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I shifted in my seat.

His eyes darted toward my parents, then returned to me.

“If I were going to college, however, I would definitely consider going to school in New York City.”

WHAT WAS HE DOING??????? AND HOW DID HE EVEN KNOW TO DO WHAT HE WAS DOING????????

“May I talk to you for a moment?” I asked, through clenched teeth.

“It was nice seeing you again, Mr. and Mrs. Darling,” he said politely while shaking my dad’s hand.

He pulled me over to a quiet corner.

“Len,” he said, before I even asked. “I know about Columbia through Len.”

Len had become such a nonentity in my life that I had forgotten there was ever a time I tried to confide in him simply because he was my boyfriend.

“Why do you always have to step in where you’re not wanted?” I asked. “This whole Columbia thing is very complicated already and I don’t need you making it a bigger clusterfuck than it already is.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it shut.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, turning away from me. “Nothing at all.”

Ha! If there’s one thing I’ve figured out, it’s that when it comes to Marcus and me, nothing is “nothing at all.”

the twenty-first

Scotty burst into the library after school today, all muscle and bluster.

“Yo! Jess! How come you haven’t returned my phone calls?”

“Scotty, I’m trying to help Taryn pass her geometry test,” I said.

Scotty could hardly waste his precious time by so much as glancing in Taryn’s direction. She slunk lower into her seat and never took her Frisbee eyes off the parallelogram on the paper.

“So are we going to the prom or what?” he asked, his chin dimple twitching.

Ever since Sara informed me that Scotty was going to ask me to the prom, I had been artfully dodging him. I steered clear of the weight room and the cafeteria and hid in all the places I thought he didn’t know even existed, namely the computer lab and the library.

“Oh, when you ask me like that, how can I resist?”

“Fuck yeah!” he said, not getting that I was being sarcastic.

“Fuck no,” I replied.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, but I won’t go to the prom with you.”

As soon as I said it, I could feel mini-versions of my mother and my sister sitting on my shoulders, like in cartoons.

“YOU SAID NO TO THE MOST POPULAR, BEST-LOOKING CLASS ATHLETE?” screamed my mom.

“WHAT BETTER WAY TO GET OVER LEN?” screamed my sister, whose excess baby fat weighed heavy on my left shoulder.

Then, in unison: “YOU DESERVE TO BE UNHAPPY!”

Maybe I do. I just know that I would’ve been far unhappier if I had said yes.

“What happened to you, Scotty?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, to you, what happened to the nice guy you used to be?”

“Gimme a fucking break, Jess,” he said as he walked out.

He didn’t even give me a chance to tell him that I would’ve gone to the prom with the old Scotty, the one who was sweet, a little goofy, and occasionally gross in a boogers-and-fart kind of way. The one who would have been Just Another Jock at our school, but who had kept his integrity in tact. But Scotty had made a choice two years ago. When he was crowned His Royal Guyness for the Class of 2002, all the testosterone necessary for that title left little room for sweetness or sincerity.

I think this is very sad.

But is it any worse than the roles any of us play to get through the day? I mean, I’ve been trying to be as vibrant and daring as Jenn Sweet for the past three months, which is just as loserish and pathetic as a pathetic loser can get.

“All you have to do is be yourself,” Mac told me last summer. But anyone who has been to high school knows that being yourself is probably the most impossible thing in the world.

the twenty-eighth

This day ended up nothing like I thought it would, which is pretty much par for the course for me.

“Well, aren’t you up with the sunshine this morning,” my mom sang as I walked into the kitchen.

“I didn’t think we’d see you until noon,” my sister chimed in. Bethany is a huge and permanent fixture in our household as her due date draws near. This has made it much easier for