A/N - Thank you so much for all your reviews, and to anyone who favorited this story it means so much to me. You guys rock! I hope this next chapter is up to par! I'm gonna try to do a chapter a week. We'll see if I can manage!

Goals. What are they?

Chapter Track: Jack Off Jill – My Cat

I wake up with a headache to rival the destruction of Pompeii and instantly wish I hadn't drank so much. The clock beside my bed says its thirteen after twelve in the afternoon and I curse to myself because I hate sleeping in past eleven. My body feels stiff and bottomed out, and I'm dying for a cigarette. And a fucking toothbrush.

The balls of my feet tingle when they touch my carpet. I have a vague recollection of Tammy Nelson and groan. This always happens to me when I go to parties. I do too much, and in the moment it seems like a fantastic idea and then I'm crawling like fucking gollum out of my sheets and I wonder why the fuck I even went at all.

I stagger to the bathroom and run the faucet over my hands, cupping the cool water in my palms and splashing it resolutely on my face. I blink it out of my eyelashes and try to remember how I managed to get back in my own bed as I reach for my toothbrush and toothpaste. I suppose I drove myself home, which is equally mortifying. I should really start walking to these shindigs if I'm going to-

My toothbrush clatters into the sink and there's blue foam dribbling down my chin as memories from last night flood across my brain like a broken dam.

Oh. My. Fuck.

The faucet is still running as I stumble back into my bedroom, diving for my cellphone and dropping it about seven times before I manage to drag my thumb across the screen. Seven new text messages. Oh, please, for the love of all that is good and holy do not let any of those be from...

But they're not.

They're from Christophe.

I sigh in relief and flop back on my mattress.

Okay, okay. So maybe no one heard about what happened. Maybe Craig didn't say anything to anyone. Maybe he didn't tell anyone about-

What even was that? A fucking kiss? I guess in the grand scheme of things it's not that big of a fucking deal but I can't help but feel like someone's just sat me down and informed me of the coming apocalypse. I rub my eyes and open my inbox.

Christophe has nothing even remotely redeeming to say and I delete every text before I bother reading them in full. I can't help but still feel a little raw about that whole ordeal. Even when two people are only just sort-of-dating, I like to think that there are rules. Obligations. Levels of mutual fucking respect that begin with having the courtesy not to mouthfuck your shitty ex boyfriend in the middle of a crowd of people. Drunk or not, people pay attention to that shit.

I sigh and drop my phone onto my pillow. It feels like I've just woken up from a really elaborate dream, but the residual smell of booze and the memory of Craig's violet eyes reassures me that I'm wide awake and it is morning and last night things happened and I have to be held accountable for them. This make me want to curl up with my My Little Pony throw blanket and eat a bowl of Fruity Pebbles in front of the TV downstairs. It's 11:07 in the morning and there's reruns of Scooby Doo on Cartoon Network.

What I do instead is pull on my favorite jeans and a clean tee shirt and head to Emily's place.

Emily answers the door in a pair of Batman underwear and I look away to be polite. I didn't get any pictures of her in her bra this morning, which means that Lola is probably lurking around in her bedroom.

"Fuck me, dude. What the fuck?" she groans, and I can tell I've woken her up. I can't really bring myself to care as I believe my predicament to be a little more important than her getting her beauty rest.

"I made out with Craig Tucker," I lament, and drop my head onto her shoulder. She looks surprised for a second before she lets me in, saying "I hate those fucking pants" as we step into her hallway. She stalks off up the stairs, presumably to put on jeans and I seat myself like a waiting room patient on her couch.

When she comes back she's got Lola in tow, and they're both looking at me with grim expressions. I drop my head back against the sofa and sigh.

"I was so drunk. I hate parties. This is your fucking fault."

"Oh, please. Let me call you a fucking wahmbulance," Emily snaps, plopping down on the cushion beside me. She folds her arms and waits like I'm gonna say something. But I can't think of anything reasonable or mature to pull out of my ass so what I do instead is stick my tongue out like a petulant child.

