I try to organize my limbs. I want to look sexy, how I'm supposed to look. I want him to want to do this again-not right now, but someday. Wasn't that the whole point? Was this time even okay? My underwear are twisted around one of my ankles and I grab for them.

He's not even looking at me, though. I know guys don't like to cuddle afterward or whatever, but he's already got his jeans back on and he's running his hands through his hair, straightening himself up. Where did the condom go? How did he do that?

I reach out and try to gently pull his face toward mine for a kiss. Instead, I end up sort of lurching at his shoulder, grabbing it for support. I hear myself giggle and don't even realize it's me for a second.

"Hey, babe, steady," Dylan says. It sounds so sweet I want to cry. That feeling you get at the back of your throat, right before the tears come. That lump. That happens-a split second after I'm giggling, I think I'm going to start sobbing.

Not a moment too soon, Dylan's hands are around me, pulling me, holding me up. It's not quite a hug, but it's enough. It's long enough for me to take a breath.

"You ready?" he asks.

I'm standing there in my underwear-sweaty bra and halfpulled-on panties-and I have to push my hair out of my face. But I nod, and I think I smile.

"Okay," he says. He gives me a little kiss, softly. Nicely. "I'm gonna go back out there."

His face is close to mine and I can just hear him over the music. I want to reach out to him again. I want to cuddle, even though that's probably lame. I feel so close to him, I feel so warm inside, but really cold, too, in all the places he's not holding.

But he's not holding me at all now, he's leaving. He's pushing the dresser away from the door.

There's a blast of light and sound from the hall, and then I'm alone.

"OMG, you're such a slut!" Brielle is practically screaming at me and laughing, and I would be afraid of the rest of the house overhearing, but the music is still on really loud. "On the floor?! God, who knew D-Bag was such an animal!" Her plastic cup waves in the air as she half dances, half hugs me. "Woooo!"

I can't help it-I'm blushing like crazy. I'm embarrassed, but proud, too. I did it. I feel like my blood is pumping in double time, like my whole body is thumping along with the music.

Brielle has me sort of pinned in a corner of the living room, which is packed with people, but across the mob I manage to spot Dylan playing flip cup with a bunch of guys from the baseball team. It's the last night they can all drink without really worrying about getting in trouble with the coaches, and it looks like they're going to make sure they have enough beer to last the whole season. Still, when I see Dylan-even just the side of his face, just for a second-my heart sort of convulses. My stomach tenses like I'm going to throw up, but in that good way, like when you're just so excited about everything you can't handle it.

"You need another drink!" Brielle shouts. "Follow me!"

I kind of always thought that losing my virginity would be a little more . . . private, I guess. Like Dylan and I would go to a rustic little cabin in the woods somewhere, and the room would have a fireplace, and we'd stay up all night talking afterward. Not that my mom would let me go to a hotel with Dylan, obviously. She'd have to pay for a babysitter to watch my brothers while I was gone, for one thing.

Anyway, Brielle is totally taking care of me. We stumble toward the kitchen, and from the flip-cup table, Dylan catches my eye and gives me a little smile. I think I'm going to just melt into a puddle right there on the kitchen floor, but then Brielle's shouting again and putting a plastic cup in my hand.

"This is the best party EVER!" she shouts. She yells it just as there's a little break in the music, but instead of laughing at her, the whole room bursts into wild hoots of agreement.

Just as the music starts up again, Brielle grabs my arm and says, "Okay, you have to tell me everything! Everything everything. Every. Thing."

I laugh and take a deep breath, wondering where to start, wondering if Brielle is going to think I did it all wrong, wondering if maybe we should talk about this later, after the party, but at the same time wanting so badly to talk about it all right now.

But just when I open my mouth, Brielle's hand grips my arm harder, too hard, and her jaw drops. For a second she seems totally sober. "Oh. My. Freaking. GOD," she says. She's staring at something across the kitchen, and I follow her eyes.

It's Emma. She's talking to Jacob Walker, and it looks like she's upset about something. Surprise, surprise. He's got his arm around her all comforting and shit-God, that girl will do anything for attention.

"Skank." I think it's Brielle hissing the word for a minute, and then I realize it was me who just said it. It feels good. I say it again. "What a total skank!"

I must be kind of loud, because a couple of girls I don't know that well turn around and look at us. Brielle shoots them a glare and turns to me, all serious. "Don eeeven worryaboutit," she slurs. "God, I mean, who even uses Facebook anymore?"

"Shh!" I hiss at her. "You know we're not-" I don't get to finish my sentence because now she's pulling herself up to sit on the counter, knocking over a stack of plastic cups in the process. I've had too much to drink, definitely, but I know better than to announce to the whole room that we set up the Fat Beyotch page. It's already been taken down by the system administrator, but we heard at school that Emma got pulled into the guidance counselor's office, and who knows what she said in there.

