They all smiled.
“Or do you want to be on your own out there?” she added.
I looked at each of them. They were all anxious to hear my answer. “I thought that once you lost your virginity, you couldn’t get it back.”
“No, not physically back,” Deidre said, “but you can become a mental virgin, which is just as stupid.”
“I’m still not sure about what I have to do,” I said.
Doris laughed the hardest.
“First, you take the oath, and then you get the tattoo,”
Deidre said.
“What tattoo?”
“Girls?”
They all stood up. Doris and Marcia undid their jeans and lowered them as they turned to show me a tattoo of VA done in a fancy script just above the crack in their rears. Deidre and Margot lifted their skirts to reveal the same one in the same place, and then Kiera rose, lowered her jeans, and showed me hers.
“We’ll take you to get yours on Friday after school,” she said. “I think Sasha should have hers done in calligraphy. Her mother used to do calligraphy, and she’s doing it in art class now. Anyone have any objections?”
No one spoke.
“Deidre, you schedule the tattoo, and tell him what we want him to do.”
“First the oath,” Deidre reminded her.
“Yes, the oath.”
“And then?” I asked, my heart thumping.
“And then we help you break out of physical and mental virginity,” Margot said.
“She began her period yesterday,” Kiera told them.
“No rush,” Doris said. “I trust her. She looks as innocent as I did.”
“Hardly,” Marcia said. “When you were born and your father asked what you were, a boy or a girl, the doctor said, ‘Slut.’”
They all laughed. Doris threw a pillow at her. Marcia threatened to throw her drink at her.
“Watch the rug!” Deidre screamed.
“There’s one major added benefit,” Margot told me when things quieted down again. She looked to Kiera.
“She’s right. When we say we’ll help you break out, we’ll make sure you break out with the right boy.”
“No one knows the boys at school better than we do,” Deidre said.
“The oath!” Doris cried.
“The oath,” everyone else chanted.
Deidre reached under the chair and produced a diary. She brought it to me, and all of the girls stood up.
I looked at Kiera. “What is this?”