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For a brief moment after I'd laid down the challenge, it had, in fact, seemed like a good idea. Cassie believed I didn't know the real her. Ben believed the same thing. And despite the fact that collecting information about Cassie had been my unofficial hobby through most of high school, I'd also begun to believe that I didn't actually know the girl I was madly, deeply, dangerously in love with. The real Cassie. The one who'd chucked Eli out on his ass and jumped on a bed with me and thrown what might go down as the best party anyone in our class had ever thrown—though to be honest, the bar was pretty low.

But reality had set in rather quickly, and I scrambled for a way
to take back my challenge without looking like a coward. Maybe I didn't know Cassie, and maybe I had to know the real Cassie before I could prove to her that the love I'd confessed during our perfect antigrav moment in her parents' bedroom was the real deal. But there absolutely had to be a better plan than the one I'd thought up.

The only problem was that even if I thought of one, it was already too late. The living room was stuffed with people dying to witness my inevitable defeat. Blaise and Urinal Cake and Aja and Natalie—clinging to Ewan McCoy's arm—and just about everyone except for Coop and Ben. They were probably the only two people at the party who could have put a stop to the shellacking I was about to take, but they were absent. I hoped that meant they'd finally bartered for a condom and were locked in that quiet room off Cassie's garage.

I couldn't believe this was where I'd ended up. Standing in front of the beer pong table, still holding a stupid red paper clip. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The truth was that I didn't even have a paper clip. I'd lost my backpack somewhere along the way—not that I could have MacGyvered my way out of this mess with any of the useless crap I'd brought anyway.

I'd resigned myself to my drunken fate when salvation appeared in the unlikeliest form: Dean Kowalcyk.

“Ain't nothing free, Castillo,” Dean said. “Your rules, not mine.” Dean was still sitting in his chair, relaxing like a boss. Crystal hadn't returned, but she'd been replaced by another girl. They were Lego pieces to Dean, interchangeable. The horny part of
me that spent more time thinking with his little brain than his big brain admired Dean's game. But the rest of me was disgusted by him and hoped that karma would eventually teach him a much-deserved lesson. However, right then and there, I could only hope that his douchebaggery would provide me with the exit strategy I needed to avoid humiliation.

“It's my party,
cabrón
,” Cassie said. “And my table. I'll play if I want.” Cassie had the same look in her eyes she'd had when she'd confronted Blaise. The problem was that Dean was not Blaise. Even if Cassie did deck Dean, he wasn't going to turn tail and run. If any of the rumors about Dean were true, then there was no way to know what he'd do if Cassie didn't back down. Punch her back? Kill her? Burn her house to the ground with all of us locked inside? I didn't know, and I didn't want to find out.

“What do you want for the table?” I asked. A moment ago, Dean had been my salvation, now he was my opponent. It was no longer about escaping a beer pong match with my pride intact; it was about escaping with all my teeth.

Dean scanned the room with a calculating stare. If there had been fewer witnesses, Dean might have chosen his price differently, but the crowd gave him an opportunity he was clearly unable to pass up. He turned to Cassie. “I want a kiss.”

“Not a chance,” I said immediately. I'd hardly had time to process his request before my unequivocal denial burst from my mouth. But there was no way I could stand there and watch him kiss Cassie. The room was quiet—the house was still vibrating with music and laughter and the energy of the night, but the living
room, and everyone in it, was completely silent. Until I opened my mouth and kept speaking. Seriously, Coop should have sewn my lips shut. “I'll eat my own underwear before that happens.”

When I glanced over at Cassie, she was looking at me with something that resembled respect. Maybe a smidgen of awe. Tonight, I'd seen a side of Cassie that I'd never seen before, and now she was witnessing a hitherto unseen side of Simon Cross.

Dean didn't share Cassie's sense of wonder at my transformation, and Aja wasn't going to be able to save me this time around. When he stood up, Dean towered over me. I wasn't short—in fact, I was taller than both Coop and Ben—but Dean was Iowa-basketball-player tall. His clothes were baggy, but he moved with predatory grace. Images of Dean tearing my Superman underwear right off my body and stuffing them down my throat flashed in front of my eyes, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop him.

