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  Others crowded into the house, glomming on to us like we were the coolest cats in the entire universe, despite my dancing. DJ Leo was smooth, moving from one song to another in a continuous flow that was carrying all the Rendview students along with it. Making us the same. Making us equal.

  In that moment, I didn’t know how I’d ever gotten it into my head that Cassie was out of my reach. I couldn’t fathom how I’d botched my opportunity to kiss her. Maybe it was because back then I’d been little more than a boy. I’d needed time to mature. To become a man. Fully grown and in control of my destiny.

  And right now, my destiny was shaking her awesome booty like it was the last night on planet Earth.

  When I couldn’t dance anymore, I moved to the fringes of the floor. There were more people crammed into Cassie’s house than I could count. Popular kids and dorks and in-betweeners, all mingling together, homogenized by the booze and bass and freedom of the night.

  But I saw only Cassie. She was the only person for me.

  While I watched Cassie dance, my mind wandered back to the day I’d asked her out. I’d been an infant among giants. Even Coop and Ben had seemed so much bigger back then. We’d graduated eighth grade together, but when we hit the halls of Rendview High, they grew up and left me behind. They’d fit in in ways I never would, never could. Until I met Cassie.

  We sat next to each other in anatomy. It was the one and only time that alphabetical seating had worked in my favor.

  The first time I saw her, the first time that I walked into Mrs. Grimauld’s classroom and laid my lucky eyes on Cassie, I knew she was the one. In those days, she’d had short hair that clung to her round cheeks, framing her smooth skin. When I’d realized I was going to have to sit next to her for the entire year, I panicked. There was no way I was going make it through the entire hour, let alone two semesters, without a permaboner.

  Yet somehow I survived. Freshman year was the year I developed a sudden and intense aversion to tucking in my shirts.

  The thing about Cassie was that she was funny and smart and never talked down to me. The other girls treated me like I was their little brother. Or, worse, like I didn’t exist at all. But Cassie talked to me. She saw me for what I could be, not what I was.

  I’m not sure what possessed me the day I grabbed destiny by the cojones. While we were dissecting our worm—a long sucker Cassie had named Wormy Worthington the Third—I asked Cassie to go out with me. The words were all smooshed together like the letters had linked arms and formed a long chain. I didn’t know where the question had come from. It had bubbled up out of me spontaneously. Sure, I’d fantasized about asking Cassie out, but never seriously. I was a nobody. It was absurd to think that Cassie would go out with me.

  I waited for the blowback. The laugh. The sympathetic smile. The words that would banish me irrevocably to that frigid nightmare world whispered of among guys with the deepest shades of dread: the Friend Zone.

  But Cassie had said yes. She’d smiled warmly at me and changed my life. “Sy, you’re so adorable. Of course I’ll go out with you.”

  Those words were seared onto my brain. When I died, they’d be etched on my grave marker. I think everyone has a couple of moments that truly change their life. Those words changed mine.

  Cassie still smiled at me like that. She saw me standing on the edge of the dance floor and waved me over. The shot of tequila that had been in my system was soaked into my shirt now. I saw everything with perfect clarity. Past, present, future. All mine. All open.

  I moved my lazy feet and pushed through the thick outer layer of sweaty dancers to get to Cassie. The knot of bodies was tighter than it had been just twenty minutes earlier, but with a burst of strength, I cut a path straight to Cassie. Hands groped me and the smell of body odor and dozens of different perfumes and colognes mixed together assaulted my nose, making my eyes water.

  When I got to Cassie, I stood in the middle of the dance floor, waiting for her to notice me again. I was always waiting for her to notice me.

  “Cassie!” I called. I was done waiting.

  Cassie opened her eyes. Her lashes cut long shadows on her face. “Simon!” She held out her hands to me, and I took them. Spots danced across my vision.

  The music was heroin. The receptors in my brain fired volleys of chemicals, making me love every single person in the room. Making me love Cassie more—something I’d thought impossible.

