"I don't care who he is," Carmen chirped, "who is he? He's dreamy!"

Liz rolled her eyes. "You have a boyfriend," she said. "If anyone gets dibs on this Weston guy, it's Danielle."

"Right," said Danielle, laughing, "assuming he would, you know, look at me twice. He's been at the school for two weeks, I'm pretty sure he's heard about 'Nutty Nellie' by now."

"He may have heard," said Liz, "but would he listen?"

Danielle didn't bother to get her hopes up. Shelly Baumgarter's campaign of poisoning Danielle's reputation had been largely successful, at least partially because Danielle didn't bother to defend herself: when asked, she told the truth. And that scared the students of Sheldon Oaks Public High School, most of whom weren't yet willing to admit that normal people could have abnormal problems. They were the children of privilege, of upper-middle-class parents who had braved the astronomical local housing prices to get their kids into the prestigious school district here; they had been sheltered all their lives. Danielle knew this for a fact because she was one of them. But one of her preconceptions was gone now: that she was insulated. She no longer believed that tragedy and accident and chaos happened only to 'other people.' She was other people.

And other people she had become. Ever since her return to school in January, she had become a social outcast; there were people who were steering clear of Liz and Carmen and Heidi and Amy now, merely because they were associated with her—Vanessa, for instance. Danielle was always last now to be picked in PE, for school projects, for lab work. And, true to her predictions, she had not been asked out once since last summer.

The good news was, David hadn't managed to stay with Missy Renquist for any meaningful amount of time; she hadn't heard about it until after she came out of her catatonia, but the two had broken up within a couple of weeks. Whether David had managed to dip his wick with her was a topic in which Danielle had no real interest. Supposedly he was dating Angela Wentworth now; she would run into them in the halls on occasion. Beyond that, she had not had any contact with him whatsoever, and she was fine with that.

She wondered if anyone had managed to tell her that David's little liaison with Missy had been so catastrophic. Surely, if Liz had heard, she would've told her, in hopes of jollying her out of her depression; but Danielle still had very little recollection of what had gone on in those five missing months. She remembered occasional bouts of desperation: sitting there wondering if there was anything she could do, any promises she could make, that would bring him back to her. At other times she raged, fumed, felt anger making her blood sing; there were depressions in the wall of her bedroom that seemed to have been made by her fist. Ned and Katrina Stanton assured her that these were some of the main stages of grief. But by and large, she remembered nothing; she had been gone, and that was that.

Amy Plisken was talking; Danielle was startled to realize that the conversation had not moved on. "He might listen. I mean, yeah, a lot of people are just ignoring you, Dani, but others aren't. We're here."

She certainly was. It had been early February when Amy suddenly appeared at their bench in the quad, asking if she might hang out with them. "I saw what Shelly did to you. God help me, I even helped her with it, a little. But I hated it. And when I saw the way they looked at me, the way they treated me, I realized... Hey, they'd do the same to me at the drop of a hat. If they thought it'd get them somewhere, they'd slander me too. And I thought, you know, there are lots of people I would really rather spend time with."

"Oh?" Liz had asked, somewhat defensive. "Like who?"

"Well, I dunno yet, but I hoped a few of 'em might be here," Amy had answered, grinning. Her presence had helped restore some of the luster that had been stripped from Liz's reputation. Not much of it, but some. Carmen and Heidi had gone nuts, of course, at the presence of another outcast from Shelly Baumgarter's circle. And soon she and Liz were trading outrageous teacher stories and laughing. Now Amy's presence seemed as natural as breathing.

"That's true," said Danielle, "you are here." She smiled to hide her own thoughts: that Carmen and Heidi would probably just as well be elsewhere, but had nowhere else to go. But there was no way to test it, and in any case Danielle knew she might be being unfair to them. Carmen and Heidi were nice people, for all that they seemed so... Young. Seriously, how could high school seniors still twitter like birds that way?

"He's been looking at you," Amy told her.

"Oh?" said Danielle. "Who?"

Amy tossed her hands in exasperation. "Our hot new friend from Indiana, that's who! Mr. Whatshisface!" ("Weston," Liz supplied.) "The hot new transfer student every girl in the school has been cooing about!"

"He's not that hot," said Danielle, which was the absolute truth; there were boys more handsome than Weston McCullough at Sherman Oaks. He wasn't McDreamy or anything. But Weston had something more than that: manners. He had a smile and a kind word for everybody, he could make anyone laugh, and he never (to anyone's knowledge) made rude comments about a girl's behind. The younger boys, especially the single ones, laughed that he must be some sort of pussy; some of the girls did too. But Danielle knew better. Mr. Whatshisface, as Amy had so eloquently named him, had decided long ago to not be a jerk, and his training was beginning to pay off. David had been much the same.

