Of course, Ashley is exactly the kind of skank that would sleep with one of her former best friendʼs boyfriend. She would even be so skanky as to do it in my own bed.

As for Jase, he would happily beat her to death with her own arm and she knew it. Mostly because he had told her as much.

“You are so self-righteous. What makes you think youʼre so much better than the rest of us?”

“Iʼm not better than everyone,” I said honestly, “just you.” I turned and walked away without waiting for her reply.

My high from putting the back-stabbing ho in her place lasted exactly fifty-eight minutes. I was trying to avoid the unidentifiable sticky black substance that clung to one of the legs of my desk in Mr. Beckʼs room when I felt him standing by me.

“Hey,” Alex said softly. I noticed several pairs of curious eyes flicker in our direction. John Davis brazenly turned around in his seat to witness the action.

Great. Confrontation with an audience. With Ashley I had been thinking of what I would say to her for fourteen months. I had played the scene over and over in my head and was just waiting for the right moment. This was different. I didnʼt know what I was going to say or even why I was saying it.

“What do you want?”

The room was small and cramped, forcing him to stand too close to me. The angle made him look very tall. “I just wanted to say that Iʼm sorry.”

“Itʼs not my nose thatʼs broken.” Although, I did have a fairly wretched bruise on my shoulder, but that was mostly Jaseʼs fault.

“Yeah, but youʼre the one I really donʼt want to be mad at me.” As messed up as it was, I wasnʼt mad at Alex. It wasnʼt his fault his brother needed some serious psychiatric help, and that mine was a tad bit over-protective. I wanted to tell him it was no big deal, but instead I did what Jase and Charlie had asked me to do.

“Alex, letʼs be clear on something. You and me? Weʼre not friends. Weʼre not going to be friends. If you could just leave me alone from now on, that would be awesome.” Apparently I had caught him off guard. It took him a minute to respond. “Is that what you want, or what your brother wants?”

“Itʼs what I want,” I lied. “Now, if you could please just go sit down and start pretending like I donʼt exist, my life would be perfect.” Or, at least, it would be normal.

“Iʼm sorry I bothered you then.” Taking my advice, he went to his desk and proceeded to ignore me for the next several months.

***

It didnʼt take long for a monotony to overtake our senior year. Every Tuesday there was a
“surprise” pop quiz in AP English, and on Fridays we did a lab in AP Chemistry that never actually worked. Mr. Beck consistently assigned at least two hours worth of homework every night. Even the Shakespeare class had fallen into a pattern: read a play, watch the movie, write a paper.

Every day during lunch, Jase would eat with Talley and me in a corner booth before going to hang out with his friends. Talley and I would then usually shuffle off to the library to spend the remainder of our break hunched over text books. We both decided four AP classes may have been a bit much.

I was so busy with the mountains of homework I had to move on a daily basis that I didnʼt have time to notice Alex Cole. I didnʼt notice the way he would click his pen when he was really trying to concentrate. I didnʼt notice that he only seemed to own five T-shirts, all of which hinted at the lithe, muscular body underneath. I didnʼt notice that he had a habit of licking his lips before he spoke, or that his left dimple was more pronounced than the right one. I certainly didnʼt notice (or care) that he took Ashley to Homecoming.

Okay, so maybe I did notice a little.

And, to my chagrin, Talley noticed my noticing.

“You know she asked him, right?” Talley asked, sitting a bowl of popcorn on my bed. It was the night of Homecoming, which meant Talley and I were having our traditional school dance night sleep-over. Usually Joi joined us, but she had a date, with John Davis of all people. We were enjoying a night of junk food and geeky movies.

“Who asked who what?” At this point in the movie there were only a couple of hobbits and some scruffy old guy that was supposed to be, but in my opinion totally wasnʼt, attractive. No girls to ask anyone anything.

“Ashley asked Alex to Homecoming,” Talley said as if we had just been talking about him, instead of avoiding that topic for weeks now. “I heard Tinsley Henson telling Molly Eastwick that she had to practically beg him to take her.”

Talley looked at me expectantly as I tried to figure out where this conversation was heading. “Well, you know our Ashley. She will do whatever it takes to get what she wants.

Remember when we were in the sixth grade and she ate nothing but lima beans for a week so that her dad would get her a puppy?” I took a thoughtful bite of Funyun. “That never did make any sense whatsoever, but Lima was a cool dog.”

“Wow. You would really rather reminisce about Ashley than talk about your feelings for Alex? You are seriously repressed.”

I squirmed. “I donʼt have any feelings for Alex, other than annoyance.”

“Of course you donʼt. Iʼm just imagining that youʼre always looking at him when you think no one will notice. And Iʼm sure there is some totally unrelated reason as to why you always start chewing on your bottom lip every time he gets within ten feet of you.” I ran my tongue over the inside of my bottom lip, which seemed to be missing most of its skin.

Crap.

I flopped back onto my bed and threw Guido across my face. Loyal sock monkey, always there to hide my humiliation.

“Okay. Heʼs kinda cute, mildly intelligent, and slightly charismatic. If Jase didnʼt happen to be the President and Founder of the I Hate Alex Cole Club, and his brother wasnʼt a raging psycho, I might be half tempted to have a tiny crush on him.” Instead of gloating over the fact that she was right, Talley sat strangely silent for a long while. Then, in a voice that was way too serious for my comfort level, she said, “Jase can only fight fate for so long.”

I was about to ask her what that was supposed to mean, but at that moment Orlando Bloomʼs face appeared on the screen, distracting Talleyʼs thoughts for the rest of the night.

As for the interaction between Alex and Jase during those months, it was virtually nonexistent. After that first day, Alex no longer spent his lunch in the cafeteria. I had a feeling it didnʼt have as much to do with the mystery meat they served as avoiding Jase.