E-Book Overview
Established in 1798, Milton Academy had always had a proud history of achievement, integrity, and pride—until a sex scandal rocked the campus and made headlines in the spring of 2005. Written by two Milton graduates who know this world—and these students—like no others, Restless Virgins follows a group of seniors who were there as the "incident" (as it came to be called) unfolded. Startling, riveting, important, and true, it offers an honest, intimate look at the real lives of today's teens—an eye-opening yet sensitive depiction of normal kids with normal struggles that no teen, parent, or educator can afford to ignore.
E-Book Content
restless love, sex, and survival at a new england prep school
virgins abigail jones and marissa miley
For our families
contents
preface vii a note on methods and sources xi chapter one
Everyone’s Watchin’ 3 chapter two
The Man 27 chapter three
Awkward Little Virgins 52 chapter four
Who Did You Dance With? 65 chapter five
Keep Walkin’ 78 chapter six
Give Me Knowledge 96 chapter seven
He Said Yes 111
chapter eight
I’m Eighteen 128 chapter nine
Congratulations! 138 chapter ten
Lift the Jaws 149 chapter eleven
Wear Your Lucky Underwear 162 chapter twelve
That’s Such a Rumor 174 chapter thirteen
Is It Possible? 192 chapter fourteen
A Meaningful Relationship 209 chapter fifteen
Waiting Up for You 225 chapter sixteen
The Best Feeling of My Life 242 chapter seventeen
Bobbing for Apples and Beer
251
chapter eighteen
A Lovely Girl 263 chapter nineteen
One Really, Really Pretty Dress 278 chapter twenty
You Never Really Graduate 290 epilogue 307 acknowledgments 317
About the Author Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher
preface
Meet the girls and boys of Restless Virgins: Annie, Whitney, Jillian, and Isabel; Reed, Brady, and Josh. Classmates at Milton Academy, a prep school near Boston, Massachusetts, they give us a very personal, intimate look at their daily lives in their senior year of high school. This book is about fitting in, taking risks, hooking up, and breaking up. It’s about best friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and parents. It’s about settling and survival, and always the search for love. Their stories are laugh-out-loud funny, uplifting, heartbreaking, over the top, and outrageous. While many scenes may seem possible only in fiction, everything that happens here is true. High school is a monster story; where could it possibly begin? In Restless Virgins, it begins in early September 2004, when these seven students arrived on campus for their senior year, and it ends in June 2005, when they stood on the picturesque main quad, girls in white dresses and boys in navy blazers, ready to graduate. They began the year wondering if their personal histories were a divination of what was to come—or if, in their final year of high school, something might change. Yet the 2004–2005 school year was hardly typical at Milton. A sex
scandal involving a girl and several boys and a daring on-campus locale splashed the school across the news. As the story unfolded, we were both surprised and intrigued, because we were curious young women who graduated from Milton in the late 1990s. We weren’t so far away from our own high school days. We played sports and musical instruments, studied hard, had lots of friends, even a boyfriend or two. But the scandal was entirely unfamiliar ground for us. Young lives were changed and a prestigious school was publicly embarrassed. The circumstances around the scandal may have been unusual but, as we soon learned, the behavior was hardly an exception. How were we to understand teenage life today? The cultural image