by Katie Wismer
THE ANTI-VIRGINITY PACT
Copyright © 2020 by Katie Wismer
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact:
www.katiewismer.com
Cover design by Natasha Mackenzie : missnatmack.com
Editing by Nina Denison : Write My Wrongs, LLC
ISBN: 978-1-7346115-1-9
First Edition: June 2020
to Mom
for championing my work long before it was any good
this book contains sensitive material relating to:
bullying
religion
sexual assault
animal abuse
substance abuse
anxiety
homophobia
and trauma
please take care
The Pact
For the record, I don’t normally have a predisposition for making bad decisions. I think it’s important for you to know that. Maybe that makes me boring, but the one thing I’ve always had going for me—at least according to all of my parents’ incredibly condescending friends—is how smart I am. How responsible. How I have always been a good girl.
And maybe that’s why I did it.
The point is, please don’t judge me until you know the whole story. Because you might think you know, but you don’t. Unless you’ve spent the last eighteen years feeling like you’re drowning inside of yourself, you don’t know. And even then, I’m not so sure.
It happened on a Saturday night. Johanna’s parents were out of town—Shanghai, I think it was this time—so we were sitting in her bedroom with a bottle of vodka she’d swiped from their liquor cabinet and a crazy plan scrawled on the page between us.
Johanna’s room was more akin to the penthouse suite of a five-star hotel—vaulted ceilings, full-length windows, sleek, modern furniture. Besides the photo wall displaying her best photography and collection of hanging plants, everything was black and white. She said she preferred the simplicity of it, that it made her feel like she was living inside an old photograph.
Johanna swallowed the last of her drink and immediately grabbed the bottles from the floor so she could pour herself another—three-fourths cranberry juice, one-fourth vodka—only this time, it looked closer to half and half. She took another sip before offering the bottles to me.
I hadn’t had that much to drink yet. Not enough to give me the spins. But enough to make Jo’s words resonate with something in my chest. Enough to make me want to keep drinking until her empty promises came true, and that scared me more than anything else.
Jo downed the next drink in two gulps as she spun around and around in her hanging bubble chair. I was sprawled out on her massive four-poster bed, getting dizzy from watching her. Then she planted her feet, yanked out the pen securing her hair atop her head, allowing the thick red waves to collapse around her face, and pointed to the papers she’d gathered in her lap.
“Mare, we have to do this,” she said.
I laughed, but not because it was funny.
She waved her arms impatiently. “No, I’m serious! Here, I’ll go first.” After a quick scribble at the bottom of the first page, she flipped to the second and held it out to me. “Your turn.”
I took another sip of my drink. I couldn’t even taste the alcohol anymore, just the syrupy aftertaste of the juice and the nauseating bubble of panic growing in the pit of my stomach. “You can’t be serious.”
“Come on, Mare, just sign the contract.” Johanna plopped herself beside me and pushed the papers into my lap. Her breath smelled like the overly-sweet perfume usually reserved for the halls of a middle school. “You know I’m right about this.”
Johanna always thought she was right about everything. I rolled my eyes. “I’m not signing that thing.”
Even as the words left my mouth, a heavy feeling of inevitability had started to cling to my skin. Because Johanna didn’t have to convince me with reminders of our looming graduation—reminders of all the things I hadn’t done, or the things people whispered in the halls.
I looked down at the papers in my lap. When laid out like this, sure, they held a kind of sparkle in their potential. She was absolutely right. All my life, I’d been the quiet one. The one people teased about why I never talked, and when I did, they feigned shock that I had the capability to speak. I was the girl with a yearbook full of flippant have a good summer messages because no one had anything better to say. My shyness had always been a self-imposed cage that left me crippled to all that was high school.
High school. It had a way of making you feel so small. It wasn’t even the judgmental looks or the snarky comments. It was the absence of them. Sometimes, not being seen at all was worse. The way kids you’d gone to school with since kindergarten couldn’t remember your name. The way they walked into you in the hallway because they expected you to be the one to move. The way your whole body would deflate when teachers commented on how you never talked, even when you were so proud of yourself for working up the courage to raise your hand that day.
My finger ran over the last line of Johanna’s contract. By the end of senior year, I vow to no longer be a virgin.
I was eighteen years old and I’d never been kissed. Never even been on a date. Honestly, none of the guys in our class had probably thought of me that way. All while I watched every other girl, freshmen and seniors alike, burn through relationship after relationship. I couldn’t help but think if it was so easy for them, then maybe there was something wrong with me.
Johanna must have seen the indecision on my face because she jumped at my hesitation. “Come on!” she urged. “Take a risk for once. Do something that scares you. You’ve played it safe all through high school. We’re eighteen fucking years old. And we’re about to be out of here, anyway, and then it won’t even matter what these losers think of us.”