"WhatEVER," Brielle is saying now, swinging her legs and kicking the cabinets with the pair of Jimmy Choos that I happen to know are her mom's. "I'm so sick of talking about that nutcase. And now you'n D-Bag are all"-she holds up her hand and crosses her fingers-"and then"-she wraps her other hand around the first one, intertwining all her fingers, then starts waggling her tongue.

I burst out laughing again, despite myself. "Stop it!" I squeal. She's, like, making out with her hands now, doing these gross moaning noises. The girls who were staring at us before look like they don't know whether to laugh or run away.

Brielle starts grabbing at me, going, "Oh, Sara! Oh, Dyyylaaaan!" and I'm trying to push her off, but still laughing, and while we're basically wrestling my eyes move to the other end of the room again.

Emma and Jacob are looking at us, obviously a little stunned that we're acting like such freaks, but whatever.

And then, finally, it occurs to me.

That bitch can't call me a tease anymore.

"C'mon," Brielle says, clumsily hoisting herself back off the counter. She stalks across the kitchen and plants her hands on the island where Emma and Jacob are standing. I follow her, setting down my plastic cup and tossing my hair over my shoulder. It might not be red, but it's long and curly(ish) and I kind of like how tously it looks after my . . . um . . . time with Dylan.

"What are you doing here?" Brielle says to Emma.

Emma ignores her, though, and talks to me instead. "Do you do everything she tells you to do?"

"What did you just say?" I snap back, but at the exact same time Brielle goes, "What did you say, bitch?" so it actually sounds like I'm parroting her.

Emma cracks up, and so does Jacob, which is totally not fair-he was our friend first-and Brielle takes another step toward the corner of the island, closer to them.

"I don't know who invited you," she growls at Emma, "but I know who's gonna kick your ass out of here."

It's not her best line, but it's effective. Emma gives Jacob this look, like a sad Disney princess. Jacob shakes his head, like we're all so immature and he's just disappointed in us, and puts his arm around Emma again. He looks back at me and Brielle and says sarcastically, "Really nice party."

"Really nice skank," Brielle sneers back, but Jacob is already guiding Emma through the kitchen to the front of the house.

Brielle turns to watch them go, then holds her cup of beer up in the air, as if she's toasting them.

"I hope Jacob likes herpes!" she yells.

Everyone's still laughing as Jacob and Emma walk out the door.

By midnight Brielle is mostly in the bathroom throwing up, so I'm mostly in there with her. I only really see Dylan one more time, just as he's leaving, but he gives me this long kiss and says, "Talk tomorrow?" and it's enough. In the morning I feel like I've slept maybe five minutes, but I don't care. I pad down to Brielle's giant kitchen and make coffee while she's still asleep.

When I bring it back upstairs, Brielle is propped up on her pillows, but still wearing the eye mask she put on last night. "That smells ahhhmaaaazing," she says. She pushes the eye mask up and holds out both hands, and I put one of the mugs into them.

"Two Splendas and cream," I say, sitting on the other side of the bed with my own one-Splenda cup.

"Bless you, you beautiful slut." She takes a sip and closes her eyes. "I might actually be dead right now."

"Actually, I'm not quite dead yet!" I joke, but when she doesn't laugh I remember it's my mom and my brothers who like Monty Python, not Brielle.

"Uch, you're shouting," she whines. "Are you going home now, or what?"

I open my mouth to make another joke, or argue, or something. But I actually should get home. And Brielle's clearly not in the mood to download my Dylan experience. I press my lips back together and swallow my disappointment.

"Yeah," I say, standing up. "Just wanted to make sure you had some caffeine."

"You're the best. Lock the door when you go." Brielle's eyes are still closed, so she doesn't see me smile, which is just as well. It's kind of a crappy smile.

But when I'm in my car I think about Dylan again, and I smile for real this time. For the whole drive I'm grinning like an idiot, though it fades again when I pull my Honda into the driveway at home.

My mom isn't one of those parents who goes into the office on the weekends, and sometimes I wish she was. Instead she's always trying to fix something around the house, and my brothers and I get roped into the lamest chores, like cleaning the blades of the ceiling fans (gross) or boxing up our old toys or electronics or whatever so she can take them to the Salvation Army. Or to the garage, more likely, where they become some other weekend's cleanup/donation/dump project.

It snowed and then rained last week, but now it's kind of warm out, so I'm not that surprised when I see Alex and Tommy holding a giant trash bag under a ladder while my mom, big rubber gloves on her hands, scoops gunk out of the gutters and tosses it into the bag. They're all laughing about something, and I pause before I get out of the car, thinking first that I'd rather do anything but help clean the damn gutters, and second how happy they look, like some postmodern Norman Rockwell painting. The Single Mother, it would be called. She has her hair up and her big red Huskers sweatshirt on, the one that used to be my dad's, one of the things he left behind when he moved.

