"I don't think you're a child."

I took a step towards her, smirking, “Elizabeth, I don’t think you’re a child. The angel who walked into that room earlier today with those beautiful big boobs of yours was ALL woman.”

She blushed at my response, suddenly self-conscious about her little outburst. “It’s nothing you said, it’s just starting to really get on my nerves the way the other girls tease me. I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

I held out my hand to lead her back to the party. “And I’m sorry I just assumed the other girls had to put you up to that fashion show. I should have known better when you started kissing me like that.”

Elizabeth’s cheeks turned an even deeper shade of pink. “I’d never French kissed a boy before, so I figured, what the hell? You’ve gotten pretty cute, and I knew it wasn’t gonna go anywhere.”

There was something about the way she said those final few words that crushed my spirits. She sounded so damned certain! She “knew” it wasn’t gonna go anywhere? Why couldn’t it go anywhere? What had started off as one of the hottest nights of my young life suddenly felt very cold.

A few weeks later, I encountered what was, by far, the worst side-effect of my new social circle. I had spent the last several months fending off constant requests from every asshole in the school who wanted me to hook him up with one of my friends. Football players who had been tossing me in trash cans less than a year ago were suddenly buddying up to me, sometimes even trying to bribe me if I would help them nail a girl. I couldn’t blame these guys for trying, but I refused to take part in their idiotic attempts at conquest with five people I legitimately cared about. Give a mouse a cookie, I figured. When one of the girls actually liked a guy, I’d always get out of their way, but my unilateral refusal to aid and abet utter douche bags didn’t make me any friends.

Quite the opposite, unfortunately.

On my walk home from school, I was ambushed by no less than five guys on the football team whom I had refused to help out with the girls. The worst of the bunch was the team captain, Charles. Everyone in school knew he had **** a freshman girl over the summer, but she was too ashamed to ever admit it to the police. As far as I knew, his buddies had never gone quite that far, but they were backing him up which made them just as bad in my book.

I had hated all of them since elementary school. I’d even fantasize about somehow miraculously attaining Tony Jaa level ninja powers and beating the shit out of the whole group while my classmates cheered me on. But no matter how many times you see it in movies, one guy just can’t hold his own against half a dozen.

At least I didn’t make it easy on them. Charles went home with a black eye, and when one of his friends tried to grab me I stomped on the guy’s hand and broke a finger. But nobody would say I won the fight. I spent the better part of a week in the hospital.

Still, karma got the better of my attackers in the end. One of Charles’s genius friends had filmed the whole attack on his parent’s camcorder, everyone’s face on clear display. He then dubbed some copies of it for them all at the school’s AV lab, not realizing that all my nerd friends ate lunch there. By the end of the next day, the police had a copy of that tape and my five assailants were going to jail for ****. I didn’t have to do a thing.

My week in the hospital was made a bit less miserable by merit of having five hot girls as my best friends. There was an endless stream of cards and care packages, and plenty of good company. I felt genuinely loved by all of them, even if it was a more platonic sort of love than I might have preferred.

I was due to leave the following morning, and feeling pretty decent aside from a few lingering aches and pains that were keeping me up at night. I had my own room thanks to a bit of lucky musical chairs with other patients being escorted around, which meant plenty of peace and quiet but also a fair amount of boredom.

I was just about to try for some sleep when the door opened and a nurse walked in to check on me...