fml (21 page)

It was the blue ball from Pirate Chang's Booty and Mini-Golf. The one I'd sunk on the eighteenth hole. I didn't have to tell them what it was. They knew.

“We're going to this party,” I said. “And I'm giving this ball to Cassie. The rest is up to Fate.”

Ben actually looked impressed. Coop, not so much. “It's okay, baby,” Ben said. “We can go to Howley's after Simon humiliates himself.”

Coop shook his head. “No, we can't.”

I didn't know what he meant by that and I didn't have time to unravel the enigma that was Cooper Yates, because we were back at the party and the only person on my mind was Cassie.

I'd found my paper clip. It was time to go turn it into a house.

I felt like I was living in a pop music video as I descended the stairs into the belly of the party. While Stella and I had been hiding in Cassie's bathroom, tricking Eli into handcuffing himself to the bed so that I could make my move on Cassie, the party had continued without us. Whatever semblance of civility people had arrived with, they'd shed it and devolved into a PG-13 hedonism that would have sent their parents into apoplectic fits. Shane Durban streaked from the front of the house to the back, his hairy ass disappearing into the chaotic tumor of dancers in the family room, screaming about the end of the fucking world. Shane was a straight-A Mormon vegan who I'd never seen wear anything other than khaki pants and button-down shirts. Tonight, he'd gone native.

And he wasn't the only one. The lights in the library were out and the distinct sounds of sucking face told me that the game of Contact Scrabble was over. Kids were dancing on the tables. Various articles of clothing hung from sconces and door handles, their owners nowhere to be seen. The party
had peaked and the air was thick with laughter that was too loud and screams that were too shrill. Soon, it would collapse under its own weight. A fight would break out or the cops would show up. People would try to grab their dignity and scram, but I was sure that photographic evidence was already on Facebook, telling the whole sordid story of the night.

As much as I felt like I was in the middle of a memory I'd carry with me for the rest of my life, I also felt out of place. These people, compatriots with whom I'd gone to war in hell, were lost, whereas I was finally found. They were drifting aimlessly through the party, pulled in whatever directions their amped-up hormones deemed gave them the highest probability of getting laid. But I, I had purpose. And I moved through the party with one thought in my head:
Find Cassie.

Okay, okay, that's not entirely true. I was also thinking about the last thing Stella had said to me before she'd gone to find Ewan. The part about me being perfect. What the hell did she mean anyway? She didn't know me. She didn't know a damn thing about me except that I was gullible, which wasn't exactly a state secret. If Stella knew me, she'd know that I wasn't perfect. There were so many things wrong with me that I'd given up keeping track of them a long time ago. If Stella thought I was perfect, then there was something seriously wrong with her. No wonder she'd never kissed a guy before.

Stella wasn't around, though. She was probably trading those humiliating pictures of me in drag for that stupid video game. Whatever. The only thing she'd done all night was distract
me from my true purpose. It didn't matter if she thought I was perfect or the pope. Stella Nash was not Cassandra Castillo.

With that settled, I continued my hunt for Cassie, but I didn't get another step before someone pulled a pillowcase over my head, and calloused hands grabbed me and yanked me off my feet. I heard muffled laughter but I couldn't make out what the voices were saying. I struggled, kicking and clawing—I even bit someone who was stupid enough to put their hand near my mouth—but my captors were strong and I couldn't break free.

In less than a minute, it was over as I was thrown onto grass. I scrambled to my feet and pulled off the pillowcase. I recognized it from Mr. and Mrs. Castillo's bedroom.

“He don't look like a girl,” Derrick Fuller said. He wasn't the brightest kid on the best of days, but drunk, he was a total moron.

Blaise stood at the apex of his idiot brigade, his brutish grin aped by his minions. Derrick Fuller and Seth Portnoy on his left, and Jesús Gomez and Fat Duke on the right. Everyone called him Fat Duke because he was fat. Really fat. And the way he held his thumb told me that he was the unlucky bastard I'd gotten a mouthful of. Urinal Cake stood off in the shadows, watching me with a satisfied grin. Part of me wished I'd helped him earlier.