  The distance between us closed with each beat. Our breaths were counterpoints to the music. Our hearts keeping time. Our eyes locked on only each other. All the shit that had happened between the moment on Pirate Chang’s killer eighteenth hole and this second was nothing. Erased. I had bridged those other million agonizing seconds like they had never happened.

  Holding Cassie’s hand, dancing. Staring into her eyes, not blinking. My heart beating so fucking hard that I wondered if it were possible for it to explode.

  I thought back to Gobbler’s. To Coop and Ben—who had conveniently disappeared—telling me that I was doomed to failure. To Natalie Grayson, who was dancing over by the French doors, pretending like she wasn’t watching me. To that moment I’d almost decided to get up and go to Natalie’s table, because I was sure that Cassie was out of my reach.

  I thought about how I’d almost fucked this up. Dancing with Cassie and being near her, being so close to her that I could kiss her right now. We’d been closer only one time. Tonight would change that.

  Because Cassie was looking into my eyes. She was putting one arm around my neck, the other against my chest. She was doing that thing with her tongue behind her teeth again. She was practically begging me to kiss her.

  And then she was yelling at me.

  “Ow! Fuck, Simon!” Cassie shoved me away; I fell into Kate Jordan, who cursed at me. I didn’t give a shit about Kate. Cassie was standing awkwardly, favoring her left foot.

  “Damn, Cassie, I’m so sorry. I have stupid feet. Dumb, clumsy feet. I’d cut them off if I could.”

  Cassie rolled her eyes and grabbed my arm, taking a tentative step. “I thought Ben was the drama queen,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Help me get some ice.”

  I bent down so that Cassie could put her arm around my shoulders, and we limped into the kitchen, which was packed with people trading for drinks, talking, and grazing from artsy ceramic bowls filled with assorted tasty snacks.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again.

  Cassie kicked off her shoe and wiggled her toes. “Nothing broken.” But I could see her skin turning red and was willing to bet it would bruise.

  I found a dish towel and wrapped it around some ice cubes. Cassie held it to the top of her foot, clearly not caring that she looked silly. She was the hostess and could do anything she wanted.

  We stood in the kitchen while the party happened around us. I was terrified that I’d blown my chance with Cassie but still riding the high of dancing with her. My choices were to retreat or press on, and retreating was simply not an option.

  “Told you I was a sucky dancer,” I said.

  Cassie chuckled, which alleviated some of my guilt. “Maybe you better make one of those Muet Chaüssures a size nine. I think my foot’s going to swell like a bitch.” She tried to slip the injured foot back into her heel, but winced and gave up for the time being.

  This moment wasn’t as perfect as on the dance floor, but Cassie was still smiling. She was still looking at me like I was more than Simon Cross.

  “Cassie? I have something to ask you.” I wasn’t that bumbling freshman anymore. I had years of experience with rejection now. But the words still stuck to the roof of my mouth. I still trembled like a boy.

  “Anything,” Cassie said. She was looking over my shoulder, though. Something had caught her eye, but I had already programmed my course and I couldn’t abort now.

  “I want to barter for a kiss. From you.” Saying it took all the air in my lungs. I suffocated waiting for her answer.

  Cassie was still looking past me.
Her smile had disappeared; her face had hardened. “What?” she asked. The word slashed across my cheek like the end of a whip.

  “A kiss,” I said, my confidence flagging. “What can I barter?” I turned to see what had stolen Cassie’s attention, but deep down I already suspected the answer.

  Eli Fucking Horowitz. He was the dark cloud over my picnic, the razor blade in my apple, the piss in my cornflakes.

  He was the one thing I couldn’t compete with. I’d already lost Cassie to him once.

  “Sorry,” Cassie said. “I have to go.”

  I tried to think of something to say to keep her from leaving, but Cassie was already gone, swept up in the current of bodies rushing from one part of the party to another.

  “How about a paper clip?” I said to no one in particular, and watched Cassie disappear, along with my chances of kissing her.

