“You haven’t been in a relationship since middle school?”

I lean back, recalling it fondly. “Stacy Blinkiwitcz. She and I were in the same algebra class and I used to stare at her all the time because I was fascinated by her braces. She used to wear these overalls all the time, with a t-shirt underneath, and the t-shirts were different colors depending on her mood.” Hollis laughs at my memory. “Anyway, I slipped a note into her locker because my parents wouldn’t let me have a cell phone. Folded it up into a triangle and all that shit, asking her to ‘go with me.’”

Another laugh and Hollis relaxes, her horrible day beginning to melt away.

I go on. “So we go together, which was really just passing notes back and forth. I’d tell her she looked good in her rolled-up jeans and denim jacket, or that I liked her new kicks, and she would ask about my games.”

“What happened?”

I shrug. “There was a dance, and I remember her telling me while we were slow-dancing to whatever boy band happened to be popular at the time—she was like, ‘Trace, I think you’re super cool, but Alan Owens has a car.’” I shoot a peeved look at Hollis. “I did not have a car.”

“What eighth grader has a car?”

“Alan was a freshman, but he’d been held back in kindergarten, so he had his license.” I pause for theatrical flair. “And a mustache.”

That part is a lie—Alan did not have a ’stache, but it’s funny and adds a lighthearted element to the story. Alan did indeed have a car, the little fucker.

“Had you and Stacy even kissed?”

“No. I got robbed.”

“What’d you do after she told you she was dumping you?”

This is by far the worst part of the story. “I cried.” Then I hasten to add, “Just a little! It wasn’t like, sobs or anything.”

Not really…

Tripp found me in the boys’ bathroom crying in the last stall, pounded on the door and called our mom to come get us from the payphone in the lobby.

“Oh you poor thing.” Hollis leans forward to pat me on the cheek and I do something totally stupid.

I lick her palm.

“Ew! Trace! That’s disgusting!” She wipes the saliva onto the sleeve of her sweater, but she’s laughing and smiling, and isn’t that what counts?

“I could eat you up.”

She swats at me, batting like a cat. “I want to hear the rest of your story, the part about you crying.”

I begin shaking my head to refuse, but since I started the story, I know I have to finish it—she needs to hear what a pussy I am.

“My brother found me in the bathroom and called our mom—he was also a giant loser with no car—and she came to pick us up. I refused to tell them what had happened, so the entire ride home—we had to sit in the back—Tripp was giving me charley horses for being a baby.”

“That wasn’t nice.”

“In my defense, I had snot running out of my nose, and I was inconsolable.”

“You said you weren’t sobbing.”

“Men say a lot of things so they sound masculine. I try to block the whining and crying part of this story out of my memory.”

“Go on. So then what?”

“Then…when we got back to the house, I raced up my stairs and threw myself on the bed and continued bawling into my comforter. Then I got out my yearbook and looked at her picture and cried some more. I listened to my CD of the song we’d just danced to, by the boy band whose name I can’t remember.”

Another lie. It was the Backstreet Boys, the song was “The One”, and it touched me because it was about soulmates and that’s what that liar Stacy Blinkiwitcz was to me.

Allegedly.

“That’s…a very dramatic story.”

I look to the sky. “Tell me about it. Try living through it.” I raise my brows. “Do you think my older brother let me live that shit down? The answer is no. Last Christmas he got four of the five members of the band to FaceTime me and sing the song.”

Sometimes being famous has its perks, but I didn’t think that was as hilarious as my family did.

Bunch of assholes. Even Dad thought it was hysterical.

“And you have no idea what the song was?” She doesn’t believe that I don’t remember.

I shake my head adamantly. Press my lips together. “Nope.”

“Oh you are such a liar!”

“No, Stacy Blinkiwitcz is a liar!”

Hollis cannot stop laughing. “How?”

“She knew she was going to dump me and waited until the dance, publicly humiliating me. It was premeditated—a premeditated dumping.”

“That’s what everyone does in lower grades because not a single one of us had balls.”

I raise my chin. “I had balls.”

“By default.” Hollis stares off into the cityscape, studying the skyline. Then, “Could you have done it? Could you have broken up with you? I bet you were pretty darn cute.”