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My answer earned a couple of snickers from people who didn't matter. All that mattered was proving something to Cassie. That I wasn't going to back down, no matter how difficult she made it.

I fished the ball out of my cup and casually tossed it at one of her cups. It hit the rim and bounced onto the floor.

Cassie smirked and said, “Too bad, Sy.”

“It's cool,” I said. “I'm learning a hell of a lot about you right now,
anyway.” Which was the truth. Behind Cassie's stony veneer was a girl who was petrified. Of what, I didn't know. I knew I hadn't hallucinated the way she'd looked at me right before Dean beat my ass, the same way I hadn't imagined the way she'd looked at me when I'd sunk the shot on the eighteenth hole at Pirate Chang's. It was like she'd realized in the time between accepting my challenge and actually playing that I might uncover something about her or, worse yet, that she might uncover something about herself.

“Whatever.” Cassie picked up the ball again and sank it into the second cup.

“You've obviously missed your true calling as a beer pong pro,” I said. “You're some kind of freaky savant.”

Cassie sighed and said, “No, you just suck at this.” She smiled and asked her next question. “Are you really wearing Superman underwear?”

I silently vowed to torture Ben. I was going to tie him to a chair and force him to watch every Alvin and the Chipmunks movie on repeat until he went mad from the incessant squeaking. But not for telling Cassie about the underwear. I didn't care if the whole world knew that I was sporting my lucky Man of Steel briefs. I was pissed because what I was wearing under my jeans was likely one of many secrets about me that Ben had revealed to Cassie. And if Ben had armed her with an unlimited supply of ammo, I was sunk.

I had only one play to make. I picked up the cup and chugged the beer. When I was done, I set it upside down and said, “Why don't you come over here and find out for yourself?”

My false bravado didn't impress Cassie as much as it did the rest of the onlookers. She rolled her eyes while they hollered and laughed. Even Aja was giving me some respect. Not much, but some.

“Throw already,” Cassie said.

Since I lacked Cassie's skill with the Ping-Pong ball, my only shot was to play the odds. I took aim at the middle of Cassie's beeramid. Luck is the only way to describe how my orange ball managed to bounce around and fall into a cup. Not the cup I'd been aiming for, not even close, but I'd take what Lady Luck gave me. All I had to do now was ask my question.

When Cassie had told me that I didn't know her, I knew she wasn't talking about what kind of music she listened to or who her favorite actress was or what she wanted to be when she grew up. I knew those things. The Kooks, Charlize Theron, and a journalist. Those were the sorts of things anyone who was her friend on Facebook knew about her. No, Cassie had been suggesting that I didn't know the answers to the bigger questions—the million little pieces that make up a person.

But of those million little pieces, I wanted to know about only one.

“Why did you dump Eli?”

I'd certainly fantasized that Cassie would break up with her boyfriend for me. That she'd wake up one morning and realize that something in her life had always been missing, and that the only time she'd been truly happy was the one night we spent together playing mini-golf. But I wasn't stupid enough to believe it would ever really happen.

Instead of answering the question, Cassie picked up the cup of beer I'd hit and chugged it. Then she chugged another. And another, until all of her cups were empty. She wasn't smiling, she wasn't frowning. Without needing her to say it, I knew the game was over.

“Fuck you, Simon,” she said. “Fuck Eli, fuck Rendview, and fuck everyone at this stupid party.” She looked around the room as if realizing for the first time that her house was filled with people. If she hadn't been drunk before, she was going to be soon, and I could see her desire to be anywhere else. But before she left, she said, “You should have kissed me that night at Pirate Chang's.”

I didn't get to tell her how many times I wished I had before she fled.

The moment the drama was over, people forgot us. Someone else took possession of the table, and Dean lit up a joint to pass around the room. The crowd began funneling back to the kitchen or the dance floor or the patio or wherever they thought would be more interesting than the room in which I'd been humiliated multiple times.

