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Cadie and Shane both sat back in their chairs without looking at each other again.

Melody was not sure when the seasons started shifting.  She remembered a time when she was a kid and it seemed that it got colder as soon as school started.  Now it was the beginning of September, the heat and humidity were unbearable, and it had not rained in weeks.  She and Susan were lounging on huge reclining rafts in the Marcuses’ in-ground pool.  They even had cup holders.  Melody’s held a 12-ounce can of Coke; Susan’s, a seltzer water.

Sometimes Melody could rarely believe the kind of lifestyle Susan led.  She always wore designer clothes.  She had a Lamborghini waiting in the garage for her for the day she got her driver’s license (currently they were both fifteen and not even old enough to get a learner’s permit).  Susan’s father, Steven, was a college professor at a branch campus of a state university, which was located about twenty minutes south of where they lived.  That was not the cause of his ridiculous amounts of money; that was credited to the fact that after he had divorced Susan’s mother, he had married Cynthia, the daughter of very wealthy parents.  Melody was unsure how old Cynthia was, but she had been one of Steven’s students at the university, and she got mistaken for his daughter a lot.  However, that could have been because she usually had a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Susan’s mother, Diane, an attorney, had moved to Manhattan and continued spoiling Susan from across the state line.  She sent a “child support” check every month, which Susan instantly deposited in her savings account before wheedling her father for spending money.  Melody was convinced that Susan made more than her parents did on her mother’s contributions alone.

“So, what did you do last night?” Susan asked her, adjusting her Fendi sunglasses.

“Not a lot,” answered Melody, letting her hands dangle in the cool water.  “I hung out with my dad for awhile, then I did some homework.”

“Homework?” Susan repeated.  “It was the first day of school.”

“Well, we didn’t
have
to do it.  Miss Hetrick gave us an extra-credit geometry problem.”

“Oh, yeah.  She gave us one, too, but I didn’t do it.”  Melody was taking mostly honors classes this year, which meant that pretty much the only classes she and Susan had together were gym and lunch.  “Anyway, I was really tired after practice.”

“Oh.”  Melody did not know how to respond to that.

“Apparently the post-game party this Friday is at Stacy Monroe’s house,” Susan said.  “I was thinking of making an appearance, since I’m an upperclassman now.”

Melody turned her head to stare at Susan, causing the raft beneath her head to squeak in complaint.  “You’re not an upperclassman,” Melody pointed out.  “We’re sophomores.”

“Yeah, but I’m on the
varsity
cheerleading squad,” Susan responded.

“Oh.”

“Do you want to go with me?” she asked.

“Well, I’m not in the varsity band,” Melody joked.

Susan waved her hand dismissively.  “You’d come with me.  It’s fine.”

Melody rolled her eyes.  “Thanks, but I’ll pass.  I’ve never been very interested in any of those parties.  They drink a lot, don’t they?”

“Everybody drinks.”

“Uh, you and I don’t drink.”

“But it’s the standard at these parties.  Everybody drinks.  It’s not like you have to get drunk and trip all over the place.  And you don’t have to drink just because everybody else does.  Although you would look like a fool if you didn’t.”

“Well, thanks but no thanks.”  She hesitated.  “I thought I would see what Andy was doing after the game on Friday night,” she said lightly.

Susan sat up and stared at Melody—or at least, Melody
thought
she was staring at her.  It was hard to tell around her enormous sunglasses.  “Doing something with Andy on a Friday night?” she repeated.  “Are you going to ask him on a date?”

“No, not like a date.  Just… you know, two people hanging out.”

“On a Friday night,” added Susan.  “It sounds like a date.”

“He won’t think of it as a date.”

“So tell him it’s a date.”

“I don’t want to freak him out.”

“Okay, then don’t tell him.  Just never tell him and be his friend forever.  That sounds like fun.”  Susan leaned back in her raft again.

Melody paused.  “We hung out yesterday,” she said.

“Really?”  Susan sat forward, interested in the conversation again.

“It wasn’t, like, a huge deal or anything.  He just wanted to take some pictures so I walked around town with him.”

“Oh.”  Down she went again.

“Why do you sound like my life is a huge disappointment?” Melody asked.