“What'd you say, faggot?”

“Excuse me?”

I knew that in a fight, I didn't stand a chance. While Dean was bench-pressing freshmen for fun, I was eating my bodyweight in Chipotle. I hadn't thrown a single punch in my entire life. But being friends with Coop and Ben—having had to endure the looks and taunts and hateful graffiti scrawled on their lockers in the first few months after they'd come out—had instilled in me a savage hatred of
that
word. So much so that when I heard it, rational thought fled.

The tension in the room became unbearable. People had
come to watch Cassie kick my ass at beer pong and maybe unearth some juicy, long-buried secrets, not to see me have my vital organs rearranged by a sociopath.

Dean got right up in my face, so close that I could have counted every hair on his chin. “I called you a faggot,” he said. “You're a faggot, hanging out with your faggot friends, spending all day watching
Ellen
and giving each other blow jobs.”

No one laughed. The days of people hating on the boys for being gay were long gone. Coop and Ben were liked. Hell, they were serious contenders for prom king and king. But no one was willing to take on Dean. They were the smart ones.

I'm not sure what would have happened if I hadn't glanced at Cassie. If I hadn't seen the look in her eyes that I'd seen only one time before, standing on the bow of Pirate Chang's freakishly realistic fiberglass pirate ship. Recently, I'd thought a lot about the many turning points in my life. What would have happened if I'd asked Natalie Grayson to the party? What would have happened if I hadn't tried to kiss Cassie on the bed? What would have happened if I had kissed Cassie on the eighteenth hole? But this moment was one that shined like a beacon. What would have happened if I hadn't looked over at Cassie? Truthfully, I just don't know. Because I did look. Only I didn't see her. I saw me as she saw me. I saw the kind of guy who would never back down from a giant dick like Dean Kowalcyk.

I saw Simon Fucking Cross.

“Say it again,” I said to Dean, not recognizing my own voice. “I don't think I heard you the first time.”

“Faggot.” He was grinning, his smile a chaotic line carved from his stubbled, sunken cheeks. “You're a fag. You've probably sucked more dick than this bitch.” He hiked his thumb at Cassie and settled back on his bones, like a soldier standing at rest.

Coop had been in a couple of fights in middle school, and he always claimed that he didn't remember anything that happened during them. He could recall the before and the after but never the punches he threw or the kicks he took. His memories, he'd told me, were out of focus.

I'm not sure if Coop was bullshitting me or if I'm some kind of freak, but I remember every second of what happened before, during, and after Dean called Cassie a bitch. Hell, my fist was on the way to Dean's nose before he cleared the “tch.”

Dean never saw it coming. He was strong and I was a wuss and he didn't believe that I had the balls to take a swing at him. The cartilage of his nose crunched under my knuckles like rotted rubber. Dean grunted in shock and stumbled backward. My fist exploded in pain but I felt invincible. I'd slain the giant; I slew Goliath. I was a bona fide badass.

Until Dean regained his feet and launched himself at me with preternatural speed, fueled by a potent cocktail of rage and humiliation. I didn't even have time to protect myself before he was on me, his first punch catching me under my ribs, driving my breath from my lungs. Luckily, I was able to hold on to the contents of my stomach, but only because I was preoccupied with protecting my body from the next anticipated blow. But Dean was
a pro. He punched me in the jaw and I bit the tip of my tongue so hard that I tasted warm, coppery blood.

The rest of the party faded away as I focused on survival. I tried to throw a second pitiful jab, but Dean shrugged it off and laid into me with a flurry of punches that landed so fast I couldn't register the pain before the next one hit. I collapsed to the carpet, trying to minimize the damage.

What scared me most wasn't that he was a freakishly strong psycho who'd been voted most likely to end up on death row before his twenty-first birthday. It was that he didn't say a single word as he beat the shit out of me. I registered every kick, every punch. I registered Cassie trying to pull Dean off of me. But his silence is what stuck. And the thought that he wasn't going to stop until I was dead.

