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Ben groaned and muttered something under his breath that sounded like “geeks,” but I ignored him.

“Are you going to Cassie's party?” Natalie asked.

“Totally.”

“What's the deal with the bartering thing?”

I'd already made Coop explain it to me a thousand times. I mean, I got the concept but didn't see the point. “You bring stuff to the party,” I said. “And you trade it for other stuff.”

“Like what?” Natalie stood holding that ketchup bottle with both hands. I was afraid she was going to squeeze a tomato geyser into the air.

Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out a little plastic bag with a dozen white pills in it. “Once people get shit-faced, I'm going to make a mint with these. People will trade me anything for them.”

“Drugs? Really?” Natalie did not sound impressed.

“They're baby aspirin.” Ben put his finger to his lips and gave the girl one of his patented winks.

“I still don't get why,” I said.

“For fun, dumbass. What'd you bring?” Coop asked Natalie.

She looked over at her table, which was packed with girls I knew by sight but not by name. They were the minor-league hitters. Not A- or B-list girls, but not part of the moo crew either. “I stole some tiny liquor bottles from my dad, and I have a guitar pick signed by Damian Crowley of Noodle Revolution.”

Ben faked puking into my empty basket of fries. He hates NR. Hates. So much that he started an anti-fan club.

“You can totally trade up with that,” Coop said, ignoring Ben's continued mock vomiting. “It's like that Canadian guy who started with a red paper clip and bartered his way up to a house. You could trade your guitar pick for a hot prom date if you played it right.”

“Fat chance,” Ben muttered, but we all ignored him.

Coop was giving me a look, this mental nudge that he seemed to think I understood. For the record, I did not. But, apparently, I wasn't the only person at the table who didn't get Coop, because Natalie was looking at him like he'd been speaking Parseltongue.

“Maybe I'll see you at the party, Simon,” Natalie said, stuttering her way through the sentence, her earlier store of bravery seemingly all used up. “Thanks for the ketchup.”

“Anytime,” I said. “You need ketchup, I'm your man. Call me Mr. Ketchup. Or, you know, not.”

I watched Natalie walk back to her table, where she said something to her friends that made them giggle and squeal.

An idea struck me. “Coop, you're a genius.”

“Tell me more,” Coop said.

“That thing you said about bartering a paper clip for a house. Was that true?”

“Indeed.” Coop grinned at me, and then at Natalie. “You can do anything you want tonight, Simon.”

“Then I'm going to barter for a kiss from Cassie. I'm going to tell her that I love her.”

Coop smacked his head on the table. Over and over. Ben finally had to put his palm between Coop's forehead and the wood veneer. “It's okay, baby,” Ben said. “Simon's a little slow.”

“What?” I asked. “It's a great idea. I'll barter for a kiss, and then, when she's had a taste of Simon Cross, I'll tell her I love her. She'll be mine.”

“You don't have anything she wants,” Ben said. “She's used to eating prime rib. You're beef jerky. You're not even beef jerky. You're that off-brand meat chew that you get at gas stations.”

I was feeling abused and didn't try to hide it. “You don't have to be an asshole about it.”

“There are other girls,” Coop said. He was looking exasperated, not that I blamed him. When it comes to Cassie, I'm a bit OCD.

“Like who?” I asked.

Ben pointed at Natalie. “Her,” he said. “She was practically jerking you off under the table, dude. How are you so stupid?”

“She needed ketchup,” I said.

Coop and Ben started talking over each other, and I tuned them out. Had I really become so blind that I'd missed Natalie flirting with me? She'd been cute and nervous, sure, but she hadn't been flirting with me, right?

Whatever. I couldn't think about flirting with someone else. I'm not making excuses for my behavior, but if you've never been in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, then you don't know. It's like, for one second of her attention, you'd cut off your fingers, you'd hold your breath until you turned blue and passed out, you'd run to the ends of the fucking Earth and bring her back anything she asked for. Girls like Cassie aren't just one in a million. They're once in a lifetime.

But I'd had my chance. Had it and blown it.

