The Abstinence Teacher. Tom Perrotta

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      “The back door's open.”

      WHAT AMAZED her wasn't that she went to him, crossing the lawn in her bathing suit, letting herself in, and climbing the stairs to his bedroom. That part of it was a foregone conclusion, all she'd been waiting for since the first day they had walked home together. What amazed her was what she did when she got there.

      It was mystifying, really She was a month away from her sixteenth birthday, and still fairly innocent, at least compared to a lot of girls she knew. She'd played a few rounds of spin-the-bottle in junior high, and had kissed three different boys in her first two years of high school. The most recent one, Scott Molloy, had touched her breasts, but only briefly, and only through her bra.

      Ruth really didn't know how to account for the recklessness—the complete absence of fear—that came over her the moment she stepped into his room. He just looked so harmless—so sweet and nervous— sitting on the bed, the trumpet resting on his bedside table next to a bag of Ruffles, his injured foot propped on a pillow. He started to say something complicated—it was part apology for keeping her waiting so long, mixed in with guilty mutterings about Missy—but she shushed him with a kiss and started fumbling with his belt. His mouth tasted like tuna on rye.

      “Ruth?” His voice trembled slightly, as if she were about to burn him with a cigarette. “What are you doing?”

      “Let's find out,” she told him.

      It had something to do with Mandy, Ruth understood that much, because she had the distinct impression that her sister was watching her, an invisible third person in the room, smiling with approval as she unzipped Paul's fly and tugged his pants down to his knees, nodding in encouragement as she peeled off her bathing suit and tossed it on the floor.

      “Ruth?” Paul said again. “Are you sure—”

      She pressed a finger to his lips as she climbed on top of him.

      Go ahead, Mandy seemed to say. Don't be afraid. It'll only hurt a little, and then it'll get better.

      “It's okay,” she whispered, reaching down and guiding him inside. And it did hurt, a lot more than she'd expected, though she tried not to show it, still keenly aware of the sensation of being judged by her sister, of proving herself to a beloved teacher.

      Because, of course, that was how Ruth had learned everything she knew, lying in bed at night, listening drowsy and aroused to Mandy's half-sheepish, half-triumphant confessions about what she had and hadn't done with this boy or that—the first time she made Billy Frelinghausen hard with her hand, the first time she used her mouth on Danny Wirth, the night she lost her virginity in Rich Lodi's parents’ bedroom, with a gallery of family photos smiling down upon her.

      But this is different, Ruth thought, as Paul released a series of astonished grunts beneath her. Mandy had been working up to that for years, taking things one step at a time, inching methodically toward the goal line. She'd had serious boyfriends since eighth grade, and had somehow managed to postpone sexual intercourse all the way to the end of high school, and to save herself for a boy she really believed she loved.

      “Ho, God!” Paul shouted. He seemed to have overcome his doubts, and was bucking his hips wildly, almost like he was trying to throw her off the bed. “Holy shit!”

      For as long as she could remember, Ruth had felt herself trailing far behind her sister, so far that she couldn't even see her anymore. But now, in a matter of just a few minutes, in a single giant leap forward, she'd gotten herself all caught up.

      “Jesus.” Paul stared at her in bewilderment when it was over. His face was slick with sweat, his hair plastered against his cheek. “I just thought we were gonna make out a little.”

      IT LASTED for a little over two weeks. There was a feverish quality to those stolen afternoons that Ruth had never forgotten, a hectic intensity that left her feeling exalted, set apart from the world.

      They'd head straight to his bedroom after school, yank down the shades, and pick up right where they'd left off the day before. Because of his limited mobility, Paul spent most of this time flat on his back, with his shirt still on (he was shy about his body) and his pants down around his knees (it was a big production to get them off over the cast), staring up at Ruth with an expression of awestruck gratitude as she sat astride his waist, basking in his admiration. He couldn't believe his good luck, couldn't believe that something so miraculous had been made possible by a broken ankle.

      “It seemed like such a drag at the time,” he said. “But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

      “You mean it?”

      “Nothing even comes close.”

      At four o'clock she'd kiss him good-bye and head home, her body ripe and sore and unfamiliar, a subject of constant fascination. Sometimes she'd shower, but usually not—it was exciting to possess a sexual aura, to move around inside the memory of what she'd just done, an outlaw in her own house. Schoolwork was out of the question, so she occupied herself by cooking dinner, singing along with the radio as she peeled the potatoes or tossed the salad. Even her mother, usually so dense and indifferent, noticed that something was afoot.

      “You seem so cheerful lately,” she said. “If I didn't know better, I might think someone had a boyfriend.”

      “Yeah, right.” Ruth rolled her eyes.

      “Pretty soon,” her mother told her. “Just you wait.”

      IF SHE'D been a character in one of JoAnn Marlow's abstinence fables, Ruth thought, she would have paid dearly for that brief interlude of after-school pleasure, and spent the rest of her life enshrined in a cautionary anecdote: Poor Ruth, who found out she was pregnant on her sixteenth birthday; Poor Ruth, who went blind from a rare venereal disease; Poor Ruth, who was exposed as the little slut she was, and driven out of her own high school….

      And it could have happened, of course, at least the pregnancy. In all their time together, Paul had never once used a condom, and Ruth never asked him to; it just seemed out of the question somehow, too bald and practical, as if they were operating in the real world of choices and consequences, rather than this sealed-off dream capsule where you could do whatever you wanted and not worry about anything. Sexually transmitted diseases, on the other hand, were a nonissue; Paul turned out to be as inexperienced as she was, though his virginity was more a matter of his girlfriend's preference than his own.

      Missy won't do that, was a constant refrain on those afternoons, a phrase that not only applied to actual sex, but to less momentous stuff like ear-licking, or finger-sucking, or letting Paul see what you looked like in just your underwear and socks. She thinks it's gross.

      “Why don't you break up with her?” Ruth asked.

      “I can't do it now,” he explained. “Not this close to graduation.”

      SHE HAD only one bad memory from those days, but it had stuck with her over the years, its power undiminished by the passage of time. It happened on a warm evening near the end of school, a couple of weeks after Paul's cast came off and he was reclaimed by real life, Missy, and the marching band. Ruth was in the kitchen, helping her mother clean up after dinner when her father called from the living room.

      “Hey, get a load of this.”

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