"Oh my God! Look at what she did!" The girl whose shoes I just ruined wailed.

I blinked a few times to clear my vision, and then wiped my mouth on the sleeve of what I realized a split-second later was Matt's jacket. I took it off and handed it back to its owner, who took it with some reluctance and held it at arm's length. "Sorry," I told him.

"You are not! You did this on purpose!" The girl answered for Matt, stamped her foot, and then made a face.

I scoffed. "Why would I?"

"How should I know? But how else would you explain only getting sick on meee?"

"You're the only one dumb enough to get in my way."

A shocked expression crossed her face. She probably wasn't used to being spoken to in that manner, especially by someone so common. "Who is this person, anyway? Why isn't anyone throwing her out?"

Throw me out? Of what? This wasn't one of their private, man-made, paradise islands. These Adamson brats thought they owned everything. Their sense of entitlement made me want to throw up on her again.

"She's with us," Seth replied.

"Whatever," the girl said, and then, more sweetly, added, "take me home, babe."

This would've been the very last words she'd ever utter if I hadn't looked up then to see that she had left Seth's side and was in fact talking to her original boyfriend.

The guy sneered. "No way you're getting in my Ferrari in those shoes." He turned to Seth. "You guys suck ass and by this time tomorrow, the whole world's gonna know it."

With that parting shot, he stormed off. His girlfriend trailed after him, alternating between cooing sweetly and calling him babe, and going ew ew ew every step she took—which gave me great satisfaction. When they were gone, an older guy approached our group. He had nice features but had too much of a sleazebag-thing going to be good-looking. This was Shane, Off-Kilter's handler.

"Well done, lads," he said in a weird accent. "So glad you settled that in a peaceful manner. These folks could make things real unpleasant for us if things had gotten out of hand. The important thing is, everyone's fine."

"Excuse me?" I pointed at Seth, whose bottom lip had some blood pooling at one corner and was starting to swell. "Does that seem fine to you?"

"Who's this, then?" Shane asked.

"I swear to God, if just one more person asks me that . . ." My eyes watered and I wiped my nose with my hand. I already felt bad enough without being constantly reminded about what a nobody I was.

Seth touched my shoulder lightly. "You okay, Adrian?" I shrugged him off and he turned to Matt.

"How'd this happen? What did you do?" Seth asked, sounding angry.

"Don't look at me, man," Matt said. "Maybe it was you. Seriously, making a move on someone else's girl is pretty sickening—"

"Look who's talking—"

"He didn't do anything," Tristan said, his pleasant tone indicating that he was, as usual, oblivious to the tension around him. "That chick pretty much attacked all our faces."

I raised an eyebrow. "Yeah right. Even you?"

"Can you blame her?" Tristan grinned. "I mean, look at me."

"Are you trying to make me sick again?"

"Hey that's on you. It's not my fault you weren't careful and didn't pace yourself. It's an Adamson party . . . you should've known they wouldn't be serving the watered down crap you're all used to."

"Like I'm really gonna take beer advice from the one guy here with the best chance of actually dying from it."

"Oh snap," Beth murmured. Name any alcoholic drink and Tristan was guaranteed to be deathly allergic to at least five things in it. Because of this, he had never touched a drink in his life. So yeah, low blow.

Tristan whistled. "Dang, Adrian, you're mean when you're drunk," he said. I flipped him off, which just made him laugh. "I rest my case."

"It's true. She showed all three of us some appreciation," Ethan said, coming to his two friends' rescue. "But she really put her back to it when it was his turn." He glanced at Seth when he said this and chuckled, seeming almost impressed by this particular detail—and this was Ethan, so that's saying a lot. "Unfortunately, her boyfriend arrived and saw them."

"Did you explain it to him?" Shane asked.

"That guy was nuts. What if he got mad at her instead of me?" Seth replied.

"Why do you care?" Matt asked.

"She's a fan."

"You're so sweet. I guess that's why you get the special tonsil greetings, huh?"

Seth's expression darkened. "I don't have to explain shit to you. Come on, Adrian, let's both go clean up."

I felt disgusting. Probably looked that way, too, and didn't think twice about accepting that invitation. "BRB," I said, and followed Seth.

The girls called out after us, telling him where we were parked in case I needed his help finding it later. Ironic.

When I asked Seth where we were going, he said they had clean towels and other stuff we could use in their van but it was parked a little far and asked me if I was okay to walk.

"Are you?" I asked back. "Or are the cartoon birds flying around your head making it too difficult?" A split-second after I taunted him, I tripped on a rock.

It just wasn't my day.

Seth caught and stopped me from falling flat on my face. "Didn't feel a thing. That guy's a wuss," he said, and then offered to give me a piggyback ride the rest of the way.

"No thanks. I really don't want any more accidents tonight."

"Challenge accepted. Get on." He crouched to make it easier for me. When I wouldn't budge he looked me squarely in the eye. "Your choice, Adrian. On my back or in my arms."

That helped me make my mind up quickly. I went with the first option. "Fine, but I'm warning you . . . if I go down I'm taking you with me."

"C'mon, we've done this a million times when we were kids. Have I once ever dropped you? No. Not even when I wanted to because you were making me carry you against my will. So I don't know what you're so worried about now."

I laughed at the memory. "Well, things are different now. For one thing, you used to be twice my size back then—"

"I was not!" Seth huffed. I stifled a laugh. It was the exact reaction I'd expected. For a moment, I thought he was finally gonna drop me (and wouldn't have blamed him if he had.)

"I just meant I was a lot smaller before," I said. He made a sound like he didn't buy my self-correction, and I cracked up. "And I like to think I've grown quite a bit."

"Believe me, I noticed."

"Huh?" My pulse began to quicken.

"You're a lot heavier than I remember."

