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When I refused to answer, he must’ve turned to her. I’m not too sure because obviously I wasn’t looking. But when I glanced askance at her, she’d craned her head around. Her eyes grew huge and mortified as if she’d been caught checking him out.

“Hey, does she have a name?” he asked.

I’ll love Bridge forever for her answer.

Tilting up her chin a notch, she flung a piece of hair over her shoulder and announced, “Why, yes, she does. Thanks for asking.” With that, she hooked her arm through mine and swept us into a gap growing in the crowd.

Number forty-two didn’t follow. I’m not sure if that relieved me or depressed me. In any case, I didn’t see him anymore that night. And I knew I wouldn’t see him again until I transferred to Southeast.

But the countdown had definitely begun. I only had three weeks left until I started a new life.

Chapter 3

“You know what I’m sick of?”

“What’s that?” I asked, the only one to answer Bridget since both Adam and Schy were busy coloring.

The nerd herd decided to throw me a going-away party the Saturday before my first day at Southeast. So there we were, seated at a table for four in Garfield’s Restaurant, waiting for our meals to arrive when Bridget decided to start a conversation about—

“Sex.”

Adam and Schy paused and looked up in unison like the twins they were, matching expressions of confusion and surprise flickering across their faces. Bridget’s answer threw me off guard too, but after knowing her since Kindergarten, I’d grown used to her out-of-the-blue and totally bizarre topics.

Casually, I leaned forward and sucked Dr. Pepper through my straw. After a healthy-sized swallow, I dryly answered, “I wasn’t aware you’d had any experience with sex to grow sick of it yet.”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then what the heck are you talking about?” Schy demanded.

“I’m doing research on teen movies for an English paper.”

Adam, Schy, and I groaned.

Pausing, Bridget glanced at us. “What?”

“I hate it when you do research for a class project,” Schy muttered.

Schy was into art. Drawing, painting, water coloring, doodling. Before beginning school, she’d gone by her full given name, Shi Ann. But by first grade, she’d shortened it to Shi. By fifth, however, she’d unofficially changed the spelling to Schy, thinking that would give her more pizzazz, when honestly it only made everyone call her Sky instead of Shi. I had a feeling she’d revert to Shi Ann before finishing high school just to keep up the change. But that was just an educated guess. For all I knew, she’d want to go by Ann next.

“Remember when you wrote that paper on George Washington?” Adam said. “We had to hear about the Revolutionary War for three weeks straight.” Groaning, he went back to coloring a drum set on the white paper tablecloth.

He was the musician of the group, always writing songs and singing to us. I can still remember when he’d saved up enough money to buy his first guitar. Thank goodness, he’d actually learned how to play. We girls probably would’ve strangled him long ago as much as he fiddled with the thing. But since he could carry a decent tune, it was kind of cool to get to listen to him so often.

“Just think about it,” Bridget went on, oblivious to our cringing. “Almost every teen movie geared toward the male gender throughout movie-making history is about one thing: trying to find a girl to sleep with him. There’s Porky’s, Dazed and Confused, American Pie, American Graffiti—”

“Superbad,” I suggested helpfully.

Someone—I couldn’t tell if it was Adam or Schy—kicked me under the table. “Don’t egg her on,” Schy muttered out the side of her mouth.

But Bridget was already pointing at me and nodding. “Superbad,” she agreed. “Though that movie focuses more on Seth and Evan’s friendship…and trying to get beer.” Pausing, she looked thoughtful for a moment, tilting her head ever so slightly to the left. “You know, underage drinking is also prevalent in most of the movies I named.” She gasped. “Maybe there’s something to that.”

Schy slapped her hand to her forehead. “Dear Lord, save us.”

“Except that would be a good topic for another research paper. So, I won’t go there just yet.”

“Thank you,” Schy whispered, lifting her appreciative gaze toward Heaven.

I grinned and sat back in the booth, watching my three friends. Adam kept his head lowered, coloring furiously with the crayons the waitress had provided, acting as if he couldn’t hear a word of the discussion. And Schy groaned as Bridget raged on about premarital, teenage relationships.