“Because it totally is,” Susan shot back.  “You’ve been into Andy for like, two years now.  It’s getting really old.”

“Well, excuse me if my feelings are getting old.”

“No, it’s getting old because you’ve never done anything about it.  I know he’s completely spineless, but sooner or later he’ll probably get up the nerve to ask out someone else, and then where will you be?  Not here with me, because I’ll be at a post-game party.  You’ll probably be sitting at home with your sister.”

“I won’t be sitting at home with my sister,” Melody answered resentfully.

“Of course not. 
She’ll
probably have a date.”

Shane emerged from the locker room showers feeling slightly refreshed.  Their practice that day had completely drained him, and he was glad to be going home.   He carefully applied his Axe deodorant, then spun the combination on his locker and threw it inside.

Will was sitting on the bench behind him, tying his shoes.  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

Shane shrugged.  “Probably going home and doing homework.”  He turned around and lifted his backpack off the bench, but he had left the zipper open, and books and notebooks spilled onto the cement floor.  He knelt to gather them up.

Will leaned over to help.  He picked up a textbook and held it up to the light, examining it carefully as if it was an ancient slab of inscribed papyrus.  “
Calculus:  An Applied Approach
,” he read.

Shane mutely held out his hand to take the book back.

Will handed it to him.  “So, how’s calc going, anyway?”

Shane glanced at him sidelong.  “You don’t look surprised that I’m taking it.”

Will shrugged.  “Stacy told me that you were in Cadie Dawson’s calc class.”

“Oh.”  That was one channel of communication that Shane had failed to consider.

“It must be pretty nice to be in a class with Cadie,” Will remarked, leaning forward slightly, a movement which Shane knew to be a subtle shift into a perverted line of conversation.

Shane shrugged again.  “She’s cool.”

“She’s
hot
.”

“She’s also my sister’s best friend,” Shane responded.

“So was Desiree,” Will shot back, mentioning a girl who had been a friend of Felicia’s last year but had given up that right when she had slept with Shane.

“No, this is different.  They’ve known each other since Felicia was in, like, fifth grade.”

“So what?” Will asked bluntly.  “I had gym class with her last year, and she has a body under there.  You wouldn’t know it, but she does.  She’s hot.”

“Yeah, you said that already.”  Shane turned to look at his friend.  “Cadie is her
best
friend.  I’ve done a lot of shit to Felicia in the past, but this is one thing that I’d never do.  Got it?”

“Whatever you say,” Will responded with a wicked grin that clearly meant he did not believe him.

Shane sighed in response.  Felicia was his younger sister by one year and 364 days.  Though that was not even technically two years, he was, chronologically speaking, her big brother.  Because they were so close in age, they had grown up close as well, even though they had never been into the same things.  Shane had played sports; Felicia had done ballet.  Once junior high had begun, Shane had scored himself a spot on the football team, where he had been ever since.  Felicia, instead, had fallen into the theatre crowd.  For a few years, he had barely hung out with her—his friends had constantly ribbed him about his dorky little sister.

Then, at the beginning of high school, Shane had begun to notice a different story.  Having Felicia as a younger sister was like being a girl magnet.  She had lots of friends in the drama, chorus, and dance crowds who had all swooned over Shane.  A lot of girls would want to come to Felicia’s parties simply for the chance that they might see him.  A lot of girls would invite Felicia to
their
parties in the hopes that she might bring him.  And it became hard for her to determine who was in it for Felicia and who was in it for her brother.  Shane had an easy way of weeding them out for her.

It was not like he took any great pleasure in fooling around with someone she considered to be a friend; it was just something he thought needed to be done.  She had taken an instant liking to Desiree when they had been in one of the school’s musical productions together, but when she started bringing her around to the house, Desiree had instantly forgotten Felicia existed.  She hit on Shane constantly, even though Felicia warned her that she would
not
be very pleased if Desiree had done anything with her older brother.  Apparently, that had not mattered to Desiree, so Shane had nipped it in the bud and had sex with her just to get her out of Felicia’s life.  She was annoying, anyway.

