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that this new guy wouldn’t last.
    I knew that Julie was in her own wilderness and that she was going to have to find her way out just like I was going to have to find the way out of mine. It made me realize that you never know what someone might be going through, you never know what their wilderness stories are or if they’re stuck in one.  We each have crosses to bear, I suppose. The trick is not to get weighed down by them.  
    We were the last couple to arrive at Jeremy’s house. Unlike Jeremy’s usual parties, this one was just for couples. His parents both traveled and were never home so we always had a place to hang out. It was me and Mike, Sue and Ron, Jeremy and Ellen, Becky and Bill and Amy (aka Cookie) and Keith. Dave wanted to bring the ninth-grader he was seeing but Jeremy told him that he better hadn’t because the rest of us would kill him. We were still all sore that he broke up with Diane right before our senior prom.
    Jeremy got his older cousin to get us a couple of cases. It felt good to just hang out with everyone. I knew we wouldn’t have many more moments like this. In two weeks, we would be graduating and everyone would be going their own way. Becky would be leaving for basic training in the Air Force and the rest of us would head off to college.
    I tasted the homemade salsa Ellen made. She was a terrific cook and was excited about culinary school. “This is so good, El. I especially love the chopped avocados.”
    “You know what they say about avocados,” Becky said. “They’re an aphrodisiac.”
    Ron dipped a chip into the salsa and held it up to Sue’s mouth. “In that case, eat a lot of it.”
    “I don’t think she’ll need that,” Jeremy said. “Just give her another beer.”
    Jeremy’s remark made Sue cough and she spit the salsa all over Ron.
    “That works, too,” said Ron, wiping the salsa off his shirt. “And maybe it’s not quite as messy as the salsa.”
    Everyone laughed.
    “Do you know that the Aztecs called the avocado tree “testicle tree?” Becky asked.
    “How do they get testicle out of an avocado?” Jeremy asked.
    “They thought that a pair of avocados hanging together on a tree looked like a pair of testicles.”
    Jeremy scrunched his nose. “I will never look at an avocado the same way again.”
    “You eat bananas, right?” Becky asked.
    “Yeah, so.”
    “That’s another aphrodisiac,” Becky said. “The shape alone is sexual.”
    I squirmed in my seat. All of the aphrodisiac talk was making me a little uncomfortable. And the more beer that my friends drank the looser they became. After awhile, there were only a few couples in the room; the rest had left to make out.
    Cookie pulled the tab on another Miller Lite. “Have you seen Karen lately? She’s getting big. She’s not supposed to have the baby until the end of June, but she told me the other day that she could go early.”
    Karen was our classmate. She got pregnant to an older guy. She claimed she was on the pill and got pregnant anyhow. She was planning a fall wedding, and said she didn’t want to look like a white elephant waddling down the aisle.
    “But she looks good,” I said. “And you know Karen, with all the sports she plays she’ll have it off in no time.”
    I thought for sure that Karen would go to college and become a gym teacher. She was the best female athlete in our school and lettered in track, basketball and field hockey. It sucked that she got pregnant especially if she was on the pill. I couldn’t imagine how I would feel if I would have gotten pregnant after what Smith did to me. Carrying his kid would have been horrible.
    I looked at Cookie and Keith, kissing on the couch. Keith was the first boy I ever kissed. We were in sixth grade and playing Spin the Bottle in Becky’s garage. I spun the empty beer bottle, and when it stopped, it was pointing at Keith.
    I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to open my mouth when we kissed. The girls and I had talked about it