"He's hot enough," Amy retorted. "Besides, all men look the same in the dark." She giggled.

Danielle rolled her eyes. Amy had it backwards, somehow: while Carmen's and Heidi's boyfriends were pressuring them for sex, and Liz and Martin did it regularly, Amy had somehow ended up with a bespectacled, tie-wearing churchgoer named Connor who wanted to wait until marriage. And he wasn't even taking the 'technical virginity' line: his rule was 'nothing below the neck,' and he stuck to it. Amy, who had lost her innocence to a vibrator long ago, was starting to get impatient. "Maybe you should jump on him, then," she said. "Get your kicks that way."

"Don't tempt me," said Amy, laughing.

"Now now," said Liz, overhearing, "let's keep our priorities in order, girls. Dani is single. You're not. That's where we focus."

"But what if I wanna be the focus," Amy said, laughing.

"Then dump Connor," said Liz with a grin. "Or, for that matter, swap him for Max. That way Connor and Heidi can be virgins together, and you and Max can screw your brains out."

"Max?" said Amy. "Max Cheng? God, have you seen his teeth?" They had joked about this many times before, and Danielle recognized with a rush of gratitude Liz's subtle hand once again at work, deflecting attention away from her.

The simple fact was, Danielle was single, and she didn't think that would change any time soon. She would just have to live with it. So far, she was doing an okay job.

But sometimes it irked her.

Rather against her will, it came out during therapy that afternoon. She was sitting in the Stantons' office trying to think of something to talk about, while Ned's wife waited patiently. Finally, before she knew she was going to say it, it blurted out: "All my friends say there's a guy I should be interested in."

Katrina Stanton tilted her head, exactly the same way her husband did it; she wondered which of them had started it. Because of the unevenness of their schedules, the Stantons had been forced to trade Danielle between them at times; sometimes it was Ned who saw her, sometimes Katrina, sometimes both at once. Katrina lacked her husband's easiness with laughter; even when she was smiling, there was a melancholy in her eyes. But she was an excellent listener, and there were things she understood about Danielle without having to ask—or, indeed, without Danielle having to even say it. Danielle thought this might be because they were both women; or perhaps that was just the way Katrina Stanton was.

"And what do you think about this?" Katrina asked her.

"Oh, he's... Well, he's attractive, no doubt about that," said Danielle. "He just transferred in at the beginning of the week, so nobody really knows him—I mean, I only know his name because we've got a class together. But about half the girls in the school are all a-flutter over him now. Everyone says he's nice and funny and polite, and he's definitely handsome... Everybody's all asking me for, you know, the inside scoop on him or whatever, but there's not much I can say yet, it's not like I've known him for any longer than they have. What do I know about..." She looked up. "What?"

Katrina Stanton was smiling. "I meant, what do you think about your friends saying you should date again. But I think I like this answer more. So, you're attracted to him."

"What?" said Danielle. "No I'm not! I didn't say that!"

"Not using those words, no," said Katrina, still with that gentle smile, "but you immediately started talking about him. With a level of detail that suggests you've been paying attention to him. You find him attractive."

"Well... Yeah," said Danielle, feeling a little like she was confessing something sinful.

"And that's... Bad?" said Katrina Stanton.

"Well... It isn't... It's not bad, per se," said Danielle, "but... I feel like I'm borrowing trouble."

"Why?"

"Because.... Because it... Look, I have a reputation," Danielle said finally. "Nutty Nellie and all that. I'm a non-entity as far as the school is concerned; they prefer to just close their eyes and pretend I don't exist. No matter what, he's gonna... Whatever he hears first about me, it isn't gonna be from my mouth."

"Unless you speak to him first," said Katrina. "Which is, I think, the reason why your girl friends think you should be interested in him. You can get your foot in the door long before the rumor mill does.

"Yeah right," Danielle grumped, "he's been here two weeks."

"And do you really think two weeks is long enough for him to have acclimated and started asking questions about individual people?" said Katrina. "You still have time. And besides, you know you're tired of being single. You bear up well, Danielle, but anyone who knows you well, knows it's been grating on you."

"It's not... I don't..." Danielle sighed. "It's just hard. You know? Everyone else I know is dating somebody." Liz and Martin had been going steady for nearly two years—which was an eternity in high school—and Amy had been with Connor for over a year. Carmen had been asked out by Jeff Rogers for junior prom, and the two had kept dating ever since; and now even Heidi had a boyfriend!—dumpy, stoop-shouldered, pear-shaped Heidi! If those girls could succeed, why couldn't she? What did they have that she didn't? ...Besides a five-month gap in their transcripts, and wrists free of scars.

