Chapter One

Now before you rush to judgment and say I should have handled it differently, ask yourself what would you have done had you been in my shoes? I mean, here I was trying to hook up with a guy who was my major crush, staying on top of my schoolwork, being a good daughter, and having to deal with what looked to be a major, possibly life-threatening problem involving a strange new friend.

They don't cover this stuff in the "Healthy Living" classes I snooze through. Trust me, I've read the syllabus.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, which is something my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Bernardino, says is a major problem for me. She's always circling the beginning of my reports with a fat red marker (one of these days, I'm going to buy her a slim-point gel pen in a nice muted purple), and writing things like, "Isn't this more appropriate at the end?" or "Why are you starting here?"

So, pardon me for my impatience with beginnings. I'm still learning.

The whole mess started one Saturday morning in October.

Kerrie called me at seven that morning—yes, Saturdays have a seven in the morning, too—to tell me Doug was going to meet us at the mall. (Doesn't every good story start with a trip to the mall?) With that news, I sat bolt upright in bed with no prompting from my annoying alarm clock. In fact, my heart started pounding out its own alarm and my palms got sweaty.

Kerrie is my best friend. She knows me, and she knows that deep down I think that Doug is my match, that we were destined to be together, that our paths must have crossed in some other lifetime, but to come out and admit all that will

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