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  Cassie shrugged. “Why bother?” She moved as if we were touring the Louvre rather than an illicit, underage party. “Over there is the beer pong table,” she said, pointing to the room across from the library. I took a peek. All the furniture had been pushed up against the walls and a green Ping-Pong table sat in the center of the room, under a crystal chandelier that was begging for some drunk dick to swing from it. Dean Kowalcyk and his harem of girls were the sole occupants of the room, which was fine by me. Dean and I had briefly been mortal enemies in seventh grade, and I’d avoided him religiously since.

  “You invited Dean?”

  “He invited himself,” Cassie said. She stood in the foyer and looked down the hall toward what appeared to be the kitchen. “They all did. I don’t know half of these people.” For a second, I thought Cassie was going to lose it. Maybe I was being melodramatic—it had sort of been that kind of night for me—but I felt like I could see her standing on the precipice of some kind of emotional breakdown. She stood at the edge, looking over, thinking about jumping, and then used her own smile to tether herself to the now.

  I wasn’t just imagining it—there was something wrong with Cassie. It was so obvious that even blind Falcor could have seen it. And a better man would have put aside his own selfish desires and tried to help Cassie. But I was not a better man. Not at that moment. I was still wearing blinders forged from the feelings of the more-than-a-crush I’d been harboring for Cassie since the first time I saw her. And I couldn’t help but hope that whatever was going on with Cassie might make her willing to kiss me. I’m not making excuses, but sometimes guys don’t always think with the brain that they ought to.

  “Whatever,” Cassie said. “It’s a party. Drink?”

  Without waiting for my answer, she took off down the hallway toward the kitchen, seemingly unconcerned with whether or not I followed. I tried to trail her wake, but where she had sliced like a knife through the hordes mingling in the narrow hall, I felt like a salmon struggling upstream, petrified that even if I made it to my destination, a motherfucking bear was going to rip me out of the water and eat my head off.

  Ben Kwon isn’t a bear, but when he grabbed me by the collar and pulled me into the dining room, I jumped.

  “Simon!” Ben said. He was slick with sweat and his eyes were bloodshot. “Got a condom? Tell me you have one in your wallet for that just-in-case that never comes. Unless you’ve managed to dip your fries in ketchup girl? Did you? Do you? Don’t toy with me, Simon.”

  I ducked out of Ben’s grasp and clapped my hand over his mouth. I needed to get my bearings. I wanted out of this room; I wanted to get to Cassie before the party swallowed her up.

  But Ben was staring at me like we were trapped on the moon and I have the only oxygen on the whole bloody rock.

  “Why do you need a condom?” I asked, regretting my question immediately.

  Ben tossed his arm around my shoulder and tried to wrap me up in a sloppy hug. I could smell the same tequila on him that I’d smelled on Cassie. “Simon, buddy, bro. Got a condom or not?”

  “No.”

  “Useless,” Ben said, and he let me go.

  I tried to leave, but Ben yanked me back. I fell into him and he stumbled into the table, knocking a can of soda onto the floor. “Are you drunk?” I asked, righting myself and putting some necessary distance between us.

  Ben stood up and brushed imaginary lint off his shirt. “I’m only a little tipsy. Cassie made me take tequila shots when I got here.” Ben tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know what’s up with party girl, but I’m digging it.”

  “Cassie’s acting odd,” I said. “Very un-Cassie-like.”

  “Let me tell you something about women.”

  “Because you’re the expert.”

  “In this room,” Ben said, “I’m the expert.” He grabbed a warm Sprite out of an open box and chugged half, following that with an impressive belch. “It’s senior year, Simon. Cassie dumped Eli. She’s finally realized that this is supposed to be the best year of our lives. A little late if you ask me, but better late than sober.”

  I frowned. “I don’t know.”

  Ben put the soda on the table and sat in one of the high-backed chairs. “Maybe this is the real Cassie, and that other uptight girl was just an ugly outfit she was wearing to impress people.”

  “You’re pretty much talking out of your ass.”

