Riley scoffs. “What bad things?”
“You could get sex-trafficked!” Maggie sits on Riley’s bed and pulls one of her oversize pillows to her chest. She rests her chin on the edge of the pillow. Riley’s unconcern is baffling to her. Hasn’t she heard the same horror stories as Maggie? Didn’t their ninth-grade health teacher warn them against the dangers of this very activity?
Riley sighs. “How exactly would that work, Maggie? My own boyfriend is going to sex-traffic me?”
“Well no, but... you don’t know, honestly. Let’s say Jacob gets mad at you for something, like, I don’t know, you hook up with a summer boy, and then he sends that photo to someone to get back at you, and that person sends it to someone else, and all of a suddenyourphoto is on some creepy website where pervy guys pay money to look at it...”
Her mother had made her read an article in theNew York Timesabout a girl whose life was basically ruined after she sent nude photos to someone she trusted. Before this girl knew it she was a drug addict living out of her car. “You could be a drug addict living out of your car before you know it.”
“You can’t even see my face!” protests Riley.
“Even so. Things can get out of your control.” She thinks about Sam Trevino.
“Jacob’s not going to do anything like that. I trust him, okay?” Riley sits down next to Maggie on the bed. Maggie can smell her Ariana Grande perfume and her mint gum. “I know you don’t understand because you haven’t been in a relationship yet—”
“That’s not what this is about,” Maggie tells the pillow. Riley’s superior tone is really getting under her skin. She doesn’t evenknow if she wants a boyfriend! Why does Riley have to make her feel bad for not having one?
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. But listen, you’re not going to find a guy who doesn’t want this. This is just how it is. This is how we have to be.”
“What if it isn’t how I want to be?”
Riley shrugs. “I don’t know, Mags. I didn’t create the world. I just live here. And I’m being careful. You don’t need to worry about me, okay?”
“Okay.” She can’t help it though. She’s a worrier.
“Let’s go to the party.”
“Get-together,” says Maggie. She tries to summon the excitement she’d felt when Sam came into the café earlier; the excitement, even, that she’d felt ten minutes ago, before she’d first looked at the phone. But she can’t find it.
When she and Riley dismount their bikes on Mohegan Trail after a long, hilly ride during which Riley worries aloud that she’s sweating off her perfume and Maggie worries internally that she’s sweatingonsome reprehensible body odor, Maggie feels like she’s finally about to experience a real-life Taylor Swift Fourth of July party circa 2013–2016. The house is lit up like a Christmas tree. There are cars parked up and down the long driveway and, in one instance, on the wide green lawn. Music is coming from the open windows; people are spilling out of the double front doors. More people are on the grass, sitting on the steps leading into the house, on the second-floor wraparound deck.
“Holy shit,” breathes Riley.
“Holy shit,” agrees Maggie. This is definitely not the small get-together Sam had described.
“Do you think these are all people from the play?” asks Riley.
“I don’t know,” says Maggie. “I guess? Probably? Or maybe they’re summer people. I don’t recognize anyone.”
“Do you think we’re the only people from school here?”
“Maybe?”
“God, that would be amazing,” says Riley. “If we were the only ones? Can you even. We could be entirely different people. We could reinvent ourselves!”
Maggie feels a tap on her shoulder and turns around. It’s Sam! “Hey, girl,” says Sam. “Welcome! Um, so, it’s alittlebigger than I was planning, I think things sort of snowballed.” She takes a deep breath and says, as if to herself, “But it’s going to be okay. I know it’s going to be okay.” She glances back and forth between Riley and Maggie. “I’m so glad you guys are here,” says Sam. “But. I don’t want to be, like, an enabler of underage drinking. You guys didn’t drive here, did you?” Maggie doesn’t want to remind Sam that she and Riley aren’t old enough for driver’s licenses, so she just shakes her head. “Okay, good. In that case. You didn’t hear this from me. But there are hard seltzers in the kitchen. I think there’s a keg somewhere over there...” She gestures vaguely behind her. “Whatever you do, take it slow. And definitely, definitely stay away from the rum. The rum is not for amateurs. Oh! And the most important thing. Do you see that big blue bucket over there?” The girls nod. “I need you to put your phones in there until you’re ready to leave. House rules, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, Sam whirls away, into the crowd.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” says Riley. “Sam Trevino. I just can’t believe it.”
“I know, right?” Maggie starts to feel the power shift slightly back in her direction. Maybe she doesn’t have a boyfriend, maybe she doesn’t know how to light a nude selfie correctly, butsheis the reason they are here.
Riley purses her lips and looks around at the clumps of people everywhere. She marches over to the blue bucket, and Maggie follows her, and they both drop their phones in.
“How will we find them later?” Maggie worries.
“We’ll figure it out. Jacob will be here in fifteen minutes. Let’sgo get a drink.” Neither one of them has been drunk before. Once in the late spring they were planning to share a vodka and lemonade when Riley’s parents were out to dinner at Kimberly’s, but Riley’s mother had a bad reaction to an oyster and her parents came home ninety minutes earlier than they were supposed to. Riley and Maggie had to sacrifice their carefully crafted cocktail to the kitchen-drain gods.
Maggie follows Riley across the lawn, down the walkway, into the house, and up a set of stairs that leads to the main floor. She’s taking in the scene. A couple is making out in a corner. A group of five is playing some indiscernible drinking game at the low living room table. A woman in her twenties is crying softly into a red Solo cup. Riley, whose absence Maggie hadn’t even noticed, returns with two cans of Truly in her hands.