“I'm telling you, he was wearing a skirt and he tried to grab my dick.” Blaise's words wove and stumbled, but I knew I was screwed no matter how drunk he was. Alone, I might have
been able to outrun Blaise, but five against one was a recipe for a serious beat down. The funny thing was that I wasn't worried about broken bones or bruises. My only thought was that my opportunity to tell Cassie I loved her, bought and paid for with my humiliation, was slipping away.

I couldn't let that happen.

“Do I look like I'm wearing a dress?” I asked, pleading my case to a jury of half-wits. “Blaise is so lit he probably felt himself up.”

Fat Duke laughed, but a vicious snarl from Blaise silenced him.

“I know it was you, Cross.” Blaise pointed at me. “And I'm going to fuck you up.” Blaise motioned at one of his guys, and Derrick grabbed me by the neck and pulled my left arm up behind my back. Bombs of excruciating pain detonated in my shoulder and I bit my tongue to keep from crying out.

I glanced up at Blaise, blinking away the tears that formed in my eyes. He looked triumphant, like he could already taste my apology. But I wasn't ready to surrender. “It's nothing to be ashamed of,” I said. “My best friends are gay. I just don't like you that way.”

Blaise punched me in the stomach with a lead fist. It knocked the breath from me and I would have crumpled to the ground if Derrick hadn't been holding me up. He wrenched my arm back even farther and the pain in my shoulder offset the agony in my gut. Or it did, until Blaise followed his right hook with his left.

“Tell 'em you were dressed like a girl!” Blaise yelled. “Tell 'em you grabbed me on the stairs.” Blaise hocked a loogie and spit it in my face. The mucus hit my eye and slid down the bridge of my nose.

Blaise Lewis wasn't playing around; I'd seriously misjudged the situation. I didn't have time to dig out the childhood trauma that had turned a silly encounter on the stairs into the catalyst that caused Blaise to lose his damn mind, but I knew that if I didn't defuse him, he was going to fuck me up.

“I'm sorry,” I said quickly.

“Yeah, you are.” Blaise's lips pulled back into a cruel rictus that had a serious serial-killer vibe.

I was alone. Ben and Coop weren't going to come to the rescue. Stella was probably inside snogging the face off Ewan McCoy, and . . . that was it. There was no one else.

Blaise pulled back to punch me again and I punted. “Wait!”

“What?”

“It was me on the stairs,” I said.

Seth and Jesús laughed. They were so drunk that they were little more than prop pieces in Blaise's drama. Derrick and Fat Duke were the ones I had to watch out for.

“It was me, but it isn't what you thought.”

Blaise relaxed slightly and said, “Yeah?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” And then I made my move. Because I could have stood there and admitted to Blaise and his goon squad that I'd dressed like a woman as part of a bigger plan to
ensnare the heart of the girl I loved, but it wouldn't have mattered to them. So I stomped hard on Derrick's foot, causing him to loosen his grip on my arm. It wasn't much, but it was enough to twist free. I launched forward at Blaise and lowered my shoulder, crashing into him and toppling him into Fat Duke. Both boys went down in a tangle of arms and legs. The only person in my way was Urinal Cake, but he stood aside wordlessly.

Without a second's hesitation, I fucking ran. I heard Blaise screaming for someone to get me, but I had a huge lead and I wasn't about to let them catch me. I ducked around the side of the house and headed for the patio. I looked behind me and was running so fast that I didn't see Aja until I nearly ran her down.

“The fuck, Simon!”

I put a hand over her mouth and dragged her into the bushes. Aja didn't struggle but she gave me a withering glare. A moment later, Blaise and his posse tore by. They didn't stop. After they passed, I counted to ten and then let Aja go.

“Fans of yours?” she asked.

I nodded.

“What'd you do?”

“It's a long story,” I said.

Aja brushed the grass off her jeans. “I'm betting it has something to do with Cassie, and no, I don't want to know what it is.”

“This really shouldn't be this hard,” I said to myself.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Aja and I stood there for a moment, she staring at me curiously and me catching my breath. I still wasn't used to the idea that Aja and I could share the same air without fighting or making out.

