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“It's worth it,” I said without hesitation, sure that it was. In fact, at that moment, I'd have been hard-pressed to dream up anything I wouldn't have done for the chance to tell Cassie I loved her.

“Because, here's the thing . . .” Coop took a deep breath before continuing, steady again. “I promised I'd help you and I will. But after this, I'm done.”

“Yeah,” I said, patting him on the arm. “I get it.”

Coop shook his head and looked me right in the eyes. “No, you don't,” he said. “I'm done with us. With you, Simon.”

Up to that point, only half of my attention had been on the conversation, but now Coop had it all. “Come again?”

“Listen,” he said. “It's just that you shouldn't have to crawl through the mud under barbed wire to get the girl you like to give you the time of day. And if you go through with this, well, I can't hold you together for another three years. It's time to move on.”

I was stunned, and pissed, but mostly confused. “You're telling me that if I tell Cassie I love her, you and I won't be friends anymore?”

Coop nodded.

“Then I guess I'll find another ride home.” My voice was emotionless. I didn't know what to feel. Mostly, I didn't
believe it. Coop and I had been friends for so long that I couldn't imagine life without him. But when it came down to him or Cassie, I chose Cassie.

With a terse nod, Coop took off to fulfill his part of the mission and earn his condom.

“You ready, hot stuff?” Stella asked, popping back into the room.

I was as ready as I was going to get, but I had a fleeting moment of indecision. A second where I considered calling the whole thing off. It's difficult to explain, but I had this thought, this picture of Cassie and me twenty years in the future. We'd gotten together at the party and gotten married and had kids. And I was sitting with them—daughters, of course—telling them the story of the night I told their mother I was in love with her. And when that premonition or whatever you want to call it had passed, I wondered whether this was the story I'd want to tell my children. That I had to dress in drag to get a shot at winning their mother's heart. In that moment, I wondered if Coop was right. But the hesitation passed and I wrote it off as nerves.

Stella patted my ass and I jumped. “Whoa there, little lady. You gotta pony up the dough to touch these goods.” I smoothed down my blouse, uncomfortable with how much my own fake breasts were turning me on. A boner in this skirt would ruin everything. “This plan is bound to fail,” I said.

“But it'll make a great YouTube video.” Stella held up her phone and I couldn't tell if she was actually filming or just
screwing with me.

I took a couple of steps in the heels, realizing for the first time that I was actually going to have to walk in these things. Lucky for me, the bed was there, because I face-planted into the warm spot Falcor had been sleeping on.

“Up-skirt shot!” Stella shouted, and her flash lit up the room. I wasn't sure how much she'd seen until she said, “Come on, Man of Steel. Let's do this thing.” She was out the door before I could stop her.

“Where are we going?” I yelled even though I knew Stella wouldn't answer me. The only way to know was to follow. Fear of being left behind overrode my fear of breaking my ankle, and I chased Stella into the hall.

I hoped that in the dark, I made a passable woman. In regular light my disguise was hardly a disguise at all. I'd put the fate of my sexual destiny in the hands of a madwoman.

Stella put her finger to her lips. She peeked around the corner and then said, “Come on.” She pulled me down the hall and into the garage.

“Where are we going?” I said when the door had closed behind us. The garage smelled like old grass and gasoline. It was dominated by a huge workbench that was neatly organized.

“Maybe you should have shaved your legs,” Stella said. She looked me up and down and then shook her head. “Nah. This is good.”

If this was good, it was only because it had lapped bad and come back around again. “Where are we going?”

“Cassie's room.”

“Isn't that where you told Ben and Coop to send Eli?”

Stella nodded.

“Why?”

“That's the plan.”

“
What's
the plan?” My voice went up two octaves and broke. “Are you insane?”

“Clinically, yes.” Stella grabbed my hand again and pulled. “Come on!”

I followed Stella out into the night, where I was immediately attacked by hungry mosquitoes. We waited at the edge of the house while Stella made sure it was all clear. Of course, her idea of clear and mine were radically different. There was a small crowd of smokers that we had to pass, but she withheld that information until it was too late for me to turn back. My only saving grace was that Stella was so brightly colored that everyone looked at her rather than me. That, and they were all completely shit-faced.

