The quintessential suburb was built on rules, and they still shape the town today Some of the tasks on the list were silly. Dance in a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Scream in a store. Lick a park bench. Some, however, were less silly. Sex on the high school turf resulted in an automatic win. As far as Amanda Luque knew, no one had done that. But still, the scavenger hunt intimidated her. She only showed up at the starting point underneath the bleachers because a friend had asked her to.
Yet there was something thrilling about the scavenger hunt, too. Luque was 14 and about to enter MacArthur High School in Levittown, New York. The scavenger hunt was an underground hazing ritual unaffiliated with the school and performed by the incoming sophomores. She had envied the photos of previous teams, and a neighbor of hers had been in the scavenger hunt two years prior, in 2013. Now, in June 2015, it was her turn. She had been assigned to the red team. For the occasion, she wore a red T-shirt from Party City and red face paint, and she stamped red handprints on her legs.
That day, in an open field, the girls on her team stripped down to their bras and underwear. The boys peeled off their T-shirts. The teens climbed atop one another to form the ?naked pyramid.? Luque watched from a distance, declining to participate (another teen who did the scavenger hunt that year told me the list also included performing oral sex behind the Burger King, hooking up with a senior, and kissing some...