Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [6]
2. After paying a $25 entry fee, bettors are asked to predict which of the ten couples will last the longest, thereby winning the title The Couple That Outlasted All Others and Showed the Haters Who Said That High School Relationships Don't Last.
3. Daters cannot bet on themselves. (A rule designed to prevent Daters who have grown to detest their boyfriend/girlfriend from sticking it out just for the cash.) However, any mercenary Dater doubtful of the strength of his/her own relationship can pay a $25 fee to bet on another couple's union outlasting his/hers.
4. Daters in the Breakup Pool are asked to operate on the Honor System, by which it is the Dater's responsibility to report any breakups or hookups with anyone other than the HSB. (Second-person eyewitness testimony will also suffice.) For the purposes of the Breakup Pool, the term “hookup” refers to activities including, but not limited to, kissing, oral and manual stimulation, intercourse, and any other physical activity that is generally considered to be more than platonic.
5. If only one bettor puts money on the last couple standing, he/she wins it all. Should more than one bettor choose correctly, they split the take. In both cases, The Couple That Outlasted All Others and Showed the Haters Who Said That High School Relationships Don't Last doesn't win any money, but proudly wears said title.
6. If no one bets on The Couple That Outlasted All Others and Showed the Haters Who Said That High School Relationships Don't Last, the winning Dater keeps all the cash, but only when his/her relationship makes it to the end of the 2002–2003 school year. (Otherwise, all bettors get their money back.) Likewise, if there is more than one Dater still in the running at the end of the spring semester, the money is split evenly among the remaining couples. (These rules seemingly contradict Rules #3 and #5, but it is widely accepted that any Dater desperate enough to stick with a detested girlfriend/boyfriend an entire year deserves a piece of the prize.)
Once the rules were established, F-Unit created odds using ancillary data, such as geographical distance between Dater and HSB and length of the relationship before separation. (They wanted to include other variables that could help determine the probability that one would be led astray, but “Hotness” and “Horniness” were too difficult to quantify.) The odds wouldn't affect the payout but were devised merely to enhance the gaming experience.
Marcus was my first love and my first sex partner. I was his first love and his forty-somethingth sex partner. We were together only two weeks before he left for California. I have done one tab of ecstasy and attend one of the most acclaimed universities in the world. He has smoked enough pot to be put in the High Times Hall of Fame and is attending Gakkai College, an unaccredited Buddhist school at which it is possible to major in Chanting and Purification. He was best friends with my best friend Hope's brother, Heath, whose heroin overdose was the tragic catalyst for her parents' sudden defection to Tennessee on the eve of Y2K. Our convoluted courtship was rife with his contradictions: He made out with his girlfriend but kept his eyes on me as I passed them in the hallway. He wrote seductive poetry but claimed he didn't want to sleep with me. He acted as Cyrano for his best friend, Len, telling him exactly what he should do and say to win me over, but shed a single tear when I obliged. He confessed that I was the woman who changed his life but chose to go as far away from me as he possibly could within the continental United States.
No wonder our odds were a hundred to one.
Yet, despite the promise of a full payout, no one bet on us. I thought they were all suckers. I was certain we would stay together. Marcus and I had been through so much that our lasting union seemed like the only logical reason for it all.
I wasn't tempted to stray. I mean, there were a few guys at Columbia who were the geek cute kind of guy I go for. But—oh!—those bright-eyed, death-cab cuties, I didn't even