A symphony of thoughts fought for my attention and I needed quiet to hear them. I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and ducked into the last room down a long hallway, not caring who it belonged to. I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it, sliding slowly to the carpet, trying not to hyperventilate. When I caught my breath, I looked around. The pictures on the mirror over the rosewood dresser announced
loud and clear that I'd taken refuge in Cassie's bedroom. I got up to leave immediately, but when I turned the knob, it came off in my hand.

“That happens sometimes,” said a deep, familiar voice from behind me. I slowly turned around, horrified to find Eli Horowitz sprawled on the floor between Cassie's bed and the wall.

I tried to push the knob back in but the tiny bits fell to the ground. There was no way out. I was trapped.

“Balls.”

When my mom found out that Ben and Coop were gay, she spent a month hinting to me that it would be okay if I were too. For a while, I had a complex about it, convinced that my mom secretly wanted a gay son because she believed that it would entitle her to an all-access pass into an elite club. She could tell people that her son was a homosexual and bypass the normal line at her hairdresser or get special discounts on shoes. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to convince her that I was completely, totally heterosexual, going so far as to purposely leave straight porn lying around where she could find it.

If my mom could see me now, standing in front of Mrs. Castillo's lavish closet, it would have undone all my hard work. Still, though I hated to admit it, I looked fucking hot in a skirt.

The skirt was part of Stella's plan, which she'd yet to fully explain. The first thing we'd done was find Ben and Coop and recruit them to our cause. Ben hadn't taken much convincing;
Coop had. I told him about seeing Eli and Cassie on the patio. Coop maybe didn't totally support my telling Cassie how I felt, but he recognized the devastating implications of Eli being back in the picture. Eli Fucking Horowitz was a stumbling block I couldn't overcome without help.

Ben and Stella had suggested I wear something from Cassie's closet, but I was too tall. Mrs. Castillo's clothes probably weren't much better, but Stella had declared that they'd do. Now she and Ben were arguing over what shade of lipstick I should wear while Coop stood by the door and tried not to laugh.

“I have two questions,” I said to Stella when I'd finished admiring my ass in the mirror. Mrs. Castillo probably hadn't worn any of these clothes since college, but they didn't look too bad on me.

“Only two?” Coop asked.

Ben faced me, holding out a tube of lipstick. “Yes, you're pretty. And no, I won't sleep with you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And ew.”

While he was distracted, Stella snatched the lipstick from Ben and tossed it behind her. He looked appalled and bent to retrieve it. “Do you like having hands?” Stella asked.

“Whatever,” Ben said. “If you want him to look like a two-dollar hooker, by all means, go with Passion Pink.”

I couldn't tell why Ben and Stella were bickering, but it had been nearly constant since they'd entered the same room. “I prefer the term ‘working girl,' ” I said, trying to defuse the
tension.

Stella ignored everyone and pushed a chair across the room so that she could stand on it and apply the winning lipstick. She smeared it across my lips and it felt like bacon fat. Of course, it wasn't the first time I'd dressed in women's clothing, but that had been Halloween and I hadn't so much dressed up as a girl as dressed up as a zombie Charlie's Angel. It had been Ben's idea, and he, Coop, and I had won first place in the Rendview Junior High costume contest.

“Back to my questions,” I said when Stella had finished with the makeup. “Where'd you get the wig, and why do I have to be the one to dress up like a girl? Especially since you already mostly look like a girl.”

Instead of answering me, Stella hopped down off the chair to admire her handiwork. When she was satisfied, she slipped the lipstick into her purse and said, “I'll hold on to this.”

“The only person this is going to fool is your stupid blind dog,” Coop said from his post by the door. His job was to make sure no one came into the bedroom. He didn't have the fashion sense Ben did anyway, and if he'd picked out my clothes I'd have ended up in a burka cut from the Castillos' sheets.

“Falcor isn't stupid,” Stella said. “He's very smart, actually.”

Ben bit back a laugh. “Then how come I caught him trying to hump the beer keg earlier?”

“It's a party. Half your class is out there humping the keg.” Stella disappeared into the closet muttering something about my hairy belly button. The blouse they'd dressed me in didn't
quite give me the necessary coverage.