  Reality Bites

  “. . . I’m gonna go talk to the ketchup girl.”

  Ben and Coop looked like they were going to crap their pants when I got up from our booth and marched over to Natalie’s table. Natalie’s friends fled like I was covered with massive, oozing pustules. But I didn’t care because I felt powerful. I wasn’t Simon Cross. I was SIMON CROSS! I didn’t need Cassie. Holding out for Cassie was like waiting to win the lottery: The odds were not in my favor, and I could waste decades trying, only to end up a bitter, lonely man with nothing to show for his life.

  I sort of thought I deserved more than that.

  Maybe I was deluding myself. The thought crossed my mind. Asking Natalie Grayson to accompany me to the party wasn’t going to expunge Cassie from the dark, dank recesses of my brain. I still loved Cassie, and not even ten Natalies could change that. But asking out a girl not named Cassandra Castillo, well, it was definitely a step in the right direction.

  Things happened quickly after I managed to open my mouth and say words. I’d hitched a ride to Gobbler’s with Coop, but he was antsy to take off. Natalie told me that I could ride with her. Everyone was starting to head out to Cassie’s party anyway, so I accepted the offer. We chatted in fits and starts on the short drive toward Cassie’s neighborhood, then Natalie suggested we park on the beach road for a few minutes so that we could get to know each other better. It seemed like a brilliant idea. Girl plus car plus a nearly full moon over the beach. What could go wrong with that?

  “So then River was like, ‘You should totally go over and ask him to come to the party,’ and I was like, ‘He’s probably going with his friends,’ and I’m so glad I asked you for the ketchup even though I hate ketchup—hate it—because otherwise I just know that I would have ended up dancing with Ed Swinder. He always tries to touch my boobs and blame it on someone pushing him into me—like I don’t know.”

  I sat in Natalie’s truck, on the side of the road, watching the waves pull away from the shore while my date babbled. She talked about her friends and what kind of music they’d listened to while they got ready for Cassie’s party, which led her on a thrilling tangent about how she’d come to be wearing those little jean shorts rather than the festive skirt she’d been planning to wear all week long. I wanted to puncture my eardrums with a chopstick.

  “Maybe we should get going,” I said.

  Natalie glanced at the clock on the radio. “It’s like nine, Simon. The party won’t get good for a while. Besides, we’re having fun, right? Now, what was I talking about?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “Skinny jeans,” I said, defeated. It might not have been so bad if there had been some interesting music playing or if I could have read the encyclopedia. But I was stuck listening to Natalie go on and on and on about clothes while I focused on her lips and wondered why people don’t build emergency ejection seats into cars for moments like this.

  “Right,” Natalie said. “So then I got the fours and they were too small and I was like, ‘Hello, these can’t be fours because I’m a four and they don’t fit.’ And that stupid biznatch had the nerve to suggest that I needed a bigger size. Can you believe that?”

  “Please kill me.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  “Exactly,” Natalie said. She eyed me. “You like music?”

  “Coop’s the music geek.”

  “What about TV? I love reality shows.”

  “Have you ever noticed that people on TV never actually watch TV?” I waited for Natalie to say something or nod her head or spontaneously vomit baby ducks onto the gray cloth armrest, but she only stared blankly at me with her sort-of-blue eyes. “I have a theory,” I said, “that the reason people on TV are so productive is because they never watch TV.”

  Natalie’s waning smile began to dip into a frown. “So, no favorite shows, then?”

  I shook my head.

  Things got quiet. In spite of the awkwardness, I was relieved. I didn’t regret that I’d gone over to talk to her, but I was ready to admit that it might not have been on my top-ten list of best decisions. Still, I wondered if she might let me kiss her. I wasn’t particularly interested in the words that passed through her lips, but the lips themselves were pretty hot.

  “I’m really glad I asked for the ketchup,” Natalie said. She wore her puppy-eyed optimism openly. It was simultaneously sexy and annoying.