My eyes widened. "How dare you? Let me down right now!" I wanted to jump right off but he had a firm grip on the back of my knees, which stopped me from doing so. "Jeez, of course that's gonna happen after how many years. And furthermore . . . I didn't even want to do this. You're the one who insisted!"

"I'm kidding," he said. This got me to stop squirming to get away, but it also made me call him an idiot.

Kidding or not, I couldn't let the remark go. I knew I wasn't some wisp of a thing like most of these Adamson girls and it never used to bother me before . . .

"Seriously, am I heavy?"

"Maybe a little, but I don't care."

That stung, but I stopped myself from getting all worked up again, in case he was still joking. We both had a sick sense of humor, after all.

Or maybe he didn't mean heavy physically, but in the sense that I was this sad, pathetic girl who was keeping him from hot girls who knew how to party.

Which, I just realized was a lot worse, and either way, I felt like a burden.

I flicked his ear and made a buzzer sound. "Wrong answer, jerk."

"Can dish it out but can't take it, huh?" He cracked up. It took a while before he got a hold of himself and could speak again. "Did you catch the show?"

"You guys crushed it." I said, getting excited. In all the chaos, I'd forgotten to congratulate him. "I wanted to throw my top onstage."

He tensed up and seemed to freeze in his tracks. And then, my own words reached my ears, and I had a similar reaction.

"Wait, what?" I exclaimed.

"Wait, what?" Seth said, almost at the same time. Then he laughed. "Very funny. I bet if you did throw anything, it'd be something more substantial than that—and you'd aim it straight for my head."

"Hah, you got me," I said, fake-laughing.

Seth helped me up the van's passenger seat, went in the back, and after a brief search, handed me a small towel that looked clean enough. I mumbled thanks, and cleaned myself up as well as I could with a dry towel. After that, he lifted the lid off a cooler that they kept in the back.

"You should eat something. We have crackers . . . and a couple juice boxes."

"Are we in kindergarten? Do you see a jungle gym anywhere around here?"

"A simple no would've been fine. Have some water, at least" He stepped out again and stood beside me, twisting the cap off one of the two bottled waters he was holding and handed it to me, opened the other one for himself, and took a long drink. I did the same and immediately felt a million times better. The water was ice cold and I felt a bit dehydrated, so I wrapped the bottle in the towel and pressed it against the side of my face and closed my eyes, enjoying how it cooled my skin.

"Much better, thanks."

"Good."

There was rustling and some movement. When I opened my eyes, Seth was inspecting his injury, using the van's side mirror. A small first-aid kit was on the dashboard.

"Here, let me." I took the small blue box, set it on my lap and then leaned forward to take a closer look at the damage.

"What?" Seth asked. Maybe I'd been staring too long. The cut on his lip had already stopped bleeding, which was fast for that part of the body, but dried blood had stained the area a deep, rusty red and it looked kind of swollen. A huge part of me hated the sight of him like this, but some terrible part of me couldn't look away, found it pretty, even appealing.

How sick was that?

"Nothing. You're lucky that guy didn't break your nose."

I poured some of my water on the towel and dabbed at the blood that had caked up around the corners of his mouth. And then I disinfected my hands with the small bottle of rubbing alcohol included in the kit. Afterward, I got a tube of antibacterial ointment, squeezed a bit out on my index finger and dabbed at his cut. His breath caught when I touched him.

"Does that hurt?"

He shook his head. "No. Just, um, you're really good at this."

I laughed. "Well, I've had lot of practice, thanks to your skater phase that started in ninth grade."

He looked embarrassed. "I thought it'd impress girls."

"Not the way you did it." I laughed again. "And then after that, you gave parkour a shot, right?"

"Briefly. I never got the hang of it."

"But what a great three weeks, profit-wise, for the Neosporin company. There. Good as new." I finished up and reorganized the items in the first aid kit before handing it back to him, and then leaned back on the seat and closed my eyes again.

"What would I do without you?" he asked.

"Exactly, so no more keeping your parties a secret from us," I said, snorting, my eyes still closed.

"There's a mattress in the back if you want . . ." he said softly.

My eyes flew open. Heart racing, I sat up and looked straight at him. "Excuse me?"

"I said there's a—"

"I heard what you said! God! Does it even matter who winds up there at the end of the night anymore?"

Seth looked taken aback. "I just meant . . . you've had a long day."

"Yeah? And whose fault is that?" I said, full on yelling by this time. "Honestly, haven't you put me through enough without adding this . . . harassment on top of it?"

"I wanted you to be comfortable," Seth said, his tone also rising. "You were seconds away from snoring and drooling all over everything—"

"I was not!"

"And harassment?" He went on, as if I hadn't spoken at all, an outraged expression on his face. "What the fuck? I would never . . . "

"Never?" My jaw hit the ground, while my defenses went way up. Maybe I did overreact at the mattress comment. His explanation about that made some sense, at least. "Then what happened that night you went to New York, huh?" His eyes widened, which told me he knew what I was talking about, and I was relieved not to have to go into more detail just to jog his memory. I didn't need to feel more pathetic and desperate than I already did. "So don't act like I'm so repulsive to you all of a sudden, just because some skanky socialite made you feel like a big man for like, five minutes, okay?"

"It's not like that, Adrian." Seth's words were rushed at first, and then there was a pause. He seemed to be struggling for what to say next, and was blinking rapidly. "You heard what Ethan said, right? About what really happened?"

"Yes, and I'm thrilled for you. Now that you have plenty of willing victims lining up, maybe you'll leave me the hell alone." I made my voice cold and slumped sideways on the seat, with my back to him. "Go back to your party, Seth."

It was quiet for a while and I felt myself starting to drift off. I thought Seth had already left but he spoke again. "Tristan was wrong about the drinking. You're just always this mean."