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“Drunk?” She buzzes her lips in a laugh, spraying a bit of beer-spit over me “Not little a even!”

“Look, you’re really - ” I pause as Kayla burps “ - great and thanks for talking to the weird new girl, but I think you need to go lie down Or possibly go back in time Before the invention of liquor”

“You’re so funny! Who invited you?”

“Avery”

“Ohhh, she’s doing that thing again,” Kayla laughs “Don’t drink the punch!”

“What thing?”

“She invites alllll the new kids to a party If they stay the entire night without crying or wetting themselves, they’re cool in our book”

Great Seven hours of binge drinking crappy beer bought by soround for who’s cool and who’s not I should’ve expected that fro, sterile little Ohio suburb like this one

“What’s in the punch?” I ask, looking over iant plastic bowl filled with ruby liquid

“Powdered lax…laxa…pooping powder!” Kayla concludes A few boys circle around her like sharks, just waiting for the moment she passes the threshold frolower at theo to the second landing, where it’s quiet and not full of horny vultures We lean on the banister and watch the chaos below

“So where are you fro crazily, I can get a good look at her Her dark hair and eyes make her one of the few non-white people in the school Her skin’s amber, the color of honeycoirls here, anyway, and definitely way better than me

“I’ place Lots of mosquitos and football jocks”

“Sounds a lot like here,” she giggles, chugging the rest of her beer Someone downstairs opens a can of cocktail wieners and starts throwing them around Girls shriek and duck and pick them out of their hair and boys chuck theirls’ shirts A wiener flies up and gets stuck in the chandelier, and Kayla ‘ooohs’

“Avery’s onna like that,” she says

“Her parents are probably loaded snobs”

“How did you know? They’re VEO’s or so”

“CEO’s”

“Yeah! I guess it’s a really iht about it really hard and how can it be so important if it’s only three letters?”

“Youvery drunk, but definitely so”

She beams at me, and reaches over to touch a piece of my hair “I like that color”

“Violet Madness,” I say “That’s what the box called it”

“Oh, you dyed it yourself? Cool!”

It was part of et clothes that actually fit Become a better person Become the person a certain someone would want to date But I don’t tell her that, because that was the old ht love wasn’t stupid The one who’d do anything for a boy, even lose eighty-five pounds dieting and sweating like a pig The one who’d go to dirty clubs to drink and s out with his friends Not even hiet accepted by them, like it’d make him like me more

But that’s not me anymore I’m not in Good Falls I’m in Northplains, Ohio No one knows the old ht just to embarrass the new me I’m desperate for friends, not socially suicidal There’s a fine, pathetic line between the two and I’ it like a ballet dancer at her first recital

“Oh shit,” Kayla hisses suddenly “I didn’t know he’d be here”

I look to where her eyes are riveted It’s un about A to the Black Eyed Peas is a single island of still calotta be six feet at least His shoulders are broad, and everything about his, his ridiculously sharp cheekbones His messy hair isn’t quite blonde, but isn’t quite brown either -hiot, and she isn’t the only one Girls froze when he walked in, and guys are throwing him stink eye Whoever he is, I can already tell he’s one of those people who are popular in all the wrong ways