Cadie, on the other hand, was a different story.  Felicia had first brought her home when she was in fifth grade and Cadie was in sixth—Shane’s age.  He had seen her before, of course, but they had never had any classes together, except maybe gym or a study hall here or there.  She was in the advanced classes, which was how she had met Felicia.  The two of them had had a lot of fun together, exploring the woods in their little town, having slumber parties, doing makeovers, experimenting with bulimia or whatever the hell else twelve-year-old girls did.  And Cadie had never shown more of an interest in Shane than was considered polite.  Shane, therefore, approved.

And yes, in the past couple of years, he had noticed that she was beginning to blossom into a very pretty, possibly beautiful, girl.  And since he had known her for so long, he knew that she was smart, and funny, and friendly; a girl, under different circumstances, that he would be very eager to get to know.  But he had refrained from doing so, never showing her more interest than she bestowed upon him.  She was Felicia’s best friend, she had stuck around for a number of years without pursuing her brother, and Shane did not want to ruin that for Felicia.  He steered clear of Cadie in a romantic sense.

He was only two years minus one day older than Felicia, but from time to time, in little ways, he still managed to be her big brother.

Will shook his head as Shane loaded his textbooks into his backpack.  “I can’t believe you’re taking calculus,” he said, chuckling slightly.

“Don’t rag on me just because your math book is called
The Abacus Made E-Z.
”

Will furrowed his brow.  “How would that be a math book?”

Shane shouldered his backpack.  “What?”

“Isn’t abacus that stuff in insulation that causes cancer?”

“I’m leaving.”

Six

Melody had been sitting at the kitchen table for over an hour staring at her phone.  After her conversation with Susan, she was convinced that the time had come for her to ask Andy out on a date.  Susan was right; he was not going to be single forever.  But if this kept up, Melody was.  She just had to screw up the courage to pick up the phone and call him.  And then, of course, once that was accomplished, she would need to find some more courage in order to ask him out.  She knew it was very likely that she would hang up once he answered the phone, or chicken out and talk about something completely mundane.

She took a deep breath.  This was it.  She was going to call him.  Melody was going to ask him out on a date.

After a few more minutes, she reached out and picked up the phone.  Progress.

Melody shook her head, suddenly completely disgusted with herself.  She found Andy in her contacts and lifted the phone to her ear as it started to ring.  There was no reason to be nervous, she told herself.

It stopped ringing.  “Hello?”

Melody fought the urge to throw up.  “It’s me,” she said.

“Hey.  What’s up?”

“Um… Um, I was just wondering what you were doing after the game on Friday night.”  She stood and started to pace the kitchen.  There was no way she could do this telephone conversation without moving.

“I don’t really know yet.  Why?”

“Well… well, I was just wondering if you, like, wanted to do something?”  Melody waited with bated breath.

“What?  I couldn’t hear you.”

She cleared her throat.  “I was wondering if you wanted to do something,” she repeated more loudly.  “You know, on Friday.  After the game.”

“What did you have in mind?”

Did he sound interested?  She could not tell.  “I don’t know, I was thinking maybe like… a movie or something.  And then maybe
Eat’n Park?”

“What’s playing?”

What’s with all the questions?
Melody was raging inwardly.  “I don’t know,” she admitted.  “I hadn’t looked yet.”

“Oh.  Well, who all is going?”

Her heart stopped.  She was asking him out on a date, and he did not even realize that it was a date yet.  She cleared her throat again.  “Well, no one, yet.  But I was thinking… I was thinking it could be just you and me.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.  “I don’t know,” he said slowly.  “Usually after games I just like to go home and relax, you know?  It’s like… it’s really tiring.”

“Well, we wouldn’t have to do the movie thing,” Melody said, grasping at straws.  He was rejecting her request for a date, and she was not entirely sure he even knew what he was rejecting.  “Like, we could go to that party that Susan told me about.”  She internally kicked herself.

Andy snorted.  “Oh, yeah.  A party at Susan’s sounds like a blast.”

“No, it’s not her party,” Melody answered.  “It’s at Stacy Monroe’s.  It’s the post-game party that they do every week.”

He was quiet.  “You mean, the party that all the football players and cheerleaders go to?”

Now he definitely sounded interested.  She was sure of it.  “Yeah.”

“I guess that could be fun.”

Melody was elated.  “So you want to go?”

“Yeah, I’ll go.”

