Pure

Chapter 1: The Test

I guess you could say it all began innocently enough.

"What do you want to do tonight?" Casey began. No one answered for a moment. "Alright people, give 'em here," she said as she tossed her phone into the middle of our circle. Riley looked up, glanced at Casey, and then back down at her screen. We all avoided Casey's gaze.

"Uggg, fine. Here," Paige said, aiming her phone at Casey's after a solid minute of her giving Paige the stink eye. Reluctantly, each member of our small group did as they were told, our phones piling up in the middle. Casey got up onto her knees, lined up all of the miscellaneous phones into one neat pile and sat back down again.

I watched her count, seven in total, and then saw as she unsurprisingly snapped her head up and look right at me. I looked at the her, and then the pile. And then at her. Shit. She had her "oh-my- god-Alex-why-are-you-like-this-will-you-please-just-be-normal-for-once" face on. My eyes pleading, I placed my only protection from these nearly perfect strangers around me gently on the top of the pile, my cheeks burning as I felt seven stares gaze at me from various corners of the room. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

Casey was the one that had begged me to let these people come into my house to 'chill' (because 'hanging out' was "for little kids" she reminded me), and because she told her parents that we both needed to study, (which they were ecstatic about), and she told my mother that I had finally made some more friends, and she was quick to agree to this little get together as well. Besides, she'd claimed that they were people I just "have to meet", but so far, the um, unique people surrounding me were proving to be quite underwhelming.

The girl, or um, guy? That I believed to be Ezra, was the one to suggest it first, I'm guessing. The only thing I knew about him so far was his pronouns of "he and him" and that he must have a shit ton of bright blue, box hair dye because it seemed like every week I'd seen him, his hair got brighter. Or maybe it had just gotten to the point because I'd taken it upon myself to stare intensly at it, the color blurring my vision until I got a headache. Yeah, it was that kind of blue. Currently, it was pulled up into a small high ponytail, but with his hair falling just above his shoulder, most of it remained sporadically down. I'll admit, I was taking so long calculating just how many boxes it would take to reach that color and surveying the others, (because, of course, he wasn't the only one in this group to sport this very unnatural looking pigment) that I wasn't really tuned in until I saw hands reach into the middle and clutch their phones in my peripheral vision.

Now that got my attention. I greedily went for my phone, happy and relieved to have it in my hands again. I unlocked my phone, my muscle memory opening Instagram and refreshing the page, even though it could have only been minutes since I checked it last. With nothing new to look at, I glanced up. Nearly everyone was furiously typing at their phones, scrolling, or tapping.

"Jesus," I heard Grace, the girl sitting next to me mutter. I stole a glance at her screen. A tan page stared at me, with a long list in black ink, Grace's finger tapping the screen every once in awhile. I stole a glance at the url. "Ryce Purity Test", it read. I looked to Riley's screen on my opposing side, his screen identical to Grace's. That's what they were talking about, I decided excitedly, mentally patting myself on the back for figuring out what everyone else was up to without having to embarrass myself (or Casey, as she sees it) again by asking about what everyone was doing. I typed the title in, and clicked on the first result.

The familiar page greeted me, my eyes scanning the page until I stopped and clicked on the "Start" Button on the center of my phone screen. Up close, I could now see thee faint outlines of owls that presented themselves in a repeated pattern all across the web page, and that the list of words I'd seen earlier were actually questions. And man, I thought, there were a lot. Scrolling back to the start, I read the first question.

'Ever held hands romantically?' it read. Uh, my love life's a joke, as I selected 'no'. 'Been on a date?' it asked. Nope. I did my answer accordingly. 'Been in a relationship?' Nada. 'Danced without leaving room for Jesus?' I suddenly got an image of a bunch of sweaty kids dancing in couples in a crowded gym with balloons between each partner, a small pop being heard from different areas in the room. I half smiled at the thought. No. The next ten all began with the word 'kissed..', so those were out too. 'Stripped?' Nuh- uh. I skipped down the list. What the fuck? 'Massaged sensually', 'mastribated', 'preformed sexual acts', 'done drugs'...

My vision was becoming unfocused I was reading so fast. I suddenly felt like throwing my phone across the room. I looked up, mortified. Everyone else was engrossed in their phones, staring at the lists of questions inquisitively. I looked back down, my cheeks burning. I continuously slid my finger up the screen as each question became more disturbing. I stopped.

'Ever been in handcuffs?' it read. Once, I thought. My uncle was a police officer, and my sister and used to take turns handcuffing ourselves to different things in our old apartment before we moved away. 'Ever been questioned by a police officer?' the next one read. I could answer this in the same way. Afterall, when your uncle finds you and your sister sitting on the ground in the same position as when he left, crying hysterically while one of you is attached to the radiator, there is bound to be some questions. (I honestly didn't mean to drop the key to the handcuffs down the air vent, but there wasn't much I could do once it happened.) Technically, it didn't count, but from the amount of tapping I'd seen earlier, I was sure that no one would mind.

I hurriedly headed to the bottom of the list and clicked "Submit".

I looked up, and quickly felt nervous as I looked around the circle and realized that everyone's eyes were trained on me.

"Who wants to go first?" Riley, the creepy kid next to me asked. I looked at my score. "98", it read. Wait, does that mean I passed? I wondered. Because man, if I were to have seen that on the top of one of my math tests, it would have been a goddamn miracle.

My thoughts were interrupted by a deep voice from across the circle.

"82," Ethan , a kid with sandy blonde hair said. He looked to his left, expecting Ezra's answer.

"86," he said hesitantly.

"89" Paige said. Wow, I'm actually winning.

"81", said the voice of my best friend. I tried to not look surprised, and luckily I was able to conceal my widened eyes before her gaze landed on me. Grace was next.

"83," she said, with pride. Silence. We, myself included were all waiting for the next voice. That is, until I realized the next score belonged to me.

"98," I said, my heart beating fast.

"What?" Casey suddenly interjected. "Did you really just say ninety-eight?" she repeated the number like it was a dirty word. And in this circle, it seemed like it was exactly that. All heads turned to look at me, resulting in a feeling that I was oddly getting used to tonight.

"Um, yeah," I responded, my cheeks rosy with the realization that that was the first time I'd spoken that night. Is that bad or something? I almost said aloud. She shook her head, her short bleached hair swishing this way and that, oblivious to the death stare I was giving her. I shot daggers at Casey, both for calling attention to my number and for making me take the test in the first place, my chest increasingly feeling angry pressure building up inside of it.

" I got a 73," said a voice suddenly. I assumed it belonged to Riley, the last one in the group, but I was proven wrong when he spoke out.

"Damn, dude, I thought I beat you this time," he said. "One point," Riley mumbled, while everyone stared at Jordan, the obvious 'winner' of the group. We sat in silence for a few beats, before Ezra, who I was beginning to discover was quite a chatterbox, spoke up.

"Dude, we should try to lower them."

"Yeah!" Casey nodded eagerly. I looked at my best friend like she was an alien. And she might as well have been because at that moment, forget planets, we were universes away from one another.

The rest of the group cast their vote through nods and mumbles of agreement. And so again, it all came down to me.

"Fuck," I mumbled.

"Alex, ya in?" Jordan flashed his pearly white smile in my direction. I tried not to puke. No, no no no no no... was all that was chanting in my head. So something must have possessed me to say the next word that left my lips.