But the real terror began when I realized she planned to take us right in the front door. I wrenched my hand from hers. “Nope. Not a chance.”

“It's the only way,” Stella said. “It'll be fine. We're going to go in and run right up the stairs.”

I glanced at the door. “Right past the living room and library. Where there are people.”

Stella grabbed my chin in her tiny hand. “This will work. I promise.” She sounded so earnest; she looked so sincere. I
couldn't help but believe her.

“All right,” I said, knowing I'd likely regret it. “Let's go.”

We raced through the door and up the stairs like Stella had promised. I thought I was going to make it without being spotted when a sweaty hand grabbed hold of my wrist. I turned around, expecting to find Ben or Coop, and found Blaise Lewis instead. He was trying to bring me into focus with his heavy, bloodshot eyes.

“I know you?” He stumbled into me, groping my fake breasts.

“Dude!”

“Huh?” Blaise's eyes flew wide with surprise and he tripped down a step.

Even laughing, Stella managed to extricate me from Blaise's manhandling and help me the rest of the way up the stairs, which wasn't easy in heels. By the time we got to Cassie's room, I was sweaty and pretty sure my heart was going to explode. Stella was still laughing.

“Can you shut up?” I said. There was nothing funny about Blaise feeling me up. I hoped he was too drunk to know what had happened or too embarrassed to tell anyone.

Stella covered her mouth with her hand, but the laughter leaked out around the edges.

It hit me that I was in Cassie's bedroom. A place I'd dreamed about for ages. It was just like I'd imagined, too. Pink and soft with all kinds of strange, exotic smells.

“She's a pig,” Stella said. She ran her finger along the rim
of a plate that was balanced on the edge of Cassie's dresser. There were water bottles on her nightstand and clothes piled on the floor. I wouldn't have called Cassie a pig, but the mess took some of the shine off.

“We're here,” I said. “What now?”

Stella dug around in her purse, looking for God only knew what, and motioned toward the bathroom. “We hide.”

“I don't get it,” I said. “Ben and Coop will finish their job and Eli will be up here any minute. What are we going to do?”

“Hide. Are you deaf?” Stella stared at me like I was the one who'd lost his mind.

“Listen,” I said, pretty much fed up. “I've done everything you asked, but I'm not moving another inch until you tell me everything.”

Stella sighed and fished out the lipstick she'd stolen from Mrs. Castillo. “Fine. Ben and Coop are going to send Eli up here. We're going to hide in the bathroom.” While Stella explained, she wrote, “Handcuff yourself to the bed and put on the blindfold,” on the mirror in lipstick. She dotted the
i
with a heart. “We'll get Eli to handcuff himself to the bed and then we'll leave him here. With him out of commission, you'll be free to work your sexy voodoo on Cassie.”

I couldn't deny that Stella's plan would definitely sideline Eli, but there was one thing I didn't understand. “If we're hiding in the bathroom, why am I dressed like Cassie's ugly cousin?”

Stella whistled and looked at the ceiling.

“Stella?”

“Okay,” she said. “This wasn't part of the plan. I honestly thought it was going to be so much harder to convince you to dress like a girl, but you practically dove into the skirt. Not that I blame you. You make a damn fine woman.”

“What?” My brain was having trouble processing Stella's confession. “Why?”

“Truthfully?”

“No,” I said. “I prefer the lies.”

She tsked. “No need to get snippy.”

I made a gesture that was considerably more than snippy and she got the hint.

“It's a barter. One of Ewan's friends has this video game that's only available in Japan. He told me that he'd give it to me if I could get you to dress in drag.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled. I threw my fake hair against the wall.

“Don't wig out, Simone,” she said, and grinned. “See what I did there?”

“Screw you,” I said, really not in the mood for puns. “You dressed me like a hooker for a video game.”

“It's not just any video game. It's Revenge of the Furry Bathtub Lickers, which is way more awesome than it sounds. It loses something in the translation.”