Alex is telling some story with lots of goofy faces and hand gestures. But then he lets his side of the bag drop and I hear Tommy squawking, and the moment is over.

"Sara, could you get another bag out of the garage?" my mom calls as I'm finally climbing out and slamming my car door shut.

I hear Tommy ask, "Hey, can I go watch TV now? You said I could when Sara got home!"

"No, I said you could go inside and start your homework," she corrects him. As I carry the new bag over, flapping it open on my way, I see Tommy frown, obviously trying to decide which option is less awful.

"Can I scoop muck for a while?" he asks. I can tell he's already asked her this at least a million times.

"Tom-Tom, you know that ladder is too high," I say so my mom doesn't have to. "But I bet next winter you'll be big enough to crawl all over the roof, fixing tiles and cleaning the gutters and sweeping the chimney-"

"We don't have a chimney!" Alex protests, but he's already in a fit of giggles at the very idea. He turns to Tommy and squeals, "You'd get all covered in sook!"

"In what?" Tommy asks, with his best I'm-twenty-months-older-and-therefore-so-much-smarter-than-you expression.

"Sook," Alex says with a sigh, like he's just so tired of explaining everything. "You know, like Santa. And Mary Poppins?"

Our mom smiles nicely as she sends a gross glob of leaves into the bag I'm holding and says, "Sweetie, do you mean soot?"

"You dumbass!" Tommy yells.

"Hey, don't call your brother that!" I say, and at the same time my mom yells, "Language!"

Tommy mutters "Sorry" in Alex's general direction, and looks sheepish for about three seconds before he asks, "Now can I go inside?"

"Sara and Brielle?" Ms. Enman looks up from the note she's holding, the one Jeremy Miner just handed her. He's already disappeared back into the hallway, off to messenger some other note to some other teacher, win Hall Monitor of the Year, be the AV club captain, die a virgin, etc.

"Yep," Brielle says lazily. She rolls her eyes, like she's been expecting her name to be called, but I'm actually dumb enough to feel surprised. When we get to the principal's office Brielle smirks at me. "What a lame effing job this lady has," she says. "You know they've pulled half the girls in our class in here already. God, it's like, just hire a stupid IT person, figure it out already."

And that's when I finally get it: the Facebook page.

My heart drops to my shoes, but two seconds in Principal Schoen's office and I realize Brielle was right. The woman has no idea who set up the Fat Beyotch account. She's just rounding up the possible suspects, two by two. Including the two who yelled at Emma Putnam on Friday night.

So I can't really focus on what's going on, can't figure out if I'm in trouble or annoyed or what. I'm in this, like, free-floating panic about what this might mean, and I don't really hear what the principal says at first. Mostly I'm staring at her shapeless gray hair and wondering whether this would go on my permanent record. Could we even try to explain how much Emma asks for it? She acts so pathetic all the time, and then she goes off and starts texting your boyfriend or calls you a tease or crashes your party, and no one calls her to Schoen's office.

"Girls, I know Emma has had a hard time making friends," the principal's saying. In my shock I've just been watching her face, but so far it's been totally calm, almost ridiculously nonthreatening. Finally some of her words start to sink in, and I start to feel like this is all going to blow over. "And I'm not accusing you of anything," she says. "If you could just make more of an effort, you know the school has a strict policy against bullying-"

I jump a little at that word, but Brielle already interrupting. "Principal Schoen," she says carefully, her voice dripping with sincerity, "we've really been trying to reach out to Emma. And I'm sure whoever did this Facebook thing was just trying to joke around, you know? I mean, Sara and I tease each other all the time, right?"

She looks at me and it's eighth grade speech class all over again-I nod vigorously, but I can't think of anything to say, can't force any words out of my mouth.

"So I just know that whoever did this," Brielle goes on, "probably thought it was a way to make Emma part of the group, right? We all do that stuff to each other. I know it sounds crazy, but it's just funny-I'm sure it was only meant to be funny."

Principal Schoen looks like she really wants to believe what Brielle is saying. Hell, I want to believe it, and I know better than anyone what a truckload of bullshit it is. I almost wonder if Brielle believes it herself-though I guess the fact that she definitely believes, or maybe somehow knows that Schoen and the rest of them can't actually catch us, is more than enough to give her voice that confident tone.

But when we leave the office-after the principal asks us again to befriend Emma and report any bullying we see at school-Brielle is pissed.