“Okay.  Okay, great!”  She was afraid she was going to drop the phone because her hands were shaking so much.

“But how are we going to get there?  My mom won’t let me drive past eleven.”

Cadie was sick and tired of limits.  She remembered limits vaguely from her trigonometry class last year, and she remembered how much she had hated them.  Cadie deathly hated Mrs. Johnson today, and she would probably hate her for the rest of the year.

Math had never been her strongest subject, and now she had to learn it at an advanced rate.  She grasped most things more quickly than other people, but her mind just never seemed to wrap around math.  This did not seem to be the case for Shane, who had practically finished the assigned problem set at the end of class that day before Cadie could figure out the first one.  She was very grateful when someone knocked on her bedroom door, and she had an excuse to not look at her calculus book anymore.  “Come in,” she called.

Melody opened the door and poked her head in.  “Hey,” she said.  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure,” Cadie answered, setting her pencil down.  “What’s up?”

“I kind of have a favor to ask you.”

“Okay,” Cadie said slowly.

“Well, there’s this party that Andy and I want to go to, and I was wondering if you would take us.”

“Why doesn’t Andy drive?” Cadie asked.

“Well, he can’t drive past eleven,” Melody responded.

Cadie raised an eyebrow.  “Isn’t your curfew eleven anyway?”

“It’s on Friday night,” her sister replied defensively.  “My curfew is midnight on weekends.”

“What kind of party are you going to, anyway?” Cadie wanted to know, folding her arms across her chest.  “Your friends are usually in bed by eight o’clock.”

“We’re going to that party at Stacy’s.”

Cadie blinked.  “You’re going to the post-game party?”

“Yeah, Susan said something about it, so I just thought—”

“Melody,
why?
  All that ever happens at the post-game parties is a lot of drinking.  Why would you want to get yourself involved with that?”

Melody sighed in exasperation.  “Listen, I didn’t ask your opinion on my plans.  Will you drive us or not?”

Cadie shrugged.  “Yeah, I guess.”

“Thank you.  And please don’t embarrass me.”  Melody turned and walked out of the room.

“You’re going to be seen in public with Andy and you’re worried about
me
embarrassing you?” Cadie called down the hallway.  Her sister did not respond.

Cadie settled in to do some more calculus problems when something occurred to her.

There’s this party that Andy and I want to go to.

It’s on Friday night.

Please don’t embarrass me.

Melody and Andy were going on a date, Cadie realized.  Her fifteen-year-old sister was going to be out at a party with a guy on Friday night; meanwhile, Cadie would probably be here, solving limits.

At lunch the next day, Cadie prepared herself to do another meal with Felicia and Elliot.  Ever since Shane had started sleeping with Felicia’s acquaintances, Felicia had developed a complete distrust of anyone attempting to
get close to her.  Cadie had grown accustomed to being Felicia’s only confidante.  Frankly, she was a little jealous of the way Elliot had swept right in and befriended her.  But she liked Elliot well enough; she seemed nice, funny, and appropriately incredulous of Felicia’s personality.

Cadie parted ways with Stacy at the door again and headed over to what was now their usual table.  “Hey,” she greeted Felicia as deposited her books in a chair.  “Do you want to go to the mall on Saturday or something?”

“Why?” asked Felicia.

She shrugged.  “I could just use some new clothes, that’s all.  Penney’s is having a sale and I bet I could get my mom to let me borrow her card.”

“I guess,” answered Felicia.

Cadie gave her a big thumbs-up.  “That’s the spirit.”  Felicia laughed, and Cadie felt the mood lighten a little.  “Is Elliot sitting with us again today?”

Felicia nodded.

“That’s cool.  She seems nice,” Cadie offered.

Another nod, but nothing else.  Cadie gave up and headed toward the lunch line.

When she returned, Elliot was already there with her tray.   She did not know what they were talking about, but Felicia had actually put down her sandwich to listen more intently to Elliot.  As Cadie approached, she realized she had walked into the middle of an anecdote about their English teacher, Mr. Bundy.

Elliot finished the story and the two of them laughed.  Cadie took a sip of her lemonade.

“So,” Elliot said.  “What are the cool things to do around here?”

