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going.”
    Izzy took it out of her hand and flipped it open. “It’s eighty-nine
hundred
dollars, Cassidy. If you’re worried about paying for college, how are you going to afford this?”
    Cassidy kept her face deliberately blank, hiding her shock. Eighty-nine hundred dollars was more than triple what she’d guessed it might cost. “I’ll have to figure something out,” she said, more to convince herself than her friends.
    “Maybe you don’t have to go so far, Cass,” Mei said, rifling through the brochures.
    “No,” she said, not about to back down now. “I say, ‘Go big or stay home.’ I’ll get the money.”
    “What are you going to do? Rob a bank?” Izzy asked.
    “Ha-ha.” Cassidy paused. “I’m going to ask my dad for the money.”
    Izzy, Mei, and Piper exchanged a glance.
    “What?” Cassidy asked when no one spoke.
    Piper answered. “Nothing, Cass. We just didn’t know you were talking to your father again.”
    “Sure, I talk to him. I mean, we’re not best friends or anything, but we talk. He’s got the money, so I’ll just ask him. It’s no big deal.”
    The tinkling of the bell above the glass doors interrupted them. The Paris High offensive line crammed into the little shop, a veritable tsunami of unruly testosterone in blue-and-white letterman jackets.
    The guys spotted the four of them at once.
Crap, here we go
, Cassidy thought.
    “Hey, dude, I didn’t know they served bacon-flavored yogurt here.”
    “Nah, pigs don’t eat their own kind; they love slop.”
    “Suuueeey!”
    Piper looked like she was going to cry. Cassidy jumped to her feet.
    “That’s real mature, dickheads. I didn’t realize the numbers on your jerseys were also your IQs.”
    “Whoa, Cassidy, I didn’t know you liked kissing pigs, too,” Jackson Grosbeck, the resident dumb ass, taunted her. “I thought you were only into kissing other girls.” He sauntered over to her, trying to intimidate her with his bulk. “ ’Cause that’s hot.”
    Yuck. She could smell the Copenhagen chewing tobacco on his breath, but she didn’t back away. Why would she? Even wearing her Vans she was taller than he was.
    He raised one eyebrow in challenge. “Or at least that’s what Jason told me.”
    Cassidy had gone out with Jason Cairns, a varsity baseball player, for two weeks at the beginning of sophomore year. Their relationship had come to an abrupt end when one night in the cab of his truck he’d rounded second base and tried to steal third. She’d almost broken his jaw. He’d told everyone it was because she liked girls.
Ah, life in a small, bigoted town.
    Was Australia really far enough to get away from crap like this? She prayed it was.
    “You guys run around in skintight pants playing grab ass all day, so I’d say kissing girls is a better option. Besides, if what Marissa Haliday says about you is true, Jackson, then your height isn’t the only thing about you that’s small.”
    That wiped the smirk off his tobacco-stained mouth. The other guys guffawed behind him like the juvenile asses they were. Cassidy took Piper’s arm and led her and the others from the shop.
    They all loaded into Piper’s purple Honda Civic and pulled out of the parking lot back onto Clarksville Street.
    “That was epic, Cassidy,” Mei said, and laughed.
    Izzy joined her. “Yeah, I thought Jackson was going to pee his pants right there.”
    “Thanks, Cass,” said Piper. “You’re the best friend ever.”
    Cassidy sat in the passenger seat, arms akimbo, still fuming. “That, ladies, is why we need to do this. We need a break from Paris, Texas. The sooner, the better.”
    “Damn straight! I am
so
sick of the guys around here,” Izzy agreed.
    “What about River?” Piper reminded her.
    “Don’t you remember? He went to college. We’re on a break.”
    “Didn’t look like you were on a break at the party,” Mei said.
    “Trust me. We’re. On. A. Break. So, Costa Rica, here I come. I mean, why not?”
    “Well, I’m