I wasn't too thrilled with this new kid, Craig. He has the house to himself one whole weekend and he invites Sean? Sean Cameron, of all people. So I bail out. I can't hang out with that kid, not after what he did with Ashley.

Then he's all over Ashley. I mean, it's nothing obvious. But I notice it. Talking to her in class, taking her picture with the Polaroid camera. And then, to add insult to injury, he gets paired with her for the "Taming of the Shrew" skit thing. Him. Not me. That sucks, man. It really sucks.

But whatever. It's cool. I was paired with Hazel, and she's a lot of fun. I had to admit that. She wasn't so gothic and gloomy like Ash was these days. She was kind of dressing like a vampire.

Yeah, you know, I liked her look from last year a lot better. She was just so cute. The long hair, the pretty smile, the bright clothes. I just couldn't really wrap my head around this new look, this new Ash. But I loved her, I didn't really care how she dressed. I could ignore that.

Walking up to her locker and who's there? You guessed it. Craig. He was leaning against a locker and talking to her. Leaning! The locker lean! Shit, that was serious. He was totally into her, I could see it. I walked right up to him and gave him this look, the look that said Dodge wasn't big enough for both of us. His eyes widened a little and he blinked. He got it. If he didn't leave I was going to shove him up against the fucking locker.

"Uh, Ash, I'll see you later," he said, glancing at me, walking away. Ashley was oblivious.

"Okay, Craig, bye," she called, all light and breezy.

"What was he doing here?" I said, and she laughed.

"Jealous much?" she said, laughing at me, putting on more dark crimson lipstick, looking in the little mirror taped to her locker door. I was still looking at her all serious. She laughed again.

"He was just talking, that's it. He's my friend. I am allowed to have friends, right?" she said, and now the laughter had gone away. There was something serious in her eyes.

"Yeah," I said, not able to explain that I saw through Craig. I knew his intentions even if she didn't.

Dinners at Ash's house, hanging out in her room, and it wasn't like last year. She was writing depressing poetry and songs that I just didn't really get, but she was acting like we were totally on the same page. And at the dinners she was always pressing me for opinions when she knew I didn't want to rock the boat with her parents. Well, her mom and Toby's dad, I guess.

I wouldn't see the distance between us, not consciously. It was easy to blame Craig, damn new kid with his troubled past and moody rock star behavior that all girls seemed to fall for. I just wanted things to be like last year, when Craig was god knew where, and Ashley dressed like the school princess and not the school ghoul. I wanted light pink nail polish on her nails instead of the flat black. I wanted her to wear just a little blush and blue eye shadow instead of all the crimsons and charcoals.

So maybe I pushed her to be what I wanted her to be and ignored what she wanted. Maybe I glared at Craig every time he even got near her, and maybe I was angry with him for reasons I couldn't even define. Maybe I was having more fun with Hazel, and being with Ashley was becoming more and more of a struggle. I just felt like if she could be who she was, if we could kind of go back to that sweet popular girl that I fell in love with, then things would be okay.

Yeah, it was true Craig hadn't even known her back then, hadn't known her any other way than she was now. He was all over her like flies on shit, so he must like her as she was. That's how he had me beat, I knew it. But it pissed me off. She was my girlfriend. She was my past and history and present and that new kid had better just back off. That's all I could say, all I could think. He'd better back off.