Cadie and Felicia glanced at each other.  “Um, no offense,” said Cadie, “but if you wanted to find cool stuff to do, you’re hanging out with the wrong people.”

“Yeah,” Felicia agreed.  “We don’t do…
cool
stuff.”

“We don’t do much stuff at all,” Cadie added.

Elliot laughed.  “Okay.  Well, what are you guys doing on Friday night?  What’s the typical weekend activity?”

“Well, on Friday night,
I
will be going to the football game,” Cadie said, “whereas
Felicia
—”

“Felicia will not be going anywhere near the football game,” Felicia finished.

“What, we don’t like football games?” Elliot asked, picking at her bread roll.

“I
hate
going to football games,” answered Felicia.  “The sport is totally stupid.  I don’t understand the rules.  Kids go there and paint their faces and act like idiots, and Shane does not need another excuse to be the center of attention.”

Cadie waited for Elliot to ask who Shane was, but all she did was nod.  Cadie raised an eyebrow.  Evidently the two of them were talking quite a bit.  Felicia did not typically readily admit that she was related to Shane.  Cadie cleared her throat.  “I’m not a big fan of them, either,” she spoke up.  “I usually go to all the home games with my parents, though, because my sister is in the band.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Elliot remarked.

“And then they always have those stupid post-game parties,” Felicia blurted.  “Shane always comes home smelling like beer and pot and the next day on Facebook there’s thousands of pictures of cheerleaders flashing the camera and making out with each other.”

Elliot raised an eyebrow.  “Sounds like fun.”

“Speaking of the post-game party,” Cadie said, “guess who is going to it this week.”

“Who?” Felicia asked.

“Melody and Andy.”

Felicia gasped.  “No way.”

“Who?” Elliot repeated politely.

“My sister and her friend Andy.  She’s had a crush on him for, like, ever,” Cadie answered.  “Anyway, I’m not sure
why
they’re going, but I guess Susan invited them and they’re going together.  Last night she asked me to drive them because Andy can’t drive past eleven.”

“Who’s Susan?” asked Elliot.

“She’s my sister’s friend,” responded Cadie.  “She’s a cheerleader.”

“She’s totally fake,” added Felicia.  “She’s so annoying.  Melody is really nice and we can’t figure out why she hangs out with Susan.”

Elliot raised her eyebrows.  “Wow,” she remarked.  “Melody must
really
be nice if
you
think she’s nice.”

Cadie was appalled at the comment; even more so when Felicia said, “Well, Melody hasn’t slept with my brother.”

Andy could feel the back of his neck getting sunburned.  Band practice went until 5:30 on Monday and Thursday evenings, and today the sun was relentless.  It had not rained in weeks, which was very unusual for central Pennsylvania.  He was going to have some nice tan lines from the saxophone strap around his neck.  He had been standing in the same spot for about five minutes while Mr. Bell helped the piccolo section set a diagonal.  He wanted to take off his sax, but he knew that the second he did, Mr. Bell would finish and call for them to reset the form, so he left it on.

He turned and saw Lucas in the form about ten yards behind him.  They caught each other’s eye.  They both checked on Mr. Bell’s progress; after setting the piccolos, they had discovered the clarinets were off, so he had moved to that section.  As if on cue, Andy and Lucas started moseying toward one another and met at a spot in the middle of the field.

Other kids saw this and decided this was a good idea; some started wandering out of their spots to talk to friends, others sat down in the grass, and still others pulled out their cell phones and started texting, a practice which was strictly
verboten
during band rehearsal.  A few kids stayed at the ready; Andy knew it would take a nuclear missile to dislodge Melody from her spot before Mr. Bell told them they could move.  Neil saw the two of them together and sidled over with his snare drum strapped to his chest.

Neil nodded in the direction of their drum major.  “Think Kristy’s boobs are getting bigger?”

Kristy Erickson was very short, very thin, and very well endowed.  Neil had started calling her Drum Major Jugs shortly after she had been named drum major at the end of the previous school year, and the nickname had quickly caught on.  She had protested it at first, but now its usage was so widespread that there was really nothing she could do about it, so she just accepted it.  She had even begun to respond to it.

Andy glanced at her inconspicuously.  “They look about the same to me,” he said under his breath.