Johanna had always been dangerously impulsive, and if I were being honest, it was part of the reason we became friends. Even as a kid, she had this mysterious allure. There was something intoxicating about her presence, something that made you want to be brave, too. I didn’t know if it was the alcohol or her words that made me do it, but either way, I held out my hand. “Give me the pen.”
1
Sunday mornings at the Beaumont house are grand events. Papa spends the morning practicing his sermon by mumbling it into his coffee; Maman prances around the kitchen making breakfast, humming as she goes, because Sundays are the only days she has time to cook; and my younger sister, Harper, sits at the kitchen table, glued to her phone, glaring at everyone and everything because she’s pissed Maman made her wear a dress. Meanwhile, I scramble to get my homework done before school tomorrow while simultaneously doing everything in my power to avoid catching my parents’ attention.
Because the thing about Sundays is they’re what my parents live for. They’re the one day Maman doesn’t have to work, Harper doesn’t have dance class, and I’m not working at the shelter. To them, Sundays are holy days in more ways than one. To Harper and me, they are the ultimate test of patience.
The kitchen table is tucked in the far corner so it backs up to the bay window for extra seating
. Harper sits in the chair closest to the stairs, her entire body slouched over her phone. Papa sits across from her on the bench, and the rest of the seats are occupied by Maman’s various pairs of discarded high heels.
When I tug on one of Harper’s dark braids to get her attention, she glances up, quickly locking the screen so I can’t see what she was looking at, and scowls at me. “What?”
My gaze flickers to the phone, just for a second. Harper’s pinched expression glares back at me in the reflection.
“Have you seen my book?” I ask.
“You can read?”
I glare at her smug little face—pursed glossy lips, haughtily elevated brows—an expression I’ve grown all too familiar with since she started high school this past fall. Someone ought to tell her that her eyebrow pencil is the wrong shade.
It’s not going to be me.
“Very funny. Have you seen it? I left it there last night.” I point at the table in front of her.
“I didn’t take it, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“I wasn’t implying anything. I just need the book so I can do my homework.”
She shrugs and turns back to her phone. “Looks like you’re screwed then.”
“Harper Beaumont,” Maman gasps from across the kitchen. She’s standing with an oven mitt on each hand, one pressed to her chest in horror. She clearly hasn’t realized doing so smeared melted cheese on her white dress. “Language.”
I turn my back so Maman can’t see me roll my eyes and decide to rope me in on this lecture.
Harper scrunches up her nose. “It isn’t even a bad word.”
“We don’t say it in this house,” Papa says without looking up. He’s counting something off on his fingers, mouthing the numbers as he goes, but keeps getting stuck on the fourth finger for some reason, his face creasing in agitation each time. His reading glasses have slipped so far down his nose, I think he’s forgotten he’s wearing them.
Harper throws her arms up and slaps them against her thighs. “Why are you yelling at me? Mare says it—and worse—all the time!”
“I do not.” I wave my hand as if she’s being ridiculous and start searching for my book in the mess on the island. “Have you ever heard me say that word?”
Maman shakes her head. “I haven’t.”
I shoot a quick grin at Harper over my shoulder. I totally have.
“Come on!” Harper exclaims, pointing at me, but I’ve already resumed my innocent book-hunting.
Maman sighs, oozing disappointment, and rips the oven mitts off one by one. She throws them onto the island, exposing the extremely intimidating pattern of kittens playing with a ball of yellow yarn. Really, it’s a mystery where Harper gets her dramatic flair.
“Harper,” she says. “We don’t point the blame at others for our mistakes. We accept responsibility.” Maman uses her overly calm, lecturing voice that makes me want to scream whenever it’s directed at me. I’d feel bad for Harper if she hadn’t just tried to throw me under the bus.
“Ugh.” Harper gets up from the table and storms upstairs.
“Harper, sit back down! Breakfast is almost ready,” Maman calls after her.
“I’m not hungry!”
Maman shoots an exasperated look to Papa, but he’s not even paying attention. In fact, I think he might be laughing at something on his phone. “We’re leaving in ten minutes!” she yells.
Harper replies with a slammed door.
A faint burnt scent reaches my nose, and I glance across the kitchen to see plumes of smoke escaping the oven.
“Maman!” I yell.
“Oh, non! Non, non, non! Zoot!” In her well-practiced routine, she flicks the oven off, turns on the hood vent, and has the situation under control in seconds, though the kitchen is now smoky enough to burn my eyes.
This, finally, gets Papa’s attention. He leaps up from his seat, glasses falling from his face and clattering to the table in the process, and hurries over to the windows above the sink. He throws them open, and the decorative metal cross clings against the glass.
“Je suis désolée.” Maman sets the charcoaled breakfast foods on the counter, body deflated, and wipes the sweat from her brow. The quiches are scorched, but at least it’s not as bad as last week. “Who wants cereal?”