Except, then it was over. As quickly as it began, the fight was done. I tasted blood, unsure whether it was coming from my nose or my tongue. I risked a quick glance around the room. Dean was standing over me, holding out his hand.

“You're still a faggot,” Dean said. “But you got balls.” Dean's nose was barely red. My ineffectual punch had done little more than bruise his ego.

I took Dean's hand and let him help me up. The first person I looked for was Cassie. Her face was splotchy and her dress was disheveled. But under her concern she was smiling at me. For me. I'd lost the fight but it had been so worth it.

The room was still silent. I didn't know when DJ Leo had stopped the music, but the quiet that had earlier been contained
to the living room had now infected the entire house. I cleared my throat of the mucus and blood that coated it.

“So, the table is ours, right?” I said.

Dean laughed and broke the silence. The music resumed and everyone who had gathered around us let out the collective breath they'd been holding. Dean returned to his chair and motioned at the table with his chin. “All yours,” he said. “Try not to embarrass yourself.”

“No promises,” I said.

Cassie kept trying to dab at my nose with a napkin to stanch the dribbles of blood that were leaking down onto the front of my favorite shirt. I briefly entertained the notion that standing up to Dean to keep her from having to make out with him for possession of the beer pong table was all the proof she needed to know that I really loved her. She disabused me of that notion by slapping my arm and calling me an idiot.

“You're welcome,” I said back. There was a gaudy mirror on the wall that I used to survey the damage to my face. It wasn't as bad as it felt. My cheek was developing a colorful bruise, and my nose was a leaky faucet of blood, but I hadn't lost any teeth or broken any bones. A definite win in my opinion. The napkin Cassie had given me had soaked through within seconds so I stripped off my ruined shirt and held it to my face.

“Here,” Cassie said. She handed me a bottle of water that I used to clean some of the drying blood from my chin.

I plugged my nose up with another napkin and turned back to the table. “We going to play or what?”

Cassie put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “You're in no shape to do anything except find Coop and have him drive you home.”

Though much of the crowd that had gathered had faded back into the party, enough remained to make backing out of our beer pong game impossible if I wanted to hold on to any of the points I'd gained by fighting the scariest guy in school.

“The cups are set up,” I said. “Let's play. Unless you've got something to hide.”

Taunting Cassie was a bad move, but my whole body hurt and I couldn't think up any other way to keep her around. If I'd been playing the long game, I would have taken the points I'd earned, kept my title of Hero of the Beer Pong Table, and lived to try another day. But I knew—I felt it in my battered bones—that everything, my whole life, my chance to kiss her, was down to this one night. If I gave up now, I might as well give up forever.

Cassie shrugged. She didn't look angry, but the admiration she'd had for me a moment ago was dwindling fast. “Fine,” she said. “But you asked for this.”

Though it didn't look like that much beer in the cups on the table, I knew it was still enough to do some damage. The pain from my fight further impaired my already questionable beer pong skills. If I had any chance of getting answers from Cassie and not pickling my brain in the process, I was going to need serious luck.

“Here's the deal,” Cassie said. “If I put my ball in your cup, I get to ask you a question. You either answer or drink. If you lie, then you drink all the cups and the game is over.”

I nodded. “Got it. Let's play.” I tried to sound cool but with a bit tongue and one plugged nostril, everything I said came out sounding like the Swedish Chef.

“Flip to see who takes the first shot?”

“Ladies first,” I said.

Without hesitation, Cassie picked up the orange Ping-Pong ball and executed the most perfect throw in the history of beer pong. She made it look effortless, even with swollen knuckles. The ball sailed in a tight arc into the center of the plastic cup at the apex of my beeramid.

Shit was about to get real in the living room.

“Your question,” I said. “I've got nothing to hide.”

Cassie took only a second to come up with her question, and it was immediately evident that she wasn't going to lob me any easy pitches. “Are you still a virgin, Simon?”

There was no way not to answer the question. She knew I was, so I couldn't lie. I couldn't drink, either. If I did, everyone would assume I was a virgin but was too afraid to admit it. There was only one thing to do. I said, “Yes,” and owned it.