"Cute," Lola mumbles, and sits on my other side. I notice she's got bruises down her neck and roll my eyes. I don't mind that they do coupley shit just so long as I don't have to see it. It's like, you see two people and you know they fuck and it's kind of cute to think like, Oh, cool, those two people. They get it on. Good for them. But bruises and bites and shit? That's like, happening right in front of you. Like they got it on and you probably just missed it and now you have to deal with it like it's not there. I shift in my seat uncomfortably and turn my nose up in the air.

"Did anyone see you do it?"

I look up at Lola with tired eyes.

"I don't know. No. I guess not," I relent, sensing already that Lola is about to say something that I will more than likely vastly disagree with. She shrugs a slender shoulder, looking at me with calculated green eyes.

"Then don't worry about it. Tucker doesn't talk."

Lola does make a fair point. Craig Tucker is notoriously low-key. I'm pretty sure I didn't even know what he looked like until the ninth grade, when he took his hat off for a school picture and everyone within a five mile radius tuned into the fact that the guy's a fucking hipster Adonis. He is the Ian Curtis of North Park High, and I know people who would sell organs to be in that guy's fucking circle. The funny thing is, I don't think Craig really cares that he has a circle. I don't think he really cares about anything at all.

But he is a good kisser.

The thought occurs to me like one of those 'aha!' moments in cartoons—with the fucking lightbulb, and shit. The big "Did you know that?" of the Bill Nye variety, and I'm staring at my two leading ladies with my mouth wide open. I'm half expecting them to put something in there, and I guess that's why I close it just as quickly, arms folded over my chest.

This is definitely news.

This is big.

This is…

Unexpected.

I look up at Emily, brimming with the overzealous need to inform her of what has just occurred deep down in my dearly departed brain. She raises her eyebrows, and I can feel Lola's green eyes on my back. I lick my lips and dig my nails into my thighs.

"He kissed me back."

The rest of the weekend passes kind of like a trip to the beach. My mood is pretty rotten, mostly waves of intense anxiety followed by the childish desire to bury myself alive. By the time Monday morning rolls around, I'm running on about three hours of sleep and my hands are shaking so bad that I feel like I'm in grade school. Luckily, no one seems to have been informed about my drunken tryst with Craig Tucker, so I skate through my first few classes relatively judgment-free.

I'm not sure how I really feel about the whole situation. As much as I enjoyed the kiss, and as satisfied as I feel knowing that to some extent, Craig must have enjoyed it, too (I recall there being serious tenting), I can't imagine anything more coming of it and in retrospect I did lose a valuable fuck buddy in Christophe—who I intend to ignore until he realizes he's done something wrong and takes me out to dinner. So, sexless and frustrated, I have come to the conclusion that it's best to just pretend that Craig Tucker doesn't exist and move on with my life.

I mean, it isn't like it actually matters. I'm way too old to get hung up and locked on—I haven't done that kind of shit since middle school. I could even say that I'm mellow these days. Totally fucking chill. But I can't help but wonder if Craig's thinking about the kiss, too. Clearly he told that chick not to say anything, and I guess she hasn't, or maybe nobody cares. Maybe everyone knows about it but it's like so underwhelming that nobody really gives a shit. Maybe they do give a shit, and I just think nobody is interested because I don't want to feel like the spazzy weird kid all fucking over again. Not that it fucking matters, what people think.

What Craig thinks. I mean, what does Craig really have to say, anyway? Dude had a fucking boner. Didn't he? Maybe I didn't give him a boner. Maybe his girlfriend gave him a fucking boner, and then I came in and rubbed my stiffy all over his leg like some kind of overexcited dog and now everyone in our grade is going to think I'm some kind of raging pervert.

I get impatient and attempt to tug my thoughts out through my air, but that just makes my scalp hurt so I try shifting in my seat and thinking about sex. Maybe if I get horny enough I'll tell Christophe how pissed off I am and speed up our inevitable recovery by a few days. Or maybe I can get Gregory to suck my fucking dick in public and then we can square. Even fucking Stevens.

