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nothing, drawing idly with charcoal, and talking to Aidan.
    He was just a cute boy in class back then, one with floppy brown hair that fell in front of his eyes when he talked, who wore clean band shirts with hoodies zipped over them, bright red Chucks, and a black-and-white checkered belt. He smiled a lot and laughed at his own jokes and told Tana lots of stories about the unfathomable girls he seemed to find himself dating. He seemed hapless and good-natured. He was always in love. He smelled like Ivory soap.
    Pauline teased Tana about him, and Tana just laughed. She got why girls fell for him. He was charming , but he was so upfront about trying to charm her, so obvious, that she was sure she was immune.
    Aidan’s project was a life-size papier-mâché version of himself, posed as if he were asleep in class. He badgered Tana into measuring him for it, and she rolled her eyes as she wound the tape around his upper arms and across the width of his chest.
    When he grinned down at her, raising his eyebrows as though they were sharing a joke, she realized she wasn’t immune after all.
    He asked her out soon after, not on a real date or anything, just to hang out with some friends. And she went and had a few beers. When he kissed her, she let him.
    “You’re not like other girls,” Aidan said, pressing her back against the cushions of the couch. “You’re cool.”
    Tana tried to be cool, tried to act as if it didn’t bother her when he flirted with anything that moved—and, that one time, when he was really drunk, with a coatrack. She’d heard all his stories about the possessive girl who texted him over and over again when he was just out with his cousin or the dramatic girl who sent him ten-page letters, the writing smudged with her tears. She didn’t want to be the star of another “crazy girl” story.
    And it didn’t bother her, not really, not in the way Aidan seemed to expect. Sometimes it hurt to watch him with someone else, sure, but what she really minded was that he always seemed to be monitoring her for signs that she was going to scold him. She minded going to parties, where she made awkward conversation, drank a lot, and pretended that everyone wasn’t waiting for her to pick some kind of giant fight with Aidan. And she minded not knowing the rules, because any time she asked him about them, he just stammered elaborate conversation-ending apologies.
    When she suggested he go to parties alone, he would make an exaggeratedly sad face. “No, Tana,” he’d say. “You have to be there. I hate going to things by myself.”
    “You could go with friends,” she’d suggest, laughing at him. Because it wasn’t as if he was ever alone. He knew everyone. He had lots of friends.
    “I want to go with you ,” he’d say, his eyes big and pleading, his mouth quirked in a little half smile, as though he was acknowledging how ridiculous he was being. And it worked. It always worked, thatcombination of flattery and little-boy silliness and, underneath it all, that fear Tana had that she wasn’t as cool as he thought she was.
    So she went to parties and pretended not to mind. And the more Tana didn’t say anything, the more outrageous his behavior got. He would make out with girls in front of her. He would make out with boys in front of her. He would wink at her from across rooms, daring her to criticize him.
    That’s when things got kind of fun.
    She schooled herself to even greater nonchalance. She’d walk over to Aidan after he seemed to be finished kissing someone, curl her arm around his shoulder, and ask to be introduced. She’d assign points for style and take away points when he’d struck out. No matter what he did, she never let him see it bother her.
    “You’re playing some kind of game of sex chicken with him,” Pauline told her, pushing back a mass of tiny braids. “Who cares which one of you flinches first?”
    “Sex chicken,” Tana said, snickering. “Too bad we don’t know anyone in a