✦✦✦
The moment we reach the church, I split off from my family. Papa needs to get set up, anyway, and as long as I rejoin Maman and Harper before the service starts so we can all sit together in the front—Maman says it gives the appearance of a united front, as if this is some kind of political election—they don’t mind.
If you didn’t already know it was a church, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell from the outside, what with its modern architecture and Papa’s weird infatuation with trying to seem hip to attract younger people. I think the building used to be a concert hall before it was repurposed.
I pause at the cluster of tables a few yards from the entrance to wait for Johanna, who is headed towards me from the opposite direction in dark jeans and a white T-shirt, her fiery hair knotted messily atop her head. She spots me a moment later and lifts her hand as if to wave, and then proceeds to flip me off. I glance around to make sure no one else saw before allowing myself to laugh.
“You’re looking…chaste,” she says by way of greeting. We prop ourselves atop the tables, staking our claim in the sunny spots since it’s still super chilly in the shade. It’s midway through April, but Colorado never fails to surprise us with random snow storms every other week.
There’s still a good half-hour before the service starts, and I don’t think either of us wants to go inside until we absolutely have to. Jo’s even less religious than I am but shows up on occasion for moral support. Also because my dad’s best friend drags his ridiculously attractive son here every Sunday.
Yeah, it probably has more to do with that.
I don’t even want to talk about the white dress my mother insisted I wear today. I’ve always thought wearing white in contrast to my ash blonde hair and pale skin makes me look like a ghost, but Maman swears it’s her favorite color on me and is constantly bringing back white things from her boutique.
“You’re looking…casual,” I reply.
Johanna lets out a mighty yawn and stretches her arms over her head. “How much longer are you going to keep up the perfect daughter act and make me get up at the butt crack of dawn?”
“The service starts at ten.”
She shrugs. “The question still remains.”
I glance at the church over my shoulder, squinting my eyes against the sun. The perfect daughter act. “I’m moving out soon anyway. I don’t see the point in stirring up trouble.”
She slaps her arms back to her sides. “Whatever, it’s your life. Just seems like Jesus might have a problem with a non-believer being his poster-child, but okay—oh my God, is Danielle Owens crying?”
Johanna points to the parking lot, where two girls are heading toward us. Danielle Owens and Ricki Paige—both are in the youth program here, but they’re closer to Harper’s age than mine, and I’ve never gotten to know them that well beyond reputation. Papa loves them, which kind of makes me assume I wouldn’t. Ricki and Harper were friends at one point, but they don’t seem to talk much anymore.
Both girls are in the standard church pastel and floral attire, but Ricki has her arm braced around Danielle’s shaking shoulders. Danielle looks like some kind of grieving widow, with dark circles stamped beneath her eyes and a tissue pressed against her face. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is about her not getting the lead in the church’s latest theater production or something.
“Are you okay?” I ask as they near the curb.
Ricki glances around when they reach us. She’s gotten a lot prettier as she’s gotten older. Dark golden hair, freckled cheeks. Looks like she finally grew into her nose, too. “Have you heard about Silvia?” she asks.
Now t
hat she mentioned it, it was kind of odd to just see the two of them. Silvia was the usual third member of their trio.
“What about her?” Jo asks, popping her gum, oblivious to the tension lining their faces.
Ricki lowers her voice. “Her parents say she’s spending a few months with her grandparents in Montana, but we think they found out she was smoking pot and hooking up with this guy, Patrick, so they hired one of those Jesus camps that kidnaps you in the middle of the night to reform you.”
“Wait, what?” Johanna makes a small choking sound like she just swallowed her gum. “That’s a real thing?”
I raise an eyebrow. Their jump from point A to point B seems like a bit of a stretch. Silvia’s mom is also president of the church’s knitting club, which pretty much makes her the picture of innocence. “Why would you think that?”
“She hasn’t returned any of my texts or DMs,” Danielle wails, as if this proves everything. She sniffles a few times before pulling a new tissue out of her purse.
“And she told us weeks ago that she found one of those camps on their computer’s search history,” adds Ricki. “So of course she totally freaked out. And then suddenly she just disappears? And in the middle of the semester? Tell me that’s not sketchy.”
“And now look at them!” Danielle glares over our heads at Silvia’s parents standing in the church lobby, arm in arm, smiling and chatting with their friends. “They’re smiling and lying to everyone like some kind of psychopaths.” Danielle practically spits the word.
“Did you tell anyone about this?” I ask.
“Like who?” Ricki demands.
“Uh, like the police?”
“Oh, so we can be next?” Danielle dots the tissue under her eyes, but it does little to help the puddles of smeared mascara. “Plus, who would believe us? Everyone here loves them. And we don’t have any proof.”
“Danielle! Ricki!”
