“You’re giving too much power to my clothes,” I said. “Besides, why do men get to decide what my clothes are saying?”
“Men are visual. Does anyone else think that’s true? Show of hands.” He smiled in his smarming way.
We all raised our hands.
“So what’s your endgame? You dress in suggestive ways. A man is gonna get the suggestion.”
“That’s the point. All I’m doing is suggesting that I’m a sexual person. I’m not issuing an invitation,” I said.
“Why are you making the suggestion? Rory, really think about it. Don’t be knee-jerk in your response. It’s like going up to a boy and asking if he wants to have sex with you and then—psych—just a suggestion. You wouldn’t do that, right?”
“That would be assholish.”
“But you let your clothes do that.”
“My clothes are assholes?”
Zee goes, “Gosh, Ror.”
“No. It’s okay, Zara. That’s what we’re here for. Real talk. Rory, I’m just saying, if you dress like a whore, men are going to treat you like a whore.”
“I wouldn’t say I was dressed like a whore. I was in shorts because it was a hundred and six, and riding boots since we’d just been at the stables. Plus, what about respect for whores? Even Jesus had respect for whores.”
“Can we not say whores?” Dee asked.
“It’s false advertising,” Jagger Jonze said.
“If you want to dress like a whore so much, why are you even here?” Jinny challenged me.
“Can we please stop saying whore?” Delaney asked. “No one here is a whore. Like, that’s a joke word to us. This feels serious.”
“Who decides where the line is drawn?” I was getting pissed. “Who decides when I look like a ‘whore’?” I used air quotes.
“You do, Rory. And you know you do. Stop playing dumb,” Jagger Jonze said.
Brook apologized for me. “Her parents are Canadian.”
Zee chimed in, “You know those skirts we got from H&M were actually super-slutty, Ror. We all said they were. We know what we looked like in them.”
Brook: “I think Jagger’s saying, like, we just need to tone it down, Ror. No big deal.”
“You’re committing to chastity, Rory, right? That’s why you’re here?” he asked.
I squirmed. “Yeah.” He knew I was a fraud. But come on, I wasn’t the only faker in the room.
Jinny got a call then—even though we were all supposed to leave our cell phones in the basket—and said she had to go run some mysterious errand for her mysterious brother.
She had to go? Wha…? And just like that, she was gone, leaving the original hive alone with this guy.
At that point, Jonze promised that what we talked about wouldn’t leave the room, and encouraged us to be honest and uncensored. He said that we were there to teach him, because the better he understood us, the more successful he’d be at spreading Jesus’s message of abstinence. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember Jesus actually saying anything about abstinence in the Bible. Plus, there are rumors he was banging Mary Magdalene without puttin’ a ring on it. So.
“You have to know that what we’re doing with the AVB is about being accountable, to God and to yourself.” He paused to look each one of us in the eye. “You can be honest. The AVB is a ritual of commitment. You can be re-virginized with your pledge. So? Virgins? Show of hands.”
We all raised our hands.
“What did we say about truth?” He was trying not to sound irritated. “We’re here to be honest. Who here is a virgin?”
All five of us assured him that we were pure.
“Not one of you has a boyfriend?” He looked straight at Fee.
We all shook our heads.
“Five hot high school girls?”
It seemed weird that he would refer to us as hot.
Brooky said, “Sacred Heart High. It’s the chastity belt of schools.”
“We’re at school all day, then music or sports and homework, and same on weekends and church on Sunday and we have our girl time. Even if we knew many boys, we wouldn’t have time for them,” Zara said.
“We only really know my brother and a few of his friends,” Brook added. “Chase and Kyle and the guys in Miles’ band. And anyway, I’m too busy with school and track.”
“Don’t tell our dads, though. They’ll think we’re only into the AVB for the dresses,” Dee said.
“Are you?”
We all shook our heads. Lying liars.
“You’re lucky,” Jagger Jonze said. “This won’t be as hard for you as it is for girls