“I didn’t make you cry, did I?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. I never wanna see you cry, Wright.” His eyes stayed glued to the television. I don’t know why he said it, but he looked like he meant it. It sounded protective, but not in a romantic way. In that moment I thought I could have an older brother. I almost asked him if he wanted to be mine.
“All right. You came here for information, and I’ve got it. You ready to learn?” Terry asked, opening his laptop.
I nodded and plopped down in a club chair.
“Come over here so you can see the screen.”
I moved next to Terry on the couch, and he pulled up a document.
“Observe Exhibit A. Your score sheet,” Terry said.
I looked it over, heart racing with adrenaline at the realization that what I was doing was wrong. I didn’t care, though. I thought it was a greater good situation, so Parker’s individual rights had to be violated. Oh God, I thought. If my conservative father heard me say the words “greater good,” he’d disown me.
The score sheet listed various sexual acts and how each act was scored. Kissing earned the least amount of points. Blow jobs were a high scorer. Sex was at the top. But scores were broken down even more than that depending on the type of girls. A blow job from a virgin fetched a hefty number, the largest score out of all of them if she went all the way. Girls who were already considered promiscuous and easy targets earned lesser scores, even if they had sex with the guy. It was confusing at first, but I figured it out fairly quickly.
“I found this score sheet under a file folder labeled ‘FSL’,” Terry said. “Didn’t take me long to figure out what that meant.”
“What does it mean?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from the score sheet.
“Lemme show you this first, and you might be able to figure it out,” Terry said.
He pulled up Exhibit B, labeled “Game 2.” It was an Excel spreadsheet with six boys’ names listed. Under their names were the names of four girls. Some girls already had numbers beside their names. Others did not.
“What on earth?”
“They’re teams, see?” Terry said. “Each of these guys has a team of girls. Like Fantasy Football.”
“Fantasy Football?” I asked.
“Jesus, Wright. Get with the program. Fantasy Football,” Terry said.
I shrugged, waiting for an explanation.
“God, you’re such a girl,” Terry said. “Fantasy Football. You play against people in a league. You draw names to decide who gets to pick first. You pick any professional football player you want for your team, and then you keep score of how they perform in their games. You try to win, see? By having the top score.”
I nodded.
“Looks like they play four games a year. Well, according to old documents I found.”
“Only four?” I asked.
“Well, think about it, Brooke. If they’re working with a team of four girls, they’ve gotta give themselves enough time to go on dates and woo each of them.”
“Okay. That makes sense,” I said. “Do they play the school year or the entire year?”
“Looks like they play in the summertime, too,” Terry said. “And I’ll venture to say these girls don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
“What a bunch of assholes,” I said with as much feminine indignation I could portray to hide my complete and utter fascination.
He pulled up another document.
“Here they’ve rated each girl from the start. You’ve got four categories to cross-reference with the score sheet. There’s ‘Virgin’ which yields top scores for anything she does. A ‘Virgin’ is classified as any girl who hasn’t done a thing except kissing. A ‘Good Girl’ yields the second top scores—”
“What defines a ‘Good Girl’?” I asked.
“Allow me to show you Exhibit D,” Terry said. “This is a document that explains all four categories. Each member of the league signed it. I suppose so that there wouldn’t be any disputes. I guess they all decide which category each girl falls into as well. Very democratic.”
“Very fucked up,” I said.
Terry smirked. “So a ‘Good Girl’ is one who’s done a little more than kissing. Light petting. No oral anything, though.”
“Jeez.” I scanned the document looking for explanations of the last two categories.
There was the ‘Bad Girl’ category for ladies known to have participated in all acts including intercourse. But they couldn’t have had sex with more than one person. The ‘Whore’ category was for all those girls who’d given it up to multiple guys.
I laughed disdainfully, shaking my head. “This is outrageous.”
“This is what you wanted to learn,” Terry replied.
I ignored him. “Show me that spreadsheet with the teams again.”
Terry pulled it up, and I noticed letters next to each girl’s name.
“How can they possibly know if these girls are virgins?” I asked.
“Spying, I guess.”
“You mean you think other girls are helping them out?”