She grabbed her pocketknife and headed for the cardboard container. For all she knew, it could be kombucha food, or maybe matching belly-dancing outfits for the rest of the Back Room Babes.

But no. It was weenies.

Knife in one hand, packing tape sticking to her fingers, Sera stared into a carton of cock. There were glow-in-the-dark vibrators shaped like Japanese manga figurines. Glass wands Glenda the Good Witch would have blushed to wave. Double-duty probes that looked more like Joshua trees than something one ought to be filling one’s happy crevices with. Dildos, vibrators, and strap-ons packed the box to capacity. A note taped to the invoice read, in flowing cursive, “Dearest Pauline—Hope these keep you humming! (Batteries included, of course!) Love to the Babes—Your friends at the Ecstasy Emporium.” The tagline beneath the wholesaler’s logo read, “Premium Pleasures. Down and Dirty Prices.”

“Dildos,” she muttered. “Why did it have to be dildos?”

Abruptly, Sera was back in high school. Tenth grade, to be precise. Friday night, the night of the Spring Semi-Formal.

In her new flower print Betsey Johnson minidress, fishnet stockings, and favorite beat-to-shit fourteen-hole Doc Martens, she was about as fashionable as her grunge-meets-Goth sensibilities allowed her to get. She’d been primping for hours, listening to an old Alanis Morrisette CD while she tried on liquid liner (disaster) and dithered over whether the dress was too much or too little. (The way it rode up the backs of her thighs made her self-conscious, but it was that or her empire waist velour, and she’d gotten that stained with ganache when she’d foolishly chosen to wear it while baking for a class fund-raiser.)

Sera had to look her best, because tonight would officially be her first real date.

She still couldn’t believe Robbie Markham had asked her out. Robbie was cool. Robbie was an upperclassman and played for practically all the varsity teams. Robbie had a coif of floppy black hair that shaded one soulful brown eye, and when he flipped it back in that signature Robbie Markham way, all the girls would sigh. What’s more, Robbie Markham had, until this week, never deigned to notice Sera was alive. When he’d asked her to be his date to the semi-formal, Sera, who’d planned to boycott the event in favor of a night spent attempting to break the hard-crack boundary on her so-far-spotty candy-making efforts, had literally looked around behind her. But she’d had a wall of lockers at her back, and Robbie, smiling his crooked Robbie Markham™ smile, had filled her field of vision, waiting for her answer with the cocky assurance of a guy whose face was likely to appear on nearly every page of the upcoming yearbook.

“So, um… Sarah, right?”

Sera had nodded, not daring to scare him off by correcting him. Her palms felt sweaty, so she hid them behind her back, pressed flat against the cool blue-painted metal of the lockers.

“You, ah, wanna hit the semi with me?”

Sera had felt like she’d been hit by a semi. She honestly wasn’t sure if she wanted to go. She didn’t know Robbie. Dancing made her queasy. And damn it, she’d really been looking forward to seeing if she could get those caramels to firm up properly. But one didn’t say no to a date with Robbie Markham. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience; even Sera could see that. Caramels could wait.

“Sure,” she’d croaked. She’d really, really wanted to throw up.

But she’d said she would show up, and now Robbie would be meeting her at the school in less than half an hour.

Wonder if Pauline will notice if I take a nip from her liquor cabinet, Sera thought as she made ready to leave. Pauline kept some Kentucky bourbon and a bottle of single malt around somewhere, she knew from previous raids. While a shot of sour, fiery Maker’s Mark was more likely to set her stomach roiling than settle the butterflies currently occupying it, Sera was willing to risk it.

Pauline, unfortunately, was blocking the booze. When Sera emerged from her small bedroom into their living room, she found her aunt sprawled out on her settee, a big Victorian affair draped in lace doilies and tassels, reading her tattered copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex for the fourteenth time. Seeing her niece decked out in gay cotton print and dark, dramatic makeup, she leapt to her feet.

“Rite of passage!” she cried, throwing her hands to the sky and planting her bare, toe-ringed feet in a wide stance. “Don’t move a muscle, kiddo. Let me get my camera. I gotta record this for posterity.” Pauline dashed to her bedroom, returning almost instantly with the battered Nikon she’d toted across four continents in her days as a cultural anthropologist. She fiddled briefly with the lens cap and the focus. “The lucky man’s not picking you up?” she asked, pouting, though Sera had already told her as much at least twice.

