THE "PARTY" starts in the late afternoon, around 4 p.m. I'm just happy that Nick and I get there as the sun is beginning to set, so I don't have to borrow one of Ruth's bathing suits. The last thing I wanted was to have to wear a skimpy bikini with Ruth and her bone-skinny friends.

Nick and his friends sit around the television and catch up on their soccer. Although the boys are all deliciously hot grunting and slapping each other on the backs with every goal, I get bored pretty quickly. Within fifteen minutes of arriving, I pick up some diet cokes, and I go outside to join the girls around the pool.

I bump into Chucky in the kitchen, where he's mixing up a batch of cocktails for his guests. He tells me the drinks are in the basement, but when I'm clueless about which if the many doors in his luxurious kitchen lead to the basement (as opposed to the indoor pool). In pity, he comes over to help me.

"It's good that you're here to keep Nick company," Chucky tells me as he switches the basement light on. "After his last breakup, he was acting all mopey. Having Ruth around here sure doesn't help at all."

"Nick and Ruth were an item?" I ask in shock. My blood runs cold, momentarily. That would explain why Ruth was so nice to me earlier; maybe she was trying to get under my skin and guilt me into breaking up with Nick. I can't imagine why else someone as cool as Ruth would want to be friends with me.

"No, no, God no," Chucky says with a laugh. "Everyone knows that Ruth is completely asexual. I keep forgetting you're the New Girl. No, everyone knows that Nick dated Ruth's twin sister — Jessica. She was like the female version of Ruth. Jessica had a nervous breakdown or something last summer. She shoved Nick off of a dock. I heard he hit his head on her dad's sailboat, and he nearly broke his jaw. She had to be hospitalized for a little while for depression. No one talks about her anymore. I think she's homeschooled now."

"What the heck?" I ask. "Are you serious?"

I can't believe this. Am I living in Jane Eyre? This is more drama than I know how to handle. Back where I went to school, people don't end up in mental hospitals. If they acted up, they were expelled, or they dropped out to work in retail.

"Jessica was under a lot of stress. I think she's had issues with her health since she was a kid. I heard she was always in and out of the ER for one infection or another. I don't know exactly what's wrong with her. The Brooks deserve their privacy, so we don't ask. Whatever it was, after last summer, she left school and started shutting everyone out."

"Oh, that's sad."

"Yeah, but don't worry. It doesn't concern you. Ruth agrees with the rest of us that Nick needs to move on."

Chucky pats me on the shoulder and gestures to the box of Diet Coke at the foot of the stairs.

"I don't know how girls drink that stuff," Chucky says and wrinkles his nose. I see his pectoral muscles twitch under his too-tight t-shirt as he glances from me to the coke. "I need real sugar. If I had to go on a diet, it would drive me insane."

~*~

I like writing about werewolves. If anyone asked me why the answer is you know how the story ends before it even begins. The Alpha always picks the main character no matter how lowly, how homely, how clumsy she appears at first. She is destined to be the Luna simply by virtue of being the Viewpoint Character. The Alpha may reject her, may torture her, might mistreat her — but in the end, in his darkest of hearts, he loves her. The book is just a quest to unearth that love under all the malice, hatred, and cruelty.

Unfortunately, if you go through life thinking you're the viewpoint character, people call you a narcissist. That's the problem with this love triangle between me, Nick, and Jessica. In my deepest of hearts, I suspect she probably deserves Nick more than I do. And Nick knows it too; that's why he only seemed to loosen up today when he brought me that quasi-caramel macchiato. He was comparing me to Jessica — poor tragic, perfectly absent Jessica.

As I sit there on a damp lawn chair beside the gorgeous infinity pool, I don't know if I'm the heroine or the villain.

Ruth waves at me from where she is lounging on a swan floaty. I notice that she's drinking a Sprite that's not a diet Sprite. It's bright green, as a Sprite should be. Just as well, because Ruth has a runway-ready body. So, she has a crazy twin sister, so what? Maybe Nick should be dating Ruth instead.

I still don't know why Nick picked me to accompany him to the Hamptons that weekend.

But did Nick pick me?

He hasn't made a single move to get in my pants.

And I've been okay with it.

I like being friends if that's all that we are. Nick's a sweetie pie, and he's eons better than Mr. Class-Cutting-Street-Fighting Jake the half-baked gangster. Nick even let me play Billie Eilish on the car stereo on the way over because she's empowering to women of all body types. Nick is a saint compared to the kind of boys I usually hang out with.