Even though it had been more than a year—well, only somewhat, since that missing five months only counted a little bit; but on the calendar it had been more than a year—she still found herself missing him at odd moments. She would think, Oh, that's something David would want to hear, before remembering that she couldn't tell him. She would catch a trace of the smell of his hair; she would wake up feeling naked and cold, wishing for arms to hold her. She even missed sex; no matter how she had tried to duplicate it in the days since then, it just wasn't the same with only one person in the bed. She hadn't even known how to masturbate; ever since she and David had shared their secret places together that night so long ago, she'd never needed to touch herself: he was always on hand, always willing. It was galling to realize that he was better at playing with her than she was at playing with herself.

"It's hard to be a fifth wheel," Katrina agreed. "Or, in your situation, a ninth wheel. But that being the case, why don't you take your friends' advice? You don't want to be single. They don't want you to be single. Why not take the plunge?"

"Well, he's gotta ask me out," said Danielle.

"For much of human history, that's been true," Katrina Stanton said, "but we live in a new age now. You can ask him."

"But what if he's one of those old-fashioned people who thinks the man should do the asking?" she said.

"If you feel like it's too big a risk, then don't ask him," said Katrina. "But Danielle, you don't have to be his girlfriend to have a presence in his life. Offer to be his friend. He probably doesn't have too many of those right now, so that will recommend you to him. And in the meanwhile, he has plenty of time to figure out whether he wants to ask you out or not."

"Well," said Danielle, hesitant.

"What do you have to lose?" said Katrina. "Let's say you talk to him, get to know him, maybe even date him a little. Perhaps he decides you're crazy, or undesirable, or just not right for him. In that case, nothing has changed: that's where the two of you stand now. And, if, on the other hand, he dates you and you two hit it off, then now you have a boyfriend, or at least a new friend, and you're no longer quite so frustrated. You've gained something."

"It's not just frustration," Danielle said. "I mean, it's not like I was gonna drag him into bed with me first thing, or something."

She saw Katrina Stanton blink in surprise. "Well. That's not actually the frustration I was referring to. But yes, that too would be addressed, or at least could be."

Danielle felt her face heat. "I, umm. I hope you don't think that... Well... I'm not—"

"A pervert?" said Katrina, smiling. "I certainly hope not. If having a healthy sex drive makes someone a pervert nowadays, I'm afraid I'd be right there in the camp with you. And most of the people I know. And, probably, most of the people you know too. We're moving in a good direction in terms of sexual mores. It isn't considered quite as abnormal for a woman to have actual interest in sex. And," she added, her eyes twinkling, "it certainly makes you more popular with the boys. Such as this fellow your friends are advocating."

"Do I really want that popularity?" said Danielle. "I mean... God. Some of the boys... I mean, they proposition me. The really desperate ones." It had started happening not long after her return. "The ones with the huge glasses and the braces and forty gazillion pimples who are scared that if they don't get laid with someone they know is easy, they aren't gonna get laid ever. If I do things with Weston and it gets around, things will just get worse."

"Danielle, most people won't approach a girl—especially not with a sexual proposition—if they know she's dating someone," Katrina said reasonably. "Besides, while things may have changed since I was your age—after all, my daughter's graduated college already—I think that, if you ask a boyfriend to keep secrets the right way, he will. For instance, after you do something with him, you could suggest to him that that if he tells anyone, you'll never do that thing with him again." She was smiling. "Besides, the best boys will know it instinctively—that certain things should just be kept private, especially if it concerns a woman's reputation."

The question burst from her before she could stop it. "Then why did David tell everybody?"

She saw Katrina give her a careful look.

"I mean... David's not like that. He's... What you said. He knew. He understood. We were doing things for years, but I don't think he ever... But then, after we broke up, it was all over the school within like five hours, that I did it with him. Why would he...?"

"Well..." said Katrina. "I think, first off, that you need to remember that he wasn't, at that moment, the David you knew. He was probably still a little angry at you, still a little hurt. So he might have told it out of spite. Second, you've mentioned that his friends were pressuring him. He might have told them just to get them off his back. And finally, you had broken up. Your secrets weren't really his concern anymore. If he'd kept them, we'd know something about his integrity, but it would really be going above and beyond. He felt—not unreasonably—that he was no longer obligated to keep them secret anymore."

Danielle thought about all the things David knew about her, and vice versa. "God, it's a wonder my reputation isn't worse."