"I bet that little tramp stamp gave Schoen a list of names," she says, storming down the hall toward her locker. The bell hasn't rung yet so the hallways are still empty, and when Brielle spins her lock and yanks the door open so hard it bangs into the one next to it, the sound echoes. "This stupid school is so scared of my parents they wouldn't dare pull me in for questioning unless she told them to. I am so gonna get her for this."

"Yeah, well, unfortunately I don't think we're playing dodgeball today," I say, in a weak attempt at a joke. We'll see Emma next period, in gym, but this week has been the badminton unit. Like any of us-or anyone at all, for that matter-needs to know how to play freaking badminton.

"Holy schnitzel, you're right!" Brielle turns to me with her mouth open in a surprised grin. "Why didn't I think of that? Jeez, girl, you are a genius."

"What? I said we're not playing dodgeball."

Brielle leans in and says in her movie-announcer voice, "Baby, where we're going, we don't need balls."

The tension of the trip to Schoen's office finally breaks, and I start giggling like an idiot. Brielle grabs my arm and practically carries me to the locker rooms, like I wasn't going there, anyway. She flings her purse onto one of the benches and paces up and down-the bell rang on our way here, but we're still the first ones to arrive. It gives Brielle time to rant some more. Her brief moment of humor is already long gone, so when another fit of laughter rises up in my throat I swallow it back down.

"First she comes to this school and acts like a total spaz skank, steals everyone's boyfriends, cries like a baby when people tell her to back off, flirts with your boyfriend, shows up at my party totally and completely uninvited, and then tattles to the principal about a stupid joke that she totally deserved?"

Brielle doesn't stop moving while she talks, and her face is all pink from anger. It's all the stuff about Emma that I hate too, but I just let her talk. I lean against a locker with my arms crossed, remembering how I hung out with Dylan a little bit last night and I feel like we're even closer now-added to being close-close at Brielle's party-but the whole Emma text thing still bothers me. It bothers me more, actually. Every time I think of being with Dylan, I get this feeling in my chest, cold and hot at the same time. Like I'm going to explode, literally. And when I think of someone else being with Dylan . . . just the idea makes me want to throw up. The cold and the hot and the exploding all mix together, and it's like I can't breathe. It's really intense. It kind of scares me, actually.

Girls start coming into the locker room and there's suddenly lots of noise. When Brielle sees Emma walking in, alone, she stops pacing and comes to stand next to me. We wait quietly while Emma walks over to her locker, and just as she passes by us, Brielle goes, "Nice shirt."

Emma's just wearing a pink tank top, nothing special, though it is a little tight, I guess. Whatever, everyone knows what Brielle means. Just the way she says the word shirt somehow says everything.

But just in case it wasn't already clear, Brielle adds, "Was the slut store having a sale? Oh, wait, I guess everything there is already cheap."

Emma has made it to her locker, but she's gone all stiff, and she won't look at Brielle. Everyone else is looking, though.

"Hey, Emma, I'm talking to you," Brielle says. She puts her arm around me and goes on. "Done anything fun on Facebook lately? Or, wait, you're too busy banging other people's boyfriends, aren't you?"

Emma's head jerks around, finally, and she looks genuinely confused. Or maybe it's just a scared look.

I feel a weird rush of power. The opposite of eighth grade speech, the opposite of sitting in Principal Schoen's office. More like that night in the Taco Bell parking lot. I tilt my chin up at Emma and say, "Yeah, what is it with you? You know Dylan just laughs at you, right?"

"I mean," Brielle adds, "who would want to be getting stupid texts from a bitch like you when they already had a girlfriend like Sara?"

Emma's eyebrows are kind of furrowed, and for a second it looks like she's going to cry. But she then looks away from Brielle right at me and says, "Wow, you keep track of who your boyfriend texts? Sounds like a nice relationship."

In a flash I find myself in front of Emma, too close, the hot-cold-vomit feeling rising up in my throat. I don't even know what I'm about to do until it's already done and I've pushed her. It's just a few inches, but the lockers make a loud banging noise, and I hear every girl behind me gasp.

"Listen, slut," I hiss, right in her face, "just stay the hell out of my life, got it?" It's like my voice is coming from someone else.

But I'm the one who sees Emma's eyes up close. At first she shrinks, doing that poor-little-girl thing she practically has down to a science. Then I see her narrow her eyes at me, just for a second. She gives me this look that clearly says, Yeah, we'll see.

And then out loud, softly but loud enough for everyone to hear, she whines, "Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, okay?"

Her eyes are big again, and tears are coming down her face, and she raises her hands up a little, like she's giving up, like I won. I wonder if I really saw that look she gave me a second ago. I can still feel it, like a punch to the gut, but she looks so sad now, anyone looking at her would swear I was crazy. . . .