  “It is my best feature.” Ben leaped at me and tried to wrestle his way into my back pocket. “You sure you don’t have a condom back there?” Ben was stronger than me, but I was wiry and fast, and I ducked out of his grasp. “Don’t hold out on me,” he said.

  “I don’t have a condom!” I skirted the wall, trying to keep some distance between us. “And for the record, it’s gross of you to ask me to help you and Coop get busy. You’re practically my brothers. You should be ashamed.”

  “I have no shame.” Ben broke out in a toothy grin and said, “Let’s go find my boyfriend.”

  We dove back into the party, letting the crowd and the rhythmic beat of the music carry us down the hall and to the kitchen—the usual hub of a party. People were dancing in the family room, playing beer pong in the living room, and brawling over the use of proper nouns in the library, but the kitchen was where everything else was happening. In the breakfast nook, some football jocks were sitting at a circular table, playing Bullshit for shots. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that they were going to be comatose before midnight.

  I kept an eye out for Cassie but I’d lost track of her. It was her house, so she had to be somewhere, but she definitely wasn’t in the kitchen.

  A girl that I’d had health with in tenth grade was hanging around the keg with a bunch of other in-betweeners—kids who weren’t exactly popular but weren’t all that unpopular, either. They were the kind of kids who no one would remember when we left high school. I’d have been one of them if it hadn’t been for Ben and Coop. Those boys were one of the reasons I hadn’t taken the long slide into high school obscurity.

  “There’s my Coopy Bear,” Ben said. He pulled me with him to the other side of the kitchen, where Coop was talking to—shit. Shit, fuck, damn. Coop was chatting up Stella. She was cradling her stupid blind dog in her arms, laughing at something Coop had said.

  It was fight-or-flight time, and my lizard brain wanted to run, to get as far from that girl as my feet could carry me.

  But that was stupid. Idiotic. Stella was just a girl. A cool girl. She couldn’t have known that I’d wanted to kiss Cassie for the better part of my high school career.

  I took a steadying breath and tried to smile, even though I knew that I likely looked like I was trying to hold back poo.

  Ben rushed Coop and kissed him so hard that both boys fell into the stove—which thankfully was off. It was obscene and a little uncomfortable. I wondered if they realized that the rest of us were still here. On the plus side, Ben and Coop playing tonsil hockey was the perfect antiboner.

  I turned away. Stella couldn’t seem to stop gawking.

  “Get a room!” shouted one of the jocks.

  Coop managed to disentangle himself from Ben’s arms. “Simon! You made it. Stella’s been telling me you nearly didn’t.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Coop frowned at me. As our DD, I knew he hadn’t been drinking, and I was thankful for that. I needed one of my friends to be sober. “What I can’t figure out,” Coop said, “is what you could have said to make Natalie dump you on the side of A1A.”

  It was bad enough that everyone knew I’d blown it. Indulging Coop’s desire for the gory details was something I had zero intention of doing. Instead I grabbed a warmish beer from a passing junior and chugged it. “Ben, isn’t this that song you like? The one with the words?”

  Ben’s ears perked up like Falcor’s, and he zeroed in on the dance floor like he had GPS. DJ Leo was just a nerdy, short kid with glasses who always had headphones in his ears and slept through his classes. But f
or tonight, he was a minor-league legend.

  “I love this song!” Ben grabbed Coop’s hand and dragged him away. Coop shot me an evil glare that said, “You’ve won this round, but I will find out the truth.” And I knew that Coop eventually would. Just not right this second.

  The moment they were gone, disappeared into the dancing shadows, I turned to Stella and lost the ability to say things. When I looked at Stella, I saw only Stella kissing Cassie. Cassie kissing her back. It was like watching the worst best movie ever.

  “Cool party,” Stella said. “Does your friend Cassie always kiss strange girls?”

  “You kissed her.”

  “I’m pretty sure she asked for it.”

  “She was asking me.”

  “She didn’t ask you by name—oh.” Stella’s shoulders drooped and she bit the corner of her lip. “You wanted to kiss her, didn’t you?”

