No way could I lose it before I really had the chance to use it. My hands stung as I slid down the tree. The second Jaden and I hit the ground, I saw her front door jerk open. Daddy was pissed and he had a bat! We ran. Unfortunately, Jaden’s car was the opposite direction. My chest hurt but I pushed forward, Jaden right beside me. Daddy was on our tail, swinging his bat and cursing.

“Pris!” I told him. She lived in this neighborhood. We cut through a yard, picking up speed trying to lose him. As we hit the next street over, I saw them. Pris and Aspen stood in Pris’s driveway. They were looking at something in the trunk of Aspen’s car. A quick glance behind me told me we might have lost him. I wasn’t going to take any chances.

I looked again. He hadn’t rounded the corner yet. I had no choice but to dive in the trunk. Jaden was right behind me.

“Where’d you go you little punks?” He was still after us. Aspen must have put two and two together pretty quickly and slammed the trunk. She always was smart.

As I fought to catch my breath, Jaden’s sweaty back against mine, I cursed. The girls were never going to let us live this down.

Chapter Three

Hook-up Doctor,

Did you get the money? Don’t blame me if someone took it. That was your fifty bucks, and you’re not getting any more until the job is done. Sorry I was a little late dropping it off. I had an …issue. Anyway, hope you got it and I’m ready to hear what to do next. I have my doubts, but yeah, I’m still here, so I guess that means there’s something wrong with me. LOL. Hmm, maybe I should have asked for references? What makes you such an expert, Mr. Hook-up Doctor?

PA

PA,

I’m the best. I can promise you that. You want Mr. Deep on the Inside and you’ll get him. Anyway, yeah, I got the money. I had an issue myself so I was late, too. No biggie.

Issue was putting it mildly. Jaden and I were too freaked out to risk stopping by Alex’s house for the beatermobile right away. I’d had all sorts of visions of her scary, psycho dad waiting to jump out of the car and made good on his castration promise. It was like one of those Saw movies complete with crazy masks and tying me up in the basement.

But then that had created another problem because I needed to pick up the money. It was easy to make up some lame excuse to Jaden as to why I’d need a few minutes alone in the park by myself because, well because he wouldn’t give a shit. The girls were a different thing. I’d known they would want all the details on what I’d be doing, want to know why they had to wait in the car and there’d been no way I could use meeting a girl as an excuse because they would have locked me in the trunk again and never let me out. After the period of time they’d already kept us in there. Nice, huh?

No matter how many excuses I’d come up with, they’d shot them down, countering with excuses of their own. Finally we’d risked Alex’s dad’s wrath by getting dropped off at the car, where I’d then had to let Jaden drop me off at home and walk back to the park by myself. So yeah, I got the issues thing.

Right now, that wasn’t as important as getting back to my email though. I’d pout about it later. Where had I been? Oh yeah, references.

As for references, that would be against my privacy policy. But I’ve never have problems getting girls when I want them ;).

Your first step is an easy one: pay a lot of attention to him. I know you’re going to think its lame, but trust the Doctor. You do this, and he’ll feel the next step even more. We’re guys; we love attention, so you can never go wrong with it. And with us, you always gotta start out slow. Be nice, friendly, helpful, the whole nine yards. Since you’re friends, it shouldn’t be too hard, but step it up a notch, k? He needs to notice the difference.

I’ll be in touch.

Hook-up Doctor.

***

“Are you sure you don’t want to ride in the trunk?” Aspen laughed from the driver’s seat of her car. It had been a week since what I liked to refer to as, “the incident” but she still wasn’t letting it go.

“Ha, ha. I’m still mad you and Pris thought it would be fun to drive around town for ten hours before letting us out.” I closed the door behind me and clicked my seatbelt in.

Aspen flipped her hair over her shoulder. It looked all shiny and flowy, which was pretty strange since she usually wore it up. “You’re such a baby. It was like, thirty minutes not ten hours.”

“Humph. Try being in that small of a space with Jaden and tell me it doesn’t feel like a lifetime. I’m still having nightmares about it.”

“That was karma’s way of telling you to steer clear of Alex the tramp. God, I can’t believe you even went over there. And then you wanted to go meet someone else at the park! You didn’t say it, but don’t think we didn’t know that’s what you wanted. You’re such a perv.” Aspen kept her eyes on the road as she drove.

I decided to ignore the park comment. I wasn’t in the mood to go there again. “No, I’m a guy and she’s a hot chick. Any guy would have done the same thing for you.”

As soon as the words left my mouth Aspen’s head whirled around to look at me, and I realized what I just said. Did I just call Aspen, my friend since I was like—I don’t know, an embryo or something, a hot chick? Wow… “I didn’t mean that how it sounded.” When her face got all squished up, I realized I’d just screwed up again. “Not that I don’t think you’re hot, I just don’t think you’re hot. You know, you’re like friend hot, not let’s make-out hot.”

“What?” Her voice was tight and I realized I kept digging myself deeper and deeper, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

“Come on, Woodstock. You know what I mean. You’re the friend. There’s nothing wrong with being in the friend territory.” I felt like jumping out of the car and letting her run me over. I’d just used Alex’s words on her. What was wrong with me? I didn’t want to insult the girl.

