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"Look," he says, all in a rush "There’s a party at the Drink tonight You should cooes on "Like twenty people,whoever you want" He says the last part in a funny voice, half-strangled I wonder whether it’s a hint, and he’s askingto wonder it Before they hooked up, there was never any weirdness between us

Onethat Dara ruined because she felt like it, because she had an itch, an urge, a whi, out of the blue, e’d all gone across the street to Upper Reaches Park to watch his Ultiame Did you ever notice that he’s undeniably fuckable? As atching hiht red disk of the Frisbee, arm outstretched--the same boy-body-arm I’d known my whole life was transfor at her and thinking that she, too, looked like a stranger, with her hair (blond and purple, then) and the thick dusting of charcoal eye shadow on her lids, lips red and exaggerated with pencil, legs stretched out for miles underneath her short-shorts How could , Nosebutton, who used to wrap her arms around my shoulders and stand on ered around the living room, have turned into someone who used the word fuckable, someone I barely knew, someone I feared, even?

"It’ll be just like old times," Parker says, and I feel a hard ache in o

Everyone knows you can’t go back

"Yeah, maybe I’ll let you know," I say, which I won’t

I watch hi behind the glare, and pretend to be fu lot to wait for the bus

BEFORE

FEBRUARY 9

Nick

"Ow" I open le, is as big as the moon, if the moon were painted in crazy colors: coal-black eye shadow, silver liner, a big redrabs ently, on my eyelids Her breath smells like vanilla Stoli "There You’re done See?" I stand up from the toilet, where she’s installed me, and join her at theher head on my shoulder