My mood remains crummy and scattered all the way through third period, when I decide to grab a nap on my desk. It's not as easy as I'd like it to be for me to fall asleep, and when I do I dream that my hands are paws and that I have a wagging tail.

I'm woken up by the school bell and the burning eyes of my teacher who is looking at me like one might look at a well-read grapefruit. Like maybe I have some potential, but it's never gonna go anywhere because of who I am and thus my presence in her class is a waste of valuable resources. I smile at her in the nervous, innocent way that I've learned how and slink out of my desk.

As I step into the hallway, I realize how odd it is that I don't have a single class with Craig this year. Not that I'm complaining, it just seems strangely fortunate that after the stunt I pulled I get to avoid him easy peasy at school. Although, maybe, if I'm really lucky, I'll never have to look at him again. Maybe we can make it through all of senior year without ever noticing one another's existence, and when I run into him at the AMPM ten years from now we can smile like we didn't spend five minutes of one Friday night in high school making each other's dicks hard.

Or five minutes of me rubbing my hard dick against his irrelevantly yet equally hard dick.

I picture my face in the dream, so awkwardly attached to the body of a small dog and kind of laugh, kind of grimace. Maybe Craig is having similar dreams. Maybe Craig is having dreams about this kiss. Maybe last night we were lying awake at the same time with our hands in our underwear, trying to remember the exact taste of one another's mouths.

Or maybe Craig Tucker doesn't give a shit that I kissed him, and no one else in the fucking universe does either.

I daydream about this until I round the corner to my locker, when those hopes are immediately dashed by none other than Craig Tucker himself. He's leaning his ridiculously tall body against my locker like he belongs there, and he has his headphones in—kind of shuffling his feet, kind of nodding his head, kind of tapping his fingers. I freeze mid step, my knee locking up as my foot reconnects with the floor. The results is me lying face down on the linoleum, tears welling up in my eyes at the throbbing agony that is my kneecap, which has surely shattered into a thousand pieces upon impact. I think that maybe its high time someone sued this fucking district for the level of disregard to the health code. Laying down fake tile over concrete does not a safe floor make. I groan, shoving myself onto my knees and rubbing at my eyes before anyone can see that I've actually sprung a leak like a goddamn pussy. Craig is watching me with strangely calm eyes, his hands inside his jeans pockets. I wonder if he's come to punch my lights out, or if he's just decided that now that we've kissed my locker is his property and I'll have to snatch up my books and move them somewhere else. Maybe Kenny McCormick will share his—it's not like he keeps anything in there. Except weed. And condoms. And a bible that's missing about 600 pages.

I frown and pull myself to my feet, still wobbling from where the floor decided to get personal with my knee. My books don't balance right in my arms, and I drop one of them on my foot and kind of stagger, huffing in exasperation and picking the thing up with a little more force than I needed to. Craig's not looking at me anymore, maybe out of courtesy. Maybe out of disgust. Whatever it is, I decide I can't exactly turn tail at this point. And walking past him isn't really an option. And if I don't face up now he'll just beat me down outside of school and out there, there really aren't any rules. I decide after a moment that even the Prince of Passé can't really start anything in the middle of the hallway, and make a slow approach.

Craig glances up when I'm about three feet away and my heart makes a valiant attempt at ejecting itself through my mouth. I glance around, hoping that I'll see Em, or Lo, or Jen lurking in the hall somewhere but they're annoyingly absent. When I finally relent that my best friends aren't around to defend me from a proper ass whooping, I look back at him, feeling exasperated.

I open my mouth to say something like "Hey, fuck off" or "Hurry the fuck up" or "Convictions, Tucker!" but before I even get the chance to think about what I'm going to say to him he's got those laser eyes boring into my skull and I just kind of swallow whatever it was I was planning on saying and stare into the face of imminent doom.