“Remember Stevie Kayne?” Ben asked. I nodded. “I loaned him my Halloween wig when the drama club did
Hairspray
. He brought it to barter.”

“So you got it from Stevie?”

Ben shook his head. “He'd traded it to Naomi for a bottle of absinthe that I'm pretty certain is fake. Naomi traded the wig to Jamison Belko for some of those berries that are supposed to change the way everything tastes.”

Stella popped her head out of the closet. “Those things make vinegar taste like apple juice.”

“Cool,” Coop said.

“I hate apple juice,” Stella said before retreating into Mrs. Castillo's closet again.

“So you got the wig from Jamison,” I said. “Got it.”

Ben shook his head. “No. Jamison traded it to—”

“Don't care,” I said. “Next question.”

Coop whistled—the signal that someone was coming. Ben and I ducked into the closet with Stella while Coop got rid of whoever was out there. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, Ben began rummaging through Mrs. Castillo's personal things. Stella had apparently found nothing to replace my blouse with because she was empty-handed. She didn't seem in any hurry to finish, and if I hadn't known better I'd have thought she was stalling. It was odd since I knew for a fact that Ewan was out there waiting for her to return.

“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked in a whisper.

“You're nice,” she said. Stella toyed with one of her dreads. I'd have thought they'd smell bad but they had the faint scent of fresh wood. “Also, we had a deal.”

I looked at where we were and what I was wearing. “This definitely goes above and beyond our deal.”

“The Nash family motto is: Never give up.” Stella frowned. “It's actually: Never give up cake. But that doesn't exactly apply here.”

Stella made me smile. I didn't always understand her, but I definitely seemed to smile a lot when I was around her. She was so different from other girls. I didn't feel the need to try around Stella. When I embarrassed myself in front of Cassie, I felt as if the entire world was judging me. But with Stella, I could stand in a closet wearing women's clothing, and it was cool.

Coop whistled twice to let us know the coast was clear. Ben pushed past Stella and me to get out.

“It was Aja,” Coop said. “With Sia Marcus.” He was making his “I've eaten something bad and I don't know whether to spit it out or swallow it” frown.

“Yeah, they're a thing now,” I said. “Maybe.” Despite enjoying Ben's clear astonishment that I, for once, was the one with the gossip, I quickly changed the subject. “So I'm dressed like . . . well, like this. Now what?”

We all turned our attention to Stella. She'd kept the plans close to her vest, indicating only that Ben's and Coop's participation was crucial. “Simon's gays, you'll be responsible for separating Eli from Cassie and getting him up to Cassie's
bedroom.”

Knowing that part of Stella's master plan did little to illuminate how this was going to help me with Cassie. “No can do,” Ben said. “Eli's on her like peanut butter on jelly.”

“Seriously,” Coop said. “How are we even supposed to do that?”

Stella stroked her chin as if she had an evil, pointy beard. “Me thinks you need proper motivation.” She reached into her purse and pulled something out, keeping it hidden in her palm, stage magician–style. “Complete your task and this will be yours.” She revealed one plastic-wrapped condom. “Ribbed for her pleasure. Or rather, his pleasure.”

Ben tried to grab it, but Stella snatched it out of his reach and put it safely back in her purse. “You've had that the whole time?” he asked. Stella nodded. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“You didn't ask.” It sounded logical to me, and Ben certainly did look motivated to do whatever it took to pry Eli from Cassie, including set the house on fire if necessary, which I hoped he wouldn't have to resort to.

Coop furrowed his brow and said, “I think I have an idea. Can I borrow Falcor?”

“My stupid dog, you mean?” Falcor was on the bed, sleeping in a nest he'd made out of the comforter. Coop didn't take back his assessment of the dog but did his best to look appropriately chastised. “Sure,” Stella said. “Don't lose him.”

Ben was jumping up and down like a kid at Christmas. He could hardly contain his excitement as he scooped up a
grumpy-looking Falcor in his arms. “Let's go!”

Coop paused. “Let me just get a minute with Simon.” He waited for Ben and Stella to leave and then he got all serious on me. “You sure this is worth it?”