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said two plus two was five. “Guys are everywhere. And”—she paused; for effect, I guessed—“you’ve seen the verts . . . in your free time, you can dress any way you want, go anywhere you want, and do anything you want. Anything, except that .” She could tell I was not impressed. “Well, you can go anywhere on the station. Guess you can’t really sneak off of it.” She laughed, shaking out her hair, and the other side of her sweater slipped down, too. “Hey, Mike, isn’t Joan a FeLS?”
    Mike was staring across the booth at Sandy’s practically naked chest. “Huh?” he grunted.
    “Joan.” I snapped my fingers under his nose. “Your sister? She’s in FeLS?”
    “She is?” He was struggling to focus somewhere besides Sandy’s breasts.
    In order to help, I yanked her sweater closed. “Joan?” I kicked him under the table. “FeLS?”
    “Oh, yeah.” He snatched up a fry. “She was.”
    “Maybe I should talk to her,” Sandy said. “She could tell me all about how to get chosen, right?” She propped her chin in her hands, leaning toward Mike. “Can you arrange that? Please?”
    “Nope. Sorry. Haven’t talked to her since she left.”
    “Wait, isn’t her two years up?” I said.
    “I guess. Mom gets chips from her, I think,” Mike said. “Heck, I dunno. My dad says she probably thinks she’s too good for us now.”
    The guy who’d been watching Sandy motioned her to show her wrist. Reluctantly, she did. He shook his head and turned away.
    “Oh well.” She flipped her hair, scanning the rest of the tables with no success.
    “You gotta be a virgin to get into FeLS, don’t you?” Derek said.
    “Of course.” Sandy rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows that. Why does everyone keep asking me if I know that?” She turned her attention to me. “I wonder what it’s going to be like, really? Can you believe those ‘how-to’ vids? We’ve watched like, what, one a week since school started? I mean, sex has got to be the most ultra thing in the galaxy! I wonder what the guys get to see when we’re watching our vids?” She looked over at Derek. “I don’t know why they separate us, we’re going to be doing it together, so, duh—”
    “Will you stop?” It was bad enough that Derek was making moon eyes across the table at me. I didn’t need Sandy saying anything that might encourage him to think about me and sex in the same thought. “No wonder guys think when girls are tattooed all they want is to get laid.”
    “Don’t they?” Mike gave me his biggest wide-eyed innocent look.
    A part of me knew he was joking, but the part that didn’t said, “Shut up.” I paused, knowing the reaction I’d get if I said what was on my mind. I couldn’t stop myself. “Look at what happened to Angel.”
    Suddenly, it seemed the remaining ketchup on Mike’s plate was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. Sandy began digging around in her purse. Derek glanced at me for a second and then looked out the window. Nobody wanted to remember. I should have felt bad for bringing it up, but I didn’t. I was sick and tired of the constant sex talk, and teasing. Couldn’t my friends at least try to understand that maybe all girls—like maybe me —don’t want to have sex?
    Angel Cordoba had been in Mike’s older sister Joan’s grade, just a couple of years ahead of us. She was cute and nice, and we’d all hung out at Oak Street beach two summers earlier, before Joan went into FeLS. Right after Angel got her XVI, a couple of guys invited her to a party. It was an eighteenth and she was the only girl there.
    The guys got off with six months’ community service for the “accident” with the lighter fluid. There were no rape charges. They convinced the prosecutor that she’d wanted it—that happened a lot when the girl was a sixteen. All the Media news stories said Angel was just another oversexed sixteen, that she got high, accidentally lit herself on fire, and then blamed the guys after