  The question was rhetorical. Of course I’d wanted to kiss her. There wasn’t a guy at the party not named Ben or Coop who wouldn’t have climbed over a pit of bloodthirsty unicorns to get that kiss. “No,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”

  Stella looked at me like she was seeing right through my words to the truth of everything about me. It was unsettling and annoying and I wished that I’d called my parents when I’d had the chance. “You like her.”

  I could have lied. I should have lied. I’d met Stella only an hour earlier and for all I knew she could have been some kind of crazy stalker chick who had formed an unhealthy emotional attachment to me and would spend the rest of the night hunting Cassie so that she could kill her and wear her skin like a prom dress. Or not.

  “Kind of.” Which was an understatement. “We went out in ninth grade and I almost kissed her and I thought that if I had another chance—especially since she just broke up with her boyfriend—that . . . you know.”

  “And I took that chance,” Stella said. “Hear that, Falcor? I’m so dumb.”

  “You’re not dumb.”

  “I’m pretty dumb.”

  I caught Stella’s eyes. They had these dark swirls like the planet Jupiter. And even though she was the one who’d ruined my perfect chance with Cassie, I was the one who felt like an asshole. “You’re not dumb. For all I know, you wanted to kiss her as badly as I did.”

  Stella made this face that was equal parts “meh” and “maybe.” Then she said, “I prefer girls with more facial hair. And by girls I mean boys. And by facial hair, I mean money. Would it help if I told you that Cassie was a terrible kisser?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  Stella wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Yuck! It was like kissing a dead cat. Gross. So bad that I may never kiss another living human being again.”

  “I suppose it’s a good thing you work with dead human beings.”

  “In the morgue, ‘no’ always means ‘yes.’ ” Stella was smiling again and I had to forgive her. There was no way to stay mad at this girl. Not even for stealing what may have been my last, best chance to kiss Cassie.

  “You can tell me the truth. It was good, right?”

  “I don’t really have a frame of reference,” she said.

  “Never kissed a girl before?”

  “Never kissed anyone.”

  I rolled my eyes and chuckled. “Funny.”

  Stella stared at me like she had the first time we’d met. Unblinking. And I knew that she’d been telling the truth as sure as if she’d beamed her entire kissless history into my brain via psychic laser.

  “For really real? No one?” I didn’t mean to sound so judgmental, but even I had kissed other people. Other girls. And maybe even Coop once on a dare.

  “No one. Not even Falcor, and I’ve tried enticing him with peanut butter.”

  It simply didn’t compute that Stella had never kissed a guy. “Are you one of those abstinence groupies? Like no sex till marriage?”

  Stella sighed. “I go to an all-girls school. And I’m not a lesbian. My kissing opportunities are limited to dead guys or the occasional Jehovah’s Witnesses who wake me up at seven on a Saturday morning. I love those guys.”

  “Aren’t we a pair?” I said, trying to defuse the awkwardness that had sprouted between us. I leaned against the counter and folded my arms over my chest, watching the party move and groove around us like a living thing rising toward its inevitable climax. The half bottle of beer I’d chugged was tearing through my veins, making me feel dangerous. Reminding me that I am SIMON CROSS. I’d talked to Natalie Grayson. I’d hitched a ride with this strange girl and traded my Vegas dice to get her to accompany me to the party. I felt like I was finally taking control of my life rather than just letting it steamroller over me. I’d been pining for Cassie for all of high school. Pining but not acting. Tonight, however, that was going to change.

  “I propose another trade,” I said.

  Stella looked up at me. “Go on.”

  “I’ll find you a guy to kiss if you help me kiss Cassie.” It was a bold proposition. It could backfire horribly. It could turn into a disaster of epic proportions. It could ruin my entire high school life, leaving me a broken shell of a man with nothing left to live for but Butterfinger bites and Firefly reruns.

  Or it might just be crazy enough to work.

  Stella might just be crazy enough to make it work.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Stella was watching me through narrowed eyes. The girl was impossible to read. But I knew she’d say yes, because Fate was cheering for Team Simon. I had the ball, all I had to do was shoot and not fuck it up again.

