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We had a lot of sex that spring, though I was still nominally dating Matthew, whatever that meant. He had always been withholding, so there wasn’t a big change when I began to spend all my time with Cassie, learning what it’s really like Down There. I liked the badness of it, but felt a curious sen…

We kissed, more and more roughly, until he grabbed ahold of some of my belly fat and pinched it hard. “Oh,” I said, hot and embarrassed. “Sorry.” I was apologizing for the fat. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re beautiful.” I wasn’t. You couldn’t pinch beautiful, at least not in the waist. But I…

We take a package of Manner wafers from the case and throw it on the floor. The Seven Gables sells Manner wafers because they are European. “Oops!” we say. “Broken!” We put the cookies in the back room to eat later and get back to the business of scooping and selling.

But hush now, the previews …

All of these factors contributed to the subject’s sluttiness. But this study feels the most useful explanation, perhaps, is mythological. A mythology of sex itself. The subject infused the act of sex with unconscious mystical power. Why did she put that power into sex and nothing else? She wanted s…

At first it was boys the same age as the subject, or only a bit older. The boys were brainy classmates from her progressive prep school, with Guatemalan spreads on their beds and climbing gear stashed in their closets and calculus textbooks on their neat desks. By the time the girl was sixteen, tho…