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yells out, “Everybody! On the bus, we’re running late!” then turns back to me and says, “Sid, come sit down in the kitchen so we can get to the bottom of this.”
    I sit at the kitchen table, facing Mrs. Winthrop, Cougar Di, and the officer. Tate Andrews and Hunter Brady walk by with a group of guys, all of them carrying skis and luggage.
    “Rock on, Sister Red! Didja get laid?” Tate calls out.
    “Boys!” Mrs. Winthrop barks.
    They laugh and funnel out the front door with the rest of the kids.
    Someone has already packed my stuff. My bag is sitting on the table and I’m being chewed out like I’ve killed someone. I nod, but I can’t absorb what Mrs. Winthrop is saying—the throbbing in my skull is too loud. Am I dreaming this? I think my head is going to blow off my neck.
    “We finally got the truth out of Paige and Kirsten about a half hour ago when Diane did a head count for the bus. A party? You know that is completely reckless. Do you have any idea what could have happened? You’re lucky you’re not dead. We were so worried, and your mother is absolutely beside herself. She’s actually on her way here.”
    My mom. Oh, Jesus.
    They call my mom and let me talk to her for a minute. Her voice is all keyed up, and my dead grandmother’s thick Irish brogue is surfacing. My mom was born here, in America, but her parents were from Dublin, so when she gets upset, her voice takes on this hint of an accent. I do my best to calm her down. She’s literally about to fall apart with terror and relief and anger and whatever else a panic-stricken mother feels when she gets a phone call from her missing child. I do the: Yes, I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s a big misunderstanding, I’ll talk to you when I get home, turn around and go home, I’m fine, I’m fine. Then we hang up. The relief of getting off the phone is followed by a stab of anxiety, because I know I’ve only postponed what is sure to be a very ugly ordeal later on.
    As I’m telling the chaperones and the officer how I met a guy on the ski lift who invited me to his condo, I start to regain feeling in my body. Right around the part of the story where I am entering Dax’s condo, I stop.
    “Can I use the restroom?” I ask.
    Mrs. Winthrop sighs.
    “Fine, but hurry up. We have to get going.”
    I go into a half-bath off the kitchen, remove my coat, and start to realize what has happened to me. My sweater is on inside out and I’m bleeding. My period isn’t for another few weeks, and it’s never hurt like this before.
    “You okay in there?” Mrs. Winthrop asks, knocking on the door.
    “Uh… yeah,” I stammer. “Just a minute.”
    I don’t have the time or sense to think about what I should do. I clean myself up and walk out, trying my best to mask the shaking of my limbs by folding my arms across my chest. A voice inside me screams: Open your mouth! Tell this PTA mom what happened! You need to go to a hospital! But overtopping the voice is the awful banging in my head. A sick regret washes over me in rising waves until I’m drowning in thoughts of: What have you done? I walk back to the table, sit down, and tell them what happened.
    “We watched TV and fell asleep,” I say.
    I tell them what I pray happened, what I desperately wish would have happened. And I spin the yarn—I am the Sleeping Beauty who slept too long. I pump the pedal on my little spinning wheel and weave us all a Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. My heart is pounding and I want to run away so badly, but the What have you done? voice calls out to me. Softer this time. It whispers to me from that hollow pit in my stomach, that place where fear lives, and it talks me through it. It helps me believe my own lies.
    … You can wrap the Fairy Tale Lie around you like a blanket. You can bring it to life with inflection and embellishment, and when it all fits, you can just click your heels together and poof!, it will become real. You’ll be home in your bed saying it was all a dream, it