We stare at each other, knowing there’s no way to change a scoreboard after the final buzzer. So we finally start exchanging hugs, plastering on smiles and pretending to be overjoyed that high school is over. Pretending we all don’t wish we could hit some magical rewind button and start again.
    Especially me. Only I’d need to go back a little farther than the team; I’d start with those driveway practice sessions, those daily runs, the pounding, the stress, the overuse. Because Gabe and I are still going to college together, as we’d planned since the start of our senior year—now, though, it’s nowhere exotic. Just Missouri State University in Springfield, a mere fifteen miles from my front door, just like Gabe’s older brother and three-fourths of the college-bound Fair Grove High seniors, Gabe to become a journalist, as he’d always planned, and me to
    … what?
    A scream peals through the night, like the squeal of a balloon with a leak. A few jokesters are already crammed into the cab of a pickup. Sean Greyson, pitcher for our baseball team and photographer for the Fair Grove Bulletin , who’d tallied every last vote for “Best Smile” and
    “Class Clown,” who’d shouted, “Gabe, stop drooling over her long 34/262
    enough to just look at the camera” when we’d posed for the “Class Couple” photo last month, has actually pulled his entire torso out of the passenger side window and is waving at me.
    “Here! Chelsea! Catch!” he shouts, launching something right at me. Instinctively, I lean forward, open my hands like I’m receiving a pass.
    The truck careens down the street, the screams of joyous freedom growing faint as I turn the object over in my hands. A box of Trojans. My face flames as the team starts to back away, down the street, shouting ridiculous woo-hoo s and ooh-la-la s. I want to yell at them to stop, to come back, because this isn’t how I want to say good-bye, not like this, me standing there like a moron, so mortified I probably look like exactly what I am: a virgin.
    The word itself scrapes me raw. Virgin. It sounds so babyish, so pathetic and old-fashioned. My head fills with the image of a grainy black-and-white video from the 1950s, a bunch of girls in crinolines and bobby socks sitting around listening to How to Protect Your Chastity.
    “Better leave you two alone,” Theresa teases, while Megan and Hannah and Lily chime in with “I’d wish you good luck, but you don’t need it” and “ We know when we’re not wanted.”
    I open my mouth, but nothing comes. They—the team, already a they —become the back pockets of four pairs of denim capris, four pairs of flip-flops smacking