“Sia's got the drama geeks putting on an aquatic version of
Romeo and Juliet
,” Aja said. “It's amazing. Or mental. I'm not sure which yet.” But I could tell that Aja was impressed, which was something many had tried and few had accomplished.

“Why aren't you watching?” I asked.

She held up her phone. “Had to call Gran to let her know I'm alive so she didn't send in the Marines.”

“Gotcha.”

“I should get back.”

“Listen,” I said. “I feel like a dick for asking, but have you seen Cassie?”

Aja nodded but didn't say where. I tried deciphering the expression on her face but she sort of looked like she'd drunk a big cup of rotten milk. Then she said, “If you tell Cassie how you feel about her, she'll hook up with you.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I just do.”

“Thanks,” I said, and turned to go.

“But not for the right reasons,” Aja called. That pulled me up short, dampened some of my fire.

“Go on.”

Aja got the rotten-milk look again. “You're not stupid, Simon. You know something's up with Cassie. She's a Goody Two-shoes, not a party girl. Until a week ago, she and Eli were married in all but name. Think about it.”

I knew all this. I'd already thought about it. Ben and Coop had warned me. But so what? Yeah, something was wrong with Cassie. It didn't change the way I felt about her.

“If you know something,” I said, impatient to be on my way, “tell me.”

Aja patted my cheek. “Maybe I was wrong,” she said. “Maybe you are stupid.”

Yells echoed down the narrow passage between the house and the hedges and I flinched before realizing that they were coming from the back patio, probably from Sia's play, and not from Blaise. “I'm not doing this with you.”

“Cassie's broke,” Aja said abruptly.

I didn't know what to say to that. It was ludicrous. Obviously Cassie wasn't broke. We were standing right outside her expensive house. “Bullshit.”

“I thought I'd enjoy this,” Aja said.

“Enjoy what?” Aja wasn't making any sense and I suspected she might be playing a game. Maybe it had all been a game.

“Cassie's downfall.” When it was clear I had no clue what she meant, Aja sighed and said, “Sia's dad is a Realtor. The Castillos lost this house. Her dad got canned. I even heard they can't afford to send her to college.”

It wasn't true. It couldn't be. “You're a liar, Aja. Always were.”

Aja threw up her hands. “Believe what you want, Simon. Maybe you and Cassie do deserve each other.” There was no more to say and she walked toward the patio without another word.

I waited until Aja was gone, trying to process what she'd told me. It might have been a lie, but it had the feel of truth. And Cassie losing everything would explain why she'd been acting so strangely. So unlike herself.

What it didn't explain was why it would make Cassie hook up with me if I told her how I felt. Aja had seemed as certain about that as she had about the rest. But it didn't make sense.

It also didn't matter. I could sort it out when I found Cassie.

I followed the sounds of the play to the back patio. Half the party was out there watching what was likely the most elaborate poolside production of
Romeo and Juliet
that had ever been staged. They were waist deep in the masquerade scene, and the audience was so enthralled that I was able to move through them with ease.

Ben and Coop were watching from the couch by the grill. Sia and Aja were by the deep end of the pool. I ran into people I hadn't even known were at the party as I wandered around. The only person I couldn't find was Cassie.

But I knew she was out there.

I would have spent all night looking for Cassie, but my
time was up. Eli ran out of the house in his shirt and boxers, with murder in his eyes. He locked onto me with laser precision and tore through the crowd. Most people were too busy watching the play to notice that Eli was coming at me, probably to tear my head from my neck. I still didn't see Cassie and I didn't know what else to do.

So I did the first thing that popped into my mind. I climbed up the rocks to the summit of the waterfall and shouted, “Cassandra, Cassandra! Wherefore art thou, Cassandra?” And then waited for the shit to hit the fan.

Cassie's barter party was winding down toward its inevitable collapse. I knew it the moment I opened the front door. The party had the weary, frantic look of a marathon runner at the end of a torturous race. People were still drinking and dancing and bartering their last bits of pocket lint for whatever they could get, but these were the actions of the desperate. Last drinks, last dances, last attempts to find someone, anyone, to make out with. Coop and Ben and I usually vacated parties before they got to this point. Me because when I didn't, I ended up with Aja Bourne, and the boys because they had each other.