  A small smile crept up the corners of Stella’s mouth. It spread across her face like sunrise. I briefly wondered if there existed any guy at the party who was even remotely worthy of planting a kiss on that mouth.

  “Can I take that as a yes?” I asked.

  Stella didn’t need to answer, it was in her eyes. But she said it anyway, and it changed my life.

  Living the Dream

  There was a yawning gulf between knowing that I needed to do something to prove myself to Cassie and actually getting off my ass and doing it. The girl I adored believed I didn’t know her, that I wasn’t in love with her. But she’d given me an opportunity. The opportunity to earn my kiss. All I had to do was show her that I wasn’t another jerk who had crawled out of the shadows to have a go at her because she was finally single.

  But I had no idea how to begin to do that.

  Coop and Ben had abandoned me, and a few feet from where I stood, Natalie laughed at something another guy said. I felt a twinge of regret. No, not regret. Curiosity. I couldn’t help wondering what my night might have been like if I’d followed Coop’s advice and talked to her at the diner. Would we have spent the entire night chatting and laughing and sucking face? Or would it have been an unmitigated disaster? There was no way to know. And none of that would matter if I managed to prove to Cassie that I really did love her. All I could do was keep moving forward and hope for the best.

  “Can I score a little of your beer?” someone asked. I looked down at this short, skinny kid who spoke with a slight lisp. He was standing in front of me, holding out a red cup that was filled nearly halfway with something brown and unappealing.

  “Come again?” I asked. I’d never seen the kid before, but he glanced around nervously, like he was afraid that I’d stomp him if he made direct eye contact. He looked like a freshman, which was odd because underclassmen weren’t usually invited to senior parties or any party outside of a Chuck E. Cheese’s.

  The kid pointed at my cup. “Can you give me a splash of your beer?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Forget it,” he said, agitated. I was clearly no longer worthy of his fear.

  “Sing the song, Urinal Cake!” Blaise Lewis shouted from his spot at the breakfast nook. He was sitting with his jock buddies, holding court.

  “That’s the worst nickname ever,” I said to the kid. He was staring at his feet, looking more irritated than embar
rassed.

  I should have done what the kid had asked and poured some of my beer into his cup, but I didn’t, so I suppose it was my fault that he had to sing. Urinal Cake had a surprisingly clear tenor.

  “Blaise is a god, Blaise is my master, he’s a champ with the girls, no one does it faster. On the field, and with the ladies. Even with the grannies, who are sometimes in their eighties. As his slave, from you I beg, a pour from your drink, or a squirt from the keg.” As if that rhyming monstrosity wasn’t bad enough, Urinal Cake then knelt in front of me and held his cup in the air. Blaise and his asshole friends were cracking up so hard that I could only hope they choked on their own tongues.

  “Whatever,” I said, and poured some of my beer into the kid’s cup. I had a feeling it would be worse for him if I didn’t.

  Urinal Cake stood up and tossed me an insincere thanks before moving along to someone else.

  It would have been funny if I hadn’t felt so bad for him. One of the things that had saved me from being known as Simon Hymen throughout my high school career was Cassie. Going on just one date with that girl had pulled me out of the social gutter. Having Coop and Ben as friends had helped too, but without Cassie, I might have ended up like Urinal Cake. In him, I saw the path my life nearly took, and it made me shudder.

  I wandered over to Blaise’s table. “Are you seriously going to make him drink that whole cup?” I said it casually, trying to keep my disgust on a short leash.

  Blaise nodded with his huge, toothy grin. He had the emotional depth of a tapeworm. “That’s Urinal Cake.”

  “I’ll bite. Why do you call him Urinal Cake?”

  It was like Blaise had been dying for someone to ask that question all night. He rubbed his hands together and took an anticipatory breath as he prepared to tell me the origin story of Urinal Cake. But then Derrick Fuller blurted out, “Because we made him eat one,” and stole Blaise’s thunder.

  “Dick!” Blaise punched Derrick in the neck. It was a sloppy swing that barely clipped him, but Derrick pushed the table forward and stormed out of the kitchen. “Little bitch,” Blaise said as Derrick left. And as soon as it was over, Blaise’s smile returned.