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him. Something about the scent was a total turn-on. “I don’t really need it anymore,” he said. “I like your costume. Zombie. Cool.”
    I looked down at my ripped running pants, the T-shirt with tire tracks and dirt smudges clinging to my middle. “Thanks,” I said. “I kind of copped out, though. I’m in running clothes. Got to be a lot harder to run in a dress.”
    He grinned. “It was kind of nice, actually. Breezy. I’m thinking about wearing it all the time. To our first meet, for sure.”
    He curtsied clumsily, and I couldn’t help smiling.
    “You will definitely be noticed if you do,” I said.
    Later, as I sat on a curb eating bagels with some girls I knew from the team, he came over and asked for my cell number. Said he liked to keep in touch with all the cross-country team members. Liked to have get-togethers and stuff. But there was something about the way he leaned over me as I wrote my first and last name down on the back of his hand with a red pen that made me feel like he wanted my number for a different reason. I was so giddy at the idea, I couldn’t keep the flirty smile off my face.
    He studied what I’d written. “Great. I’ll text you later today, Ashleigh.”
    “Okay.”
    He paused. “You have a great smile.” And then he jogged off to where some guys were hanging out over by a tent where they were selling pineapple wedges in cups.
    And you have a great everything
, I thought, and had to force myself not to get up and do a little jumpy dance.
    He texted me that night, and pretty much every night after that. At first, we just talked about cross-country and running and meets. But after a while, we started talking about other things, too, like our families and what movies we liked. And then we started flirting a lot. Talking on the phone. Hanging out at school. We went out a few times. He kissed me in the back booth of a diner after a rough meet during which I’d rolled my ankle on a pinecone. We’d been practically inseparable ever since.
    And it was perfect. During the school year, we hung out together all the time. We went to movies and played paintball and chilled at his friend Silas’s house playing video games and eating greasy takeout. He met me at my locker between classes. He drove me to school and home again, and we made out in my empty house until Mom called to say she was leaving work and would be home shortly.
    But then he graduated. And even though I tried to enjoy myself, to be happy for him, I couldn’t help feeling like this was the beginning of the end for us. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world, and I knew that. But it would
feel
kind of like the end of the world, anyway. I loved him.
    But for a moment during Vonnie’s end-of-summer party, the volleyball game over and Rachel’s nail tragedy a thing of the past, Vonnie drunkenly giggling on her chaise lounge again and a naked photo of me winging its way through cyberspace toward my boyfriend… at least for that moment… I knew I had his full attention.
    I knew I had something that his boys would never have. It felt powerful. And when my phone vibrated in my pocket minutes after I’d sent the photo, a jolt of excitement surged through me. He’d received it.
    His text simply said: OMG .
    And I didn’t know how to answer that. I was too nervous and kind of embarrassed and a little drunk and hyped up, so I simply texted a smiley face and tucked the phone back into my pocket. The bugs were starting to get thick, so we migrated into Vonnie’s house, and we started playingdumb junior high games like spin the bottle and truth or dare and I had to kiss Cheyenne’s foot and someone dared Cody to run up to the highway and moon passing cars and it was all so hilariously stupid I kind of forgot about the picture I’d sent.
    The morning after the party, I woke up to my phone vibrating in my pocket again. I rolled over and found myself nose to nose with Vonnie’s yellow Lab, Starkey, on Vonnie’s bedroom floor. My