“Guys don’t do that anymore, Aunt Paulie,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We’re meeting in front of the school.”

“Shame,” Pauline continued, clicking her tongue. “I’d have loved to get one of those cheesecake prom night pics of the two of you, even if it is horribly 1950s of me.” She sighed and shook her head. “Oh well. This’ll have to do. Strike a pose, Baby-Bliss. Make like it’s the luckiest night of this young fella’s life—because with you as his date, he damn well better think so.”

Sera managed a pained grimace for the camera.

“Um… Aunt Pauline?” she ventured when the Nikon was safely stowed again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Baby-Bliss, anything,” her aunt replied, giving her a squeeze as Sera reached for her denim jacket and checked her reflection one last time in the mirror by the front door. Is my eyeliner still crooked? she agonized briefly, but decided she couldn’t afford to start all over again. By the time she was done, Robbie would have given up on her and gone inside, and she really didn’t want to look like the lonely dork wandering the halls seeking her date when he’d probably already be hooking up with somebody more popular. Still, her uncertainty was so paralyzing it was hard to get her feet to move. She needed help. She wanted her mother like never before, but her mom had been gone for three years, and she couldn’t help Sera now. Now there was only Aunt Pauline, who tried hard but who had the maternal instincts of a burlesque queen.

Oh, Mom, she thought, aching. What I wouldn’t give for one of your hugs and pigtail pulls right now. Sera’s eyes stung with sudden longing, but she refused to cry and ruin her eyeliner. She’d wept for her parents long enough—so long she’d missed a good portion of her freshman year, and been so mute with grief even after she returned to school that she’d barely managed to make friends. Things had slowly improved and, Sera hoped, were about to get even better now that she’d been noticed by one of the most popular boys at school. She couldn’t afford to mess this up.

But Sera didn’t know how to ask Pauline, who had been born bursting with sexuality, what she wanted to ask. So she just blurted it out.

“Aunt Pauline, what do I do?”

Pauline’s hawklike features crinkled in surprise before realization set in. “You mean, when you’re with the boy? Oh, that’s simple. You do what you want to do, Bliss. No more, no less.” She touched her niece’s cheek fondly. “You don’t need a refresher on our safe sex talk, do you?”

Sera frantically shook her head. That’d been one conversation she wouldn’t soon forget. Souvenirs from that discussion had included a rainbow assortment of condoms, a semester-long self-defense class, and a prescription for birth control pills Sera had no intention of filling until she was in college.

“Don’t forget you’re a strong, confident, beautiful young woman,” Pauline reminded her, resettling Sera’s denim jacket collar so that it lay properly against her neck. “You deserve the best. After all, kiddo, you’re my niece.” She drew Sera into a fierce, patchouli-scented hug. “Go get ’em, Tiger.”

But it was Robbie who turned out to be the tiger, growling and nuzzling her neck like a wild animal the minute he’d shuffled her through their obligatory first dance. In an alarmingly chaperone-free corner of the gymnasium, he boxed Sera in and began smothering her surprised mouth with deep, slurping, porno-inspired kisses. In the background, Hanson’s “MMMBop” played at deafening volume, further nauseating Sera.

Sera pulled back. “Robbie—Robbie, whoa!” She grabbed his hand, shocked, and yanked it away from where it was crushing her breast. “What are you doing?” Robbie’s fingers abandoned the battle for her boob and swooped down to make a grab for her butt. Before she could so much as gasp her shock, he’d gotten a handful and squeezed—hard. His mouth dive-bombed her neck, sucking in a way she was sure must leave hickeys.

Hickeys! she thought, horrified. God, everyone will see! She’d always found love bites revolting when girls walked down the halls proudly displaying them like brands of possession by the strutting, preening boyfriends who strolled beside them. And though most girls at their school might kill to sport a Robbie Markham™ hickey, Sera was becoming surer by the moment that she wasn’t one of them.

Robbie began pressing his lower body against hers, and Sera grew even uneasier. There was a hardness there, poking her, and she didn’t think it was his belt buckle.

“Robbie, stop it!” she cried, pushing against his chest. It took almost all her strength to create some breathing room between them, and his hand was still kneading her ass like a baker with a vendetta against his dough. “What are you doing?” she asked again. She swiped a trembling hand across her slobber-spattered lips.