"Is it okay if I friend you guys on Facebook?" I yell at Ruth from the other side of the pool. She gives me a big thumbs up, so I click the blue button to friend her. The other girls yell out "sure" in a lackluster way, but I don't care about them. I scroll through Ruth's photos until I find one of Jessica.

Yeah, Chucky's right. She's really pretty.

Jessica had big pouty lips like Kyle Jenner and waist-long blond hair. In all the pictures, it is long and slick like an eel. Although I thought Ruth's hair was gorgeous in the sun outside the Hamptons Coffee Shop, it is drab and messy compared to her sister's. In truth, Ruth's hair looks like she had tried to trim it with safety scissors. The only redeeming factor was that Ruth had the poise of Audrey Hepburn, so she made the haircut look like it had been crafted in the finest salons of Manhattan. I bet the ladies of Warren Tricomi would ask her for styling tips if they could see her.

Jessica might have been the bombshell, but Ruth was a natural beauty. I don't know how Nick could possibly pick either of us over Ruth.

I guess I am just jealous. Ruth makes it all look so easy, this entire being rich and smart thing. Everyone says she's going to Harvard. I guess once she does, she'll finally be among the demigods where she belongs.

"So, Cor, what do you do for fun?" Ruth asks me as her floaty comes close to my side of the pool. "Other than study?"

I laugh. "Nothing worth talking about," I reply. "What do you guys do?"

"Nothing. Just typical NYC stuff. See shows, go to the museum; sometimes we do nerdy stuff like Comic-Con."

"Oh? Comic-Con?"

"Yup, we did that last year when Anne dated a kid from Horace Mann whose comic got picked up by Marvel."

"Wow," I gasp. "That's amazing."

"He nearly OD'd on Adderall," Anne said without glancing from her copy of Vanity Fair. "Also, his dick smelled funny, like bad Feta cheese. We can never go back to Comic-Con now."

"Good riddance," Margaret adds as she hands me a bottle of sunscreen. "You're so pale; I bet you burn easily."

I take the bottle, but I don't use it. I'm scared that if I start doing pool-stuff like putting on sunscreen, Ruth will insist I join her in the water. I can't believe Margaret has a thigh gap the size of the Grand Canyon. She doesn't even need to learn special Instagram poses to look skinny. Her entire life comes with a natural Instagram filter.

"It's nothing compared to what Jessica did," Anne says as she turns a page in her magazine. "Do you remember in Middle School when we went to Monaco and Jessica convinced a pack of Italian boys that she was a Rockefeller? They would not stop following us around and inviting us onboard their stupid yacht in Hercules Harbor."

"She did that?" Ruth asks, indifferently as though she didn't care to know the answer. She uses one of her pointed toes to push herself away from our side of the pool.

"Poor Jessica, she was always looking for romance and excitement," Margaret whispers to me as Ruth floats out of earshot."I don't she ever actually found it. Nothing was ever good enough for her. Nothing that can be found on this planet, anyway."

Anne snorts. "So, what's going on between you and Nick, Cori?"

"N-nothing," I reply and pretend to check my phone even though I had promised myself not to.

"Any plans for this weekend?"

"I don't know . . .I mean — I hope so."

"You're crazy about him, aren't you?" Anne insists and finally puts down her magazine. "Think he's going to ask you to the winter dance?"

"Do you think he's going to ask me? Did he say anything?"

"No, but I think he's going to," Anne says with a mischievous grin. "We can all get ready together. We're going to have so much fun."

"Would Ruth be okay with that?" I ask as I see Ruth floating away into the sunset.

"Ruth loves you," Margaret insists. "We all love you. Four is a magic number."

Yeah, the four of us. Now that Jessica is out of the picture, I'm number four. I smile back and turn my phone off again. Jessica's face burns into my memory even though I can't see it anymore. She wears such beautiful, perfectly red lipstick. It reminds me of the bottom of Louboutin Heels. I can envision myself walking along with my new friends wearing that exact shade of lipstick.

Maybe, just maybe, I am the viewpoint character. Maybe, I am the Queen Bee. Jessica is gone, and she left a vacancy that this poor-girl-from-Queens would like nothing more than to whole-heartily fill.

That evening, as I get into Nick's car to drive back to his house, I decide that I can't wait any longer. I need to know if this thing between Nick and me is for real. God, Nick is such a goody-two-shoes. He didn't even drink at the party. There goes my plan to inhale some alcohol fumes off his breath to give myself some much-needed courage.

As Nick reaches for the car keys, I lean over and press my lips against his.