  “Me too,” I said, and I was surprised to find that it wasn’t a lie. I wanted to give Natalie the benefit of the doubt. Her verbal spew could have been the result of nerves, which was something I could understand.

  Natalie smiled. She had a great smile. Like she’d been saving it up over a hundred rainy days for this moment. For me. “My friend Keisha told me that you were all hung up on Cassie and that you’d be up her ass now that she’s single.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. The funny thing was that, until Natalie brought her up, our conversation in the truck was the longest I’d gone without thinking about Cassie in a while.

  “I don’t get what guys see in her,” Natalie said. “She’s kind of a biznatch, if you know what I mean. Strutting around Rendview like she owns it, because she’s popular and her parents are loaded and she’s queen of the universe. She’s not even that pretty.”

  “She’s prettier than you,” I said.

  Shit.

  What I’d meant to say was that people often misconstrue Cassie’s confidence for bitchiness, and that she’s pretty in an unconventional way. That Cassie is a complicated girl people have to get to know to really get to know, you know?

  Clearly, those were not the words that raced to the tip of my tongue and plummeted out of my mouth. I’d said that other thing. The bad thing.

  “What?” Natalie said. All joy and optimism gone. Vanished. Like my chances of scoring more than a swift punch to the crotch.

  “That didn’t come out right,” I said. There was no doubt in my mind that I had the power to put the night back on course by telling Natalie that I’d gotten tongue-tied, that I’d meant to say that she, of course, was prettier than Cassie. That, compared to Natalie, Cassandra Castillo was a pockmarked hag who cooked fat German children and ate them for her supper. But years of being in love with Cassie had wrecked my ability to act properly around other girls.

  In other words, I choked.

  The awkward second turned into an uncomfortable moment, which quickly became an unbearable minute in which my social blunder morphed from comical misstep into a catastrophic thermonuclear explosion, obliterating any chance I may or may not have had to salvage the situation.

  Natalie huffed and turned the key. Her truck roared to life, the growl of the engine an expression of the anger blooming inside of its owner. “My friends were right.”

  “Probably,” I said, honestly. Sadly. Her friends shouldn’t have been right. I should have been capable of going out with a perfectly pretty, perfectly nice girl like Natalie without Cassie getting between us. But I wasn’t, and it made me want to bash my head against the pavement to save myself from a future where all I did was fuck things up. Maybe,
probably, Natalie Grayson and I wouldn’t have had a long-term future, but we could have had one fun night together.

  Sometimes I hated being me.

  “Get out.”

  “What?”

  Natalie unlocked the doors with a click. “Get. Out.” She looked straight ahead, her hands firmly at ten and two.

  I pushed the door open but stayed in my seat. Natalie couldn’t be serious about kicking me out of the car. Certainly, I’d said some dick things, but I wasn’t really a dick. She wouldn’t strand me in the middle of nowhere. Would she?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I meant it.

  Natalie sighed, and I felt hopeful. I even reached for the handle to shut the door. “You’ve got your phone, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then call someone who gives a fuck.” Natalie revved the engine and clutched the gearshift, putting the transmission into drive. I grabbed my backpack and leaped out of the cab into the road, not even looking to see if I was jumping into the path of an oncoming car. Truthfully, death by Cadillac wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to me right at that moment.

  Without a second’s hesitation, Natalie pulled a U-turn and floored it. I didn’t think she was coming back.

  Whining about my predicament would have been counterproductive to getting to the party, so I opted not to indulge. Plus, I knew I’d deserved to be kicked to the curb.

  I rang up Ben and Coop first, but neither answered their phones, which meant either the party was kicking ass and was too loud for them to hear anything, or they were in a dark room groping each other so hard they’d gone temporarily deaf.

  The rest of my phone list was sad and short. Friends I rarely talked to and girls I’d sort of dated.

  My finger hovered over Aja Bourne’s name, but I was not yet that desperate, and I shoved my phone back into my pocket.