"So, he has kept some," said Katrina.

"Probably the ones nobody would care about knowing," Danielle grumped. "...Which, to be fair, is most of them."

"And that's a fourth thing," said Katrina. "Well, second-and-a-half, really. For a boy, losing his virginity is a big status thing. It's a... well, how do I explain this. It plays into his social ranking in a way it just doesn't with women, or at least not as much. So, when a boy loses his virginity, it's in his best interests to shout it out from the rooftops."

"Whereas, when a girl loses her virginity, it's in her best interests to keep it dead secret," said Danielle, remembering the conversation with Liz. "Which is all sorts of ass-backwards screwed up. Somebody's getting shafted, no matter what happens."

"Unless you actually come across someone who will keep a secret," said Katrina. "And such people do exist."

"I guess," Danielle said, "if only I could meet some."

But Katrina Stanton was right. There was nothing to lose, really. So the next time she had an opportunity, she actually talked to Weston—engaged him in conversation.

Not much of one, of course; something like, "So, how are you feeling now?"

"...What?" said Weston.

"I mean, it's your third week," said Danielle, realizing she had probably not made herself clear. "Starting to feel settled in okay?"

"Oh," said Weston. "Oh. Umm. Yeah, it's, umm. It's starting to work out. Sorry, I thought you were asking about... something else."

The press of transit swept them away before she could say more; she had classes to get to, as did he. She wondered what it was he'd thought she was asking about, but then fifth-period physics kicked in and she had more important things to worry about, and, except for a few pleasantries, they didn't speak again until the end of the week, when Weston said, "Listen, umm. I'm not doing so hot in this class."

"Well, it is pre-calculus," said Danielle.

Weston laughed without humor. "That it is. Umm. If you've... If you've got some spare time this weekend, do you think you could give me a hand with it? You seem to have some sense of what's going on, and..."

That was a complete inaccuracy. Danielle only sometimes understood what was going on in this class; with some judicious homework and asking for help from her parents, she could get her head around it, but more often than not she would still only start to understand halfway through the homework, and have to start over from the beginning. She was about to say this when something clicked on in her head.

"You know," she said, "I don't have a lot of friends either. I mean. If you just wanna hang out and talk, you can say that."

He blinked. "Can I?"

"Well, why couldn't you?"

"Why couldn't...? What would you have said?" he said. "I mean, you know what they say about you, right? You're Nutty Nellie. They keep telling me to stay away from you because you don't like anybody and you want everyone to leave you alone."

Danielle blinked. "They say that?"

"Well, yeah, that's what they say... I think anyone who thought about it twice would know that it's simply not true, that you don't want everyone to leave you alone. Just most people."

"Hence the subterfuge?" she said.

"Well, yeah," he said, "because I wasn't sure if you would..."

So that was what they were saying about her. She guessed she should've seen it coming. Had it stemmed from Shelly Baumgarter?—or was it straight from her own behavior? She certainly wasn't bothering to waste time on most people anymore; it just wasn't worth it, to her way of thinking. She lived in a different world now, one that the silly teenage concerns of her peers (her former peers) just didn't touch. Why should she...?

She realized suddenly that she had been zoned out this entire time, and that Weston McCullough was now grimacing. "Oh God, I shouldn't've said anything, you're going to snap and kill me now, aren't you."

Danielle wondered what her face had looked like, for him to think that. "Nonsense," she said. "First off, all the single girls in the school would kill me if I did. And second, how would I help you with your pre-calc homework?"

"Uh... My... You're gonna help me?"

"Sure," she said.

"And it's not just a ploy to lure me somewhere so that you can kill me and hide the body," he said.

Danielle burst out laughing, and when she did, he did too. Not much of a laugh, just a few giggles, but it was still something.

"What time works for you?"

"God, I dunno," said Weston, "how about Saturday night?"

She gave him a grin. "You do homework on Saturday nights?"

Weston blinked for a moment. Then an embarrassed smile broke over his face. "Well, it's not like I've got anything else to do."

"How about... Saturday afternoon then," she said. "Just in case, you know. Something should come up." She gave him a smile, and he smiled back.

And something indeed came up. The pre-calc homework wasn't too hard, and Weston was clearly a smart guy; he grasped the principles quickly, and when he didn't, he asked good questions, ones that she could bounce off of quickly and explain where he'd gone wrong. And when they were done, she asked if he had been to the local pizza place, a pride and joy of the neighborhood, and he said he hadn't, and they talked and laughed their way through the evening. And somewhere in between the sitting and talking and trading pencils and papers and pizza slices and napkins and sitting closer to each other, it had become a date, so that when, at the end, he stood in to kiss her, she wasn't surprised at all.

It was impossible to keep things secret, of course; not in a place like Sheldon Oaks, where there were only so many places you could go. Within two weeks it was all over the school. "It probably won't help your reputation," Danielle told him. "You're an outsider because you're new here, and now that you're associating with me..."

"It's all right," Weston told her. "There's a few people who are talking to me. And, they ask if you're, you know... weird. And I tell them the truth: that you're perfectly normal."

"And they believe you?" said Danielle, a little more shocked than she'd expected to be.

"They believe me," Weston said, smiling.

It was so different than her previous relationship. There were butterflies in her tummy now sometimes, and a feeling of tingling thrill whenever he kissed her. She would spend more than an hour grooming, dressing, trying on this, casting off that, trying to look just right. She'd never before had someone she really, really wanted to please. With David, it had been easy: she could wear anything, whatever she felt like, and he wouldn't comment or complain; and if she did want to dress up, she never had to worry, because she knew his tastes so well. Even when he took her to dances, it had never been an issue. And even their love play... Well, they'd been doing it for years, hadn't they? It wasn't anything particularly outstanding anymore. David had been so comfortable to her—like a security blanket. It was nothing like dating Weston; with Weston, everything was newness.

He was clumsier than David, and his hair was coarser, but he was taller as well, and broader about the shoulders. There was a broad innocence to his face, like a puppy dog's, which was doubtlessly part of his appeal. Her parents loved him from the start, gushing over how polite and friendly he was, and her friends were ecstatic (if perhaps a tad jealous) that she had managed to snag the newest and most attractive guy in the school.

He wasn't David, that much was sure. Danielle was used to being the loud one, the one with the opinions, the one who usually got her way; but Weston had his opinions too, and wasn't scared to voice them. It was nothing like what she had had with David, where he would simply wait out her anger (if there was any) and then calm her down with logic and reason. At first she worried about this, but the Stantons assured her that every couple needed to find their own ways of making compromises, and as long as no harm was done, what was the trouble in voices being raised? After that she stopped being nervous when he told her how stupid she was being, and in fact started to tell him how stupid he was being. It was good stress relief for both of them.

Weston was much more athletic than David, who had never shown much interest in sports. He was fiercely competitive, and loved to win almost as much as he hated to lose. He was often busy with his intramural teams (he expressed no interest in trying out for the school teams, claiming the pressure would be too much), and that put limits on how much time they could spend together. Sometimes he'd show up muddy and sweaty and exultant (or not); sometimes he'd beg off, needing to go home for the relative peace and quiet there for whatever homework he needed to accomplish that day. Scheduling was touch-and-go most of the time, in a way she wasn't quite used to.

His physicality just added to his masculinity, it seemed. Touching him, embracing him, kissing him was a wholly different experience than it had been with David. For one, David was not all that much taller than she and weighed almost the same; he was a shrimp next to Weston. And Weston smelled more: of dirt, of grass, of sweat, all the good male smells that she had, actually, never had too much exposure to before, because David just never got that dirty. He was a neat sort of person. Weston seemed to have more important things to focus on. And there was a sensuality in his body, in his presence, that seemed born of his heightened athleticism. She was aware of his body in a way she had never been before.

And eventually she found out what it was that had been on his mind that very first day. "In Keterburg, I used to date this girl. Jodie. Jodie Wycroft." He had stared out into the distance for a long time, and Danielle had not said anything, merely snuggled closer into his arms to let him know she was listening. He was not one to talk about his past much.

"She was my first," he said finally.

The silence went on long enough that she felt like she should speak. "Your first what?"

"My first... Everything," he said. "First girlfriend. First kiss. First date." A beat. "First time."

After a pause, she asked, "Was she beautiful?"

"I... I loved her," was all he said, and Danielle understood.

"But...?"

For the first time he seemed to notice that she was there. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you're here," she said, with a smile to alleviate the solemnity, "and you're not with her. What happened?"

"Well..." He sighed. "My dad got transferred. And, I didn't wanna stay with my mom. So... We talked, and we said we'd try it long distance."

"Oh."

"But, within a couple of weeks of school starting, we... I got a call. She said..."

"I'm sorry," she said, to cut him off. "That sucks." She knew what Jodie had said. There was no need for him to revisit that pain by repeating it.

"Yeah," he said, and there was silence for several minutes.

"But... There was one good thing."

"Oh?" she said. "What was that?"

He gave her a smile. "I got you."

She snuggled closer to him, feeling the warmth of his chest under her cheek. "You did," she said. "And I got you."