I fold the ribbing on the sleeve of my sweatshirt to cover up the stain, then fold the other one to match. “See? All better.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. What if you run into Jon Priestly or someone equally hot?”

I grab the brush from my desk and throw it at her. “My run this morning kicked my butt and I’m too lazy to do any more than what you see here. Besides, I’m not going to run into him, or any other hot guy for that matter. And if I do, I’ll just walk on by because I’m not looking for a hookup buddy.”

I have no intention of repeating how I was down in LA when I visited my best friend Deena. In those few weeks, I slept with more guys than I’d been with the entire time I lived in Lincoln Falls. Which sounds impressive (or slutty, depending on how you look at it) but wasn’t all that much, because there were exactly two guys in high school.

And because I know you’re curious, they were:

1) Arturo De Luca, AKA smoking hot exchange student from Italy. (Yeah, I lost my virginity to a guy with an accent, which I have to admit is way better than Deena and obsessed gamer Perry Rogers on the floor of his parents’ basement. When she snuck over to my house that night to tell me about it, I actually plucked a Cheeto out of her hair.)

2) Chase Marquette, AKA all-time leading scorer for the Red Devils football team. Blond hair, blue eyes, and totally gorgeous. The darling of Lincoln Falls. Everyone loved him. Including me, or so they tell me. But honestly, I don’t remember ever loving him.

Cassidy’s phone beeps. As she’s reading the message, I look at my face in the mirror again and decide she’s right about the mascara. Grabbing it out of my makeup bag, I put on a few coats.

“Oh my God,” she says, looking at her phone.

“What?”

She scrambles to open her laptop. “More tickets went on sale for Sasquatch. A bunch of people are road-tripping over there and camping the whole weekend. Do you want to go? I’m going to buy tickets right now.”

“Sasquatch? The music festival?”

“Yeah, it’s on Memorial Day weekend at the Gorge.” Seeing the confusion on my face, she adds, “That’s an outdoor concert venue in eastern Washington on the Columbia River. Google it. It’s really cool. They’ll post the line up in a few weeks, but in the past they’ve had bands like Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers, Vampire Weekend, and Arctic Monkeys.”

I’ve been to plenty of concerts, but I’ve never been to a music festival before. “When do you need to know?”

“Like ASAP. I fucked up and didn’t get tickets when they first went on sale. I can’t even believe they released more. If you want, I can buy them and you can pay me back.”

“How much are they?”

Her fingers fly over the keys. “Three hundred bucks and change. But that’s for the whole weekend and it includes camping.”

“For one person or is that for two tickets?”

“No, it’s per person.”

I chew on my lip as I think about it. That’s a lot of money. I’ll have to check my account to see if I can swing it. “And you need to know now?”

“Yeah. These won’t last.” Her fingers are poised above the Buy button. “If you want, I can buy them now and if you can’t go, I’m sure I won’t have any problem selling your ticket.”

“If you’re sure you’re okay with that…”

“No problem. I’m just using some of my Christmas money anyway, so it’s no big deal.” Before I can say anything else, she stabs the Buy button with a manicured fingernail. “Done.” Then she rubs her hands together gleefully, like a villain planning an evil plot. “It’s going to be so much fun.”

While Cassidy showers, I grab the book I need to start reading for Comparative Lit. The Butterfly Lovers is the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet, written centuries ago. The textbook contains several versions of the story and we need to read all of them. Even though the paper isn’t due for a while and the stories are short, I want to get a jump start. By the time Cassidy returns, I’ve read two of them.

She changes into skinny jeans and flats and arranges a knit scarf around her neck.

“Is that new?” I ask, looking up from my book. “It’s really cute.”

“Thanks. Ryan made it for me for Christmas.”

“Your brother? He made that? Let me see.” She comes over and I examine the baby-blue scarf more closely. All the rows are even, the stitches uniform. Although it’s simple, it’s very well made. Makes me want to pull out my latest knitting project—or at least log in to Ravelry. It’s the only social network I didn’t quit. Figured Aaron and his stalkerish ways wouldn’t think to look for me in the knitting and crocheting community.

“Yep,” she says, continuing to mess with how it’s positioned. “A bunch of guys in high school first started crocheting really crazy ski caps in wild colors for themselves. Other kids wanted them, too, so they took orders and sold them. Now they make scarves and beanies, too.”