Ben and Coop expected me to move on from that, but being near Cassandra Castillo was like living. Everything else was death.

“All I'm asking is that you try to go out with other girls,” Coop said. “You don't have to fall in love, but maybe you'll see that Cassie isn't as perfect as you think.”

Ben rested his arm along the top of the booth, absently rubbing the back of Coop's neck. “She's not all that great,” Ben said. “The girl has got issues. I could tell you stories—”

“Don't,” I said. Ben has a casual relationship with the truth when it comes to stories. It's not that he lies per se, but he doesn't see the problem with embellishing details or leaving them out altogether if it suits the tale he's telling.
Ben is a master storyteller, but if I want the truth, I go to anyone else.

“I just want what you guys have,” I mumbled.

Coop looked at me with shelter dog eyes. The last thing I wanted was his pity.

“Simon, I'm never going to be more honest with you than I am right now.” Coop sat up straight and folded his hands on the table the same way my mom had when she'd tried to tell me where babies come from. For two years after that I'd believed I would impregnate every girl I smiled at. It had made first and second grades terrifying. “If you want to go to this party tonight and try to barter your way to a kiss with Cassie, I'll help you.”

“Whoa,” Ben said. “We have our own plans tonight.
You know.
”

“We'll have time for both.”

“I think I'm going to hurl,” I said, frantically trying not to imagine what Ben and Coop were going to be doing in a dark room at the party.

“As I was saying,” Coop said. “If you want to make some final play for Cassie, then I'm Team Simon.” Coop paused and took a deep, meaningful breath. “But there's a girl over there who might actually like you.” Coop nodded in Natalie's direction. She and her friends were still giggling. When I glanced at her this time, she waved before looking away. I waved back. “A girl who might like you for who you are. A girl who might even be willing to kiss you, though the thought makes me want to regurgitate my veggie burger.”

Ben was nodding along with everything Coop said. “And ketchup girl's got small hands, so that's a bonus.”

“How exactly?”

“They'll make even your teeny weenie look like a foot-long.”

Coop punched Ben's arm. “I'm trying to be serious.”

“So am I. Did you see those tiny little baby hands?” The boys started bickering, and I zoned out again.

It wasn't like the thought of kissing other girls had never occurred to me. I'd gone out on some dates but they'd all been catastrophes. There was the Aja Bourne incident of which we never, ever spoke. Then there was Naomi Cutter, a ballet dancer who was great except for the fact that she'd refused to let me eat in front of her. We dated for three weeks and I lost eight pounds. Before that was Kirsten Gallows, who turned out to be as obsessed with Cassie as I was. There were other girls, but it always came back to Cassie.

Look what she'd done to Eli Fucking Horowitz. The guy had everything. He had more play in his pinkie than I had in my entire body. It would take fifty of me to equal one of him. Yet there he was. Broken. Defeated. A gutted man sitting alone, probably trying to decide whether or not he could stomach going to the party.

If I did manage to find something Cassie wanted, barter for it, kiss Cassie, and finally tell her that I loved her, I'd probably end up like that one day. Like Eli.

“If it makes you feel better,” Ben said. “Cassie's got a raging case of herpes.”

“You totally just made that up,” I said. “And how would that possibly make me feel better?”

Coop checked the time on his phone. He was probably getting antsy to leave. He likes to get to parties early so he can score a good parking spot.

“You've got to make a choice,” Coop said.

I looked at Natalie. She was pretty and sincere. She had a killer smile, and she really did seem to like me, lame jokes and all. When she leaned forward, I could see the line of her panties sticking out of her jean shorts, and her slender shoulders outlined under her floral cami. I didn't know much about her except that she was terrible at geometry. And I suppose that was the exciting part. I didn't know anything about her and she didn't know anything about me. We were enigmas to each other. She could turn out to be everything I wanted her to be.

Only she'd never be Cassie.

Then again, Cassie might never be Cassie. I might have spent years in love with an illusion.

I didn't know. I didn't know anything except that I had two choices. I could go to the party with Coop and Ben and try to barter a kiss from Cassie. I could try to make my dreams come true. Or I could embrace reality and move on with my life.

