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Bridget clapped her hands and jumped in the air.

"You like him!"

"I like him as a friend."

"No," she said. "You like him like him."

"No I don’t!"

"Then why are you acting like a total spaz?"

Why was I acting like a total spaz? Why? I knew better than this.

"There’s just something weird between Marcus and me," I said. "Since last year, there’s been this … energy between us."

"Sexual energy."

"Bridget! Stop it!"

"I’m just trying to help," she said, twirling her ponytail around her finger. "Like, what kind of energy?"

"I don’t know," I said. "Once we acknowledged each other’s existence last year, he started popping up all over the place. He was always around, causing controversy."

She put her ponytail in her mouth for a few seconds, deep in thought.

"I think the biting thing is maybe just another way to keep me guessing. It’s all part of his game."

Bridget kept on sucking on the end of her ponytail. I wanted to tell her more about Marcus and me. More than was necessary. Just enough to make it real and get it all out of my system.

"He slipped a note in my back pocket once," I said. "He had it all folded up origami-style, like a mouth. But I lost it before I got to read it. And when I asked him about it, he wouldn’t tell me what it said …"

Bridget dropped her ponytail.

"It was shaped like what?"

"It was folded up, so it opened and closed, you know, like a mouth or something."

"You’re kidding, right?"

"Uh, no." I didn’t understand why Bridget was so hung up on the shape of the note when there were so many other details that needed to be analyzed to death.

She leapt off the bed, bounded over to her dresser, and opened the top drawer. She pulled out a box with cherubs and hearts on it. She rifled through some papers before pulling out … the origami mouth I was just talking about.

I almost peed all over Bridget’s comforter—which wasn’t living up to its name.

"Is this it?"

I fell backward on the bed and slammed my skull against her headboard. She took that as a yes.

Bridget sat down next to me and bounced up and down on the bed. "I can’t believe it!" she squealed. "I can’t believe this is for you! I can’t believe that it’s from Marcus! I thought I’d like, never find out who it was to or from!"

I started coming to. "How did you get it to begin with?"

"I found it on the locker-room floor last spring."

The locker-room floor! It fell out of my pocket as I changed for gym! I should have known!

"I kept it because it’s only, like, the sexiest thing I’ve ever read!" she squeaked.

"Sexy?"

"Sexy."

"Really?"

"Really. It was better than anything Burke wrote me in four years. I wished it were for me," she said, heaving a sigh and hugging a lacy pillow to her chest. "That’s why I held on to it. As proof that someone out there thought sexy meant more than sleeping on the wet spot so I wouldn’t have to."

Huh?

"Sleeping on the wet spot? What? But you and Burke never …"

Bridget dropped the pillow.

"Oh, Jess," she said with a touch of condescension.

"Oh, Jess, what?"

"I thought you of all people would’ve seen through that."

"Seen through what?" I asked, not liking the sound of where this was going.

"I never said I was a virgin," she said, breathily.

And that’s when I discovered that Bridget might have an acting career ahead of her after all.

"I did it with Burke in like, ninth grade. I just made it sound like I was still a virgin to get Manda, Sara, and Hy off my fat ass about the statutory rape stuff."

"But you said …"

"I think I said, ’Who says Burke and I are having sex?’ which like, implied that we weren’t," she said. "And when I said it, we’d stopped having sex, so it wasn’t a lie."

What did I tell you? Bridget does not lie. She really doesn’t.

"Why did you stop?"

"I just wasn’t into it anymore," she said.

"Why?"

She took a second to come up with the perfect answer.

"It got like, old. By the time I left for L.A., I was like, a born-again virgin. So in a way, I don’t blame Burke for screwing Manda. He was really horny."

"That doesn