I was about to tell Stella all the places she could stick the game when I heard footsteps in the hall and someone cursing to himself. It sounded like Eli.

“And, we're out of time. Get me a shirt from one of the drawers.” While I fished a green shirt from Cassie's dresser and tossed it on the bed, Stella pulled out the handcuffs I'd seen in her car earlier. She laid them on top of the shirt and grabbed my arm.

“Hide.” She pulled me into the dark bathroom and closed the door all but a crack as Eli entered Cassie's bedroom.

My anger drained away and was replaced by fear as I realized that I was trapped in Cassie's bathroom, dressed like a bad facsimile of a girl, with Eli just a couple of feet away.

Fuck.

God hated me and was punishing me for some crime I'd committed in a previous incarnation. I was cursed to live out the remainder of my days under the ire of an all-powerful deity who had bent his limitless fury toward the single task of ruining my life. It was the only explanation for how I could have come to be trapped in Cassandra Castillo's bedroom with Eli Fucking Horowitz—her too-good-to-be-true ex-boyfriend, who actually happened to be that good. I was sure he usually spent his Friday nights rescuing kittens and saving old ladies from loud-music-blaring hooligans.

I stood in front of Cassie's bedroom door, holding the busted knob in my hand, feeling hopeless. Being beaten up by the school sociopath and trounced at beer pong by the girl I loved were turning out to be the high points of the night. I suspected that being locked in a small room with my mortal enemy might not even be rock bottom.

“You look like shit,” Eli said. He'd moved into a sitting position and was now examining me, taking stock. I wasn't sure what
he'd been doing prior to my arrival, but now all his attention was focused on me.

“At least I don't smell,” I said. There were pieces of the door on the floor, pieces that I had no clue how to fit back together. With a shrug, I dumped the knob and shoved my hands in my pockets.

Eli didn't seem to take offense. He did, in fact, smell. It was an unwashed odor of rum and regret. Up close, he looked worse than he had at Gobbler's. Stubbly and unkempt. The way Coop and Ben and I looked when we came back from camping, only sadder and drunker.

“Well, this is awkward,” I said.

“What happened to you?” Eli asked. I assumed he meant my face, but a quick glance in the mirror over Cassie's dresser revealed that I looked less like I'd been beaten up and more like someone had dumped a bucket of pig's blood on me.

“You should see the other guy,” I said.

Eli nodded. “Sure.” The way he looked at me and talked to me was infuriating. He was so authentically nice about everything. Eli was a parent's wet dream. Granted, at that moment, he wasn't living up to his potential, but Eli on his worst day was still better than most men on their best. He was certainly better than me.

As maddening as that was, he also put me at ease. I knew that I could tell him what happened and he would judge my actions honestly. So I told him about my fight with Dean without embellishing too much.

When I finished my story, Eli pointed at the bottom right
drawer of Cassie's dresser. “There's a shirt you can wear in there.” He picked up a bottle of dark rum that had been hidden between his thigh and the bed and took a swallow.

The drawer was filled with clothes that were decidedly not Cassie's. A couple of pairs of jeans, some shirts. Boxers. I glanced back questioningly and he said, “They're mine.”

“Thanks,” I said. I chose a shirt at random and pulled it on. The thing was like two sizes too big. It was a green shirt with
TEAM PLÁTANO
written in red over a festive silk-screened menorah.

Eli chuckled. “Mr. Castillo had that made for me over the holidays. Every year he has a family contest. Last year was boys versus girls. Team Plátano versus Team Melón.” I didn't get the joke, but it made Eli smile. I wished I could smile with him, but all I could think about was Eli celebrating Chrismukkah—or whatever inclusive hybrid religious holiday the Castillos had devised—with Cassie. Sitting around the table, part of the family, part of her life. It was all I could do not to rip off the shirt and burn it.

“You fucking her yet?”

I was so caught up in envying Eli and then hating him for making me envy him that I missed his question the first time. It wasn't until he said it again that my brain fired off the appropriate signals to my jaw, which, if I'd been a cartoon character, would have hit the floor with an audible thunk.