"Who's Junk?"

It takes me a second to realize that he's talking to me and I nearly drop my books again. I eye him warily, unsure. As much as I want to believe that there is nothing hostile about this conversation, I've heard and seen too much of this fucking town to not have my guard up. Craig doesn't seem bothered by my defensive stance, and plows on without my reply.

"There's a sticker on your car. It says Junk. Who is Junk?"

My brain kicks back into gear and suddenly I'm annoyed. Because, first thing's first, what was this asshole doing looming around my car, and secondly, since when did he give a fuck?

"What does it matter to you?" I snip, yanking open my locker with a little more gusto than was probably necessary. The contents of my locker are a total hodgepodge, and I don't feel nearly as swish as a bunch of old coffee cups and Mrs. Fields cookie wrappers come tumbling out onto the floor. I bend down to pick them up as quickly as possible, shoving the garbage into my school bag as though it belongs there. I hear Craig snort and I stand up indignantly, having only overlooked the trajectory of my locker door by about a mile as I smash my forehead directly into it and let out a sound like a dying giraffe. Craig watches this happen with something like a smirk on his smug face and I want to slap it off. I don't have the guts to do anything like that, though. So instead I trade out my environmental book for AP Psych, and avoid looking in Tucker's crazy cat eyes until I really don't have a choice. Mostly because he's just staring at me, about four inches from my face.

"Is it your band? McCormick says you're in a band."

"Uh. Yeah. Yeah, It's my fucking band. Well, I mean. Not my fucking band. Music doesn't belong to anyone. But, it's the band I'm in. I play in that band. Called Junk."

Craig Tucker smiles and I feel placated all of a sudden, like the gesture alone has smoothed over my anxiety like a pin roller. I find this bothersome, as no one in the world has ever crammed my heart back into my chest cavity when it was so valiantly attempting to crawl out between my teeth just by smiling at me.

"When do you guys play?" Craig asks, and he's twisting one of the strings on his chullo hat between his fingers with the same air that girls use when they're examining their finger nails. I wonder if he's having a bad day, because I only ever see him wear the thing when he looks like he hasn't gotten any sleep. It occurs to me that maybe I've paid more attention to him in the last few years than I've realized and I go a bit red in the face.

"We have a show on Friday," I snap, and then curse myself for giving out that information so freely. What if he told people not to come? Or worse, what if he decided to come himself?

"Cool. Where?"

Like I'd tell you where my show is, you cretin I think, and I stick my nose up in a huff before I reply,

"It's at the old train station. On the platform. Ten o'clock."

"Neat. Maybe I'll come."

"Yeah, cool," I say, and before I can really come to grips with what I've just done he's peeled his lanky body off my locker and stalked off down the hallway. I can hear the sound of his headphones from twenty feet away, and I think of shouting something petulant like "I hope you go deaf, asshole!" but I think I probably listen to mine louder and slam my locker closed instead.

I'm leaning against the wall of the Park Country Station ticket booth, and my cigarette tastes like shit. It's Friday, and I'm wearing black slimfit jeans. Emily finds them less distracting, apparently, and since she has to stare at my ass for our entire set, I guess she's got the say-so on the subject. The woes of being the percussionist, I think, and knock the ash off the tip of my grit.

I always smoke a few for nerves before a set, but I'm having an unusually high amount of anxiety about this gig in particular and have gone through half a pack already. My mind tells me immediately why that would be, but I'm still in pretty fervent denial that Craig Tucker's possible appearance at this event would have any effect on my mood what-so-ever. Who gives a fuck what Tucker thinks?

Even if he is the hottest boy in school.

Even if his lips did make my toes curl.

I sniff and toss my cigarette onto the pavement, crushing it under my leather boot.

"You better be ready, fuckface."

I hate when Jenny says shit like this. It makes me feel like she's about to walk me off the goddamn plank, or throw me into the Lion's den, or leave me sitting alone at the welfare office, or something equally irresponsible for a friend