She shook her head. “Whatever, Bastian. You’re lucky I’m such a good friend.”

I was, because apparently, I sucked at the friendship thing today.

I nudged her arm, trying to change the subject. “Thanks for taking me job hunting today. Pretty soon I’ll get a job, then I’ll have wheels and you won’t ever have to worry about lugging me around in your trunk again.” See? I could make fun of myself when it counted.

She laughed and I knew I was off the hook. “You know I’d do anything for you, Sebastian. I don’t know why, but I would.”

Her reply made me say, “That’s because we’re BFFs. Jaden told me that last week.”

Aspen tucked a wayward strand of her hair behind her ear. “It’s because I know you’re a good guy. Buried deep—deep under that teenage boy exterior, you, Sebastian Hawkins, are a sweetheart. I know it’s hard to believe, but I wouldn’t be such good friends with you otherwise.”

I gulped, almost swallowing my tongue. Aspen’s words were eerily familiar. It was like she’d copied them out of PA’s email. Hell, from what she said, not only could she be PA, but I could be the chump! It couldn’t be, could it? No. Aspen was not the kind of girl to email someone about hooking up with a guy and I sure wasn’t a chump.

“Did I mention it’s really, really under the surface? Like practically microscopic?”

I laughed, wiping out all the thoughts from before. This was my friend, that’s all and we both knew it. “Please. I like, exude sweetness.”

She patted my leg and then put her hand back on the wheel. Relaxed, I dropped my head against the seat to take a little nap before I had to fill out my first application.

***

“A-spen. We filled out like a million applications today, plus the ones I did online. Everyone looked at me like they were going to toss them in the trash when I walked out. I’m done. This is lame. Let’s go do something fun.” I put my feet up on the dashboard of her car. One narrow-eyed look from Aspen later, I put them back on the floor.

“You’re never going to get a job with that attitude. Do you want to be stuck in the beatermobile for the rest of your life?”

“Jaden’s beater es my beater.” I shook my head. “Or something like that. I suck at Spanish.” This wasn’t how I wanted to spend the beginning of my summer. I needed a job. I needed money, but we’d been at it for hours and I was done. My hand was practically cramped closed and I doubt Aspen wanted to spend her day doing this either.

“You know, I’m not even the one who needs a job and I’ve wasted my whole day out here with you and you don’t hear me complaining,” she said.

I was totally a mind reader, but she was right. I was whining. It was pretty cool of her to do this for me, but I was still done. “You're the best. We all know that, Woodstock. I’m not giving up. Just done for today.”

“Whatever. Your loss. I need to run by the restaurant and get my schedule though.”

Ugh. How could I have forgotten she had a job too? Probably because she didn’t work much during the school year, but now it made me feel like an even bigger loser.

My stomach growled, which trumped my whining. “Will they give us free pizza?”

Her only response was to roll her eyes at me. A few minutes later we walked into the dive she worked in. “Hey! Look who it is. It’s our Rocky Mountain Girl!” Some guy yelled from behind the counter. There was another dude and two girls back there that looked up smiling and said hi to Aspen. A strange pinch twinged inside me. Rocky Mountain girl? Who were these people and when had they gotten a nickname for my friend? Couldn’t they get any more creative than that?

“Hey guys!” Aspen smiled and walked behind the counter, leaving me. It felt weird being on the opposite side as her. We were always together. A group. A package deal, or whatever.

I watched as she hugged the girls, gave one guy a high five, then turned to the last guy and smiled at him.

“You going to introduce me to your friends, Woodstock?” I leaned over the counter.

“This is Matt,” she pointed to the smiley guy in the back, the one who she’d grinned at, and I felt the strange urge to punch him in the face. “Bradley, Liz, and Sara.” After giving me all their names, she pointed at me. “This is my friend, Sebastian.”

“Best friend,” I blurted out and then wanted to punch myself in the face for sounding so dumb. At this rate, I’d be painting nails with her any day now. Thank God, Jaden wasn’t here.

Aspen’s eyes squished up as she looked at me. “Um, yeah. My best friend.” She leaned against the counter from the other side. “How’s it been today?” she asked them.

They started blabbing about how busy it had been, but the place looked pretty dead to me. I stood back watching her talk to them and wondered why I hadn’t realized she had this whole other life outside of me. Not like I thought I was her life or anything, but it was always me, Woodstock, Jaden and Pris. We hung out together, partied together. Now there was a group of people who thought Woodstock was their little, “Rocky Mountain Girl,” and it kind of annoyed me. Which made me sound like an ass, but it was just because I cared about her. Them. I cared about them. I’d be the same way if it was Pris. They were my girls, and I just wanted to make sure no one would mess with them. As long as I knew these guys were cool, I’d be cool.

See? Aren’t I a good friend?

“Crap! DJ’s here. Get on the other side of the counter. You don’t have your uniform on.” One of her new friends rushed her away.

I felt my lips curl up into a smile as Aspen ran back around the counter and stood next to me. I stood behind her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders with my chin resting on top of her head. It wasn’t unusual. I touched her like this a lot, but I felt her squirm a little bit, but then she leaned back into me and I relaxed, figuring I imagined it.