Cassie isn't the only girl on planet Earth. Right?

Ben patted my cheek. It still smarted from where he'd slapped me earlier. “What's it going to be, dude? You going
to keep pining for Princess Cassie, or are you going to talk to the perfectly nice, heterosexual girl who might not laugh at you if she saw you naked with the lights on?”

I looked over at Natalie. I looked at Eli. I looked at my two possible futures. “Fuck it. I think . . .”

“. . . We should go to the party.”

Coop and Ben were disappointed. It was written all over their faces. Especially Coop's. But he didn't get it. Natalie's laugh would never be Cassie's laugh. Her smile, her mouth, her eyes, and pale long legs. The sum of those parts would never equal Cassie. And while part of me wanted to forget about Cassandra Castillo and move on with my life, the other part of me knew that, until I told Cassie how I felt, until I tried to barter for one goddamn kiss, I'd never be able to let her go.

As we funneled out of Gobbler's with some of the other kids who'd decided to take off, Natalie waved at me.

I didn't wave back.

Coop pulled his mom's Kia up to Cassie's house at 9 p.m. on the nose. We didn't talk the whole drive. I could tell by the way he was fidgeting that Coop was composing a speech in his head, working up the nerve to say something to me that he thought I wouldn't want to hear.

“Whatever you're going to preach at me,” I said as Coop put
the car in park, “I've probably already said it to myself a thousand times. I'm not good enough, Cassie's too pretty, I've got a better chance of sprouting an extra pair of arms than I do of getting her to kiss me. Trust me. If you've thought it, so have I.”

And I had. I'd thought it all. I knew all the variables and still didn't care. There was something different about tonight. Something in the air that made me feel like anything was possible.

I was going to turn a paper clip into a kiss, and no one, not even Fate, was going to stop me.

“You're still determined to do this?” Coop asked. “Because I'm sure Natalie will be here soon and . . .” Coop leaned over the back of his seat, wrapping his arms around the headrest.

I nodded. “It's all ending, guys. High school, I mean. Only prom's left, then graduation. You guys are gonna take off to Boston, while I'll be stuck at the world's lamest community college. I'm not sure where's Cassie's going, but I'm sure it's somewhere far.”

“Yale,” Ben said. “With Eli.”

“Well, that'll be awkward,” I said. “Anyway, my point is that regrets are built out of the shit we don't do. And if I don't do this now, I'll regret it for the rest of my pathetic life.” I grabbed the backpack that held all the things I'd brought to barter and headed up the lawn toward Cassie's front door.

Other kids were beginning to show up, attracted like flies to the intoxicating lure of a parentless house. Music rocked the walls, and I knew without needing to see it that Leo Cartenzo had already set up his turntables in a dark corner and was playing
the sound track to our lives. There was a cluster of girls by the garage, performing last-minute makeup checks.

“Wait up,” Ben said. He and Coop caught up to me by the front door. The flowerpots, which had been filled with a crayon box's worth of color the only other time I'd been here, were conspicuously absent. That night, Cassie had gone on and on about how much her mother loved flowers. I swept the memory into a dark corner. Tonight I was going to make new memories.

“I'm doing this,” I said.

Ben said, “Yeah, whatever. I just wanted to warn you that Cassie's been acting a little off lately.”

Coop elbowed Ben in the ribs. “Tell him.”

“I was about to,” Ben said, his voice layered with irritation. I knew Ben. He wasn't irritated with Coop but with me. Ben wasn't the type to interfere in other people's drama. He liked the rumor mill, true, but he would have happily let me run off and make an ass of myself, and his sum total involvement would have been recording my spectacular failure and posting it to Facebook before the end of the party. That he was trying to warn me off was owed solely to Coop's influence.

“Something's up with Cass.” Ben paused. Whether it was for dramatic effect or what, I wasn't biting, so he went on. “This whole idea to break up with Eli and throw a party, it came out of nowhere. It's like she went to sleep as Cassie and woke up as a totally different girl.”