“That’s really cool your brother and his friends do that. Does anyone tease them?”

“Tease him? Ha. No one teases Ryan. No one would dare pitch him shit about anything.”

I can see that. The guy’s totally buff.

She eyes the canvas bag next to my bed where I keep my knitting stuff. My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was little. Although I’m not very good at it, it helps me to think I’m recapturing the person I used to be before my life fell apart.

“Next time he comes to visit, you guys could go yarn shopping together.”

I smile at the thought of a big, burly guy like Ryan in a yarn shop.

We grab our backpacks and leave the room. As I lock up, Cassidy removes the dry-erase marker from the whiteboard on our door.

“What time will you be back?” she asks.

I have to think about it for a moment. I don’t have this quarter’s schedule memorized yet. “Not till three or four.”

“I’ll be home earlier.” Back by two, she writes on the board.

We head down the hall, waving to a few people on our floor who have their doors open. Soon we’re outside and heading to the Commons. Cassidy dodges a puddle on the sidewalk. It rained earlier this morning and everything is still wet, reminding me that I should’ve put my running shoes next to the heater under the window to dry them out. I make a mental note to do that when I get back.

We enter the dining hall, then end up standing in line at the salad bar for a few minutes as we wait for a replacement batch of fresh lettuce.

“Have you heard from your mom?” Cassidy asks.

“Not yet.” I shift my weight from one foot to the other.

“Maybe it wasn’t—you know—his brother at the party.”

I cringe. She promised she wouldn’t mention it again. “One can hope, right?”

The fresh lettuce arrives and we make our salads. I pile on lots of feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and pepperoncini. Cassidy, on the other hand, goes for the soy cheese, mushrooms, and garbanzo beans. Taking our trays, we spot a table with a few people from our floor. Sara and another girl I don’t know are there, too.

The memory of how she talked to me the other night—like I was an idiot—is still fresh in my mind. One of my goals when I moved here was to stay away from toxic people. Right now, she tops that list. And even though I feel strange admitting this, the way she shamelessly fawned all over Jon kind of pisses me off.

Erik, Austin, and Brina are huddled over a textbook, so I’m guessing they’re heading somewhere to study when they’re done with lunch. Marla is texting. Sara’s friend is in workout clothes, so she’s probably going to the rec center. I’ve heard they’ve got some good classes, but I wouldn’t know because I like running outside. Sara, on the other hand, is looking all Taylor Swift with her wavy blond hair, floral print dress, jean jacket, and cowboy boots. Who knows what her plans are.

Before we get there, Cassidy whispers, “Can I mention we’re going out on Friday night to celebrate your birthday?”

I scan the people sitting at the table. “Yeah, I guess that’s okay. I doubt they’re all twenty-one anyway.”

We grab our seats and sit down.

“I didn’t know you knew him,” Sara is saying to Marla. She stirs her yogurt and takes a bite.

Marla’s light brown hair is piled into a messy knot at the top of her head, complete with a pencil sticking out of the middle like a single chopstick. “So when I say he’s trouble, I’m not just blowing smoke out my ass.”

“Who are you guys talking about?” Cassidy tears off a corner of her napkin and spits out her gum.

With an exasperated look on her face, Marla shakes her head. “Oh, Sara met this guy and—”

“Ivy,” Sara says, whipping her head around to face me.

Marla jerks sideways to avoid being hit by Sara’s hair, but she bumps into Brina, knocking her arm, and Brina’s fork clatters to her tray.

Keeping my face composed, which is pretty damn hard, I look at Sara. “Yes?”

Sara continues, oblivious to what’s going on around her. “You remember the guy that me, you, and Cassidy met?”

I take a bite of salad. “Mmmm-hmmm.” How could I forget? I can still see those dangerously blue eyes staring into mine. I may even have pressed my nose to his coat a few times this weekend and taken a few big whiffs. I’m not saying I did…just that it’s possible. You know, the migraine and all.

“I went to the tutoring center yesterday and guess who I ran into?” She’s playing with her hair, pulling it forward, creating a mass of blond curls on one side. If she keeps petting herself like that, she’s going to shed hair into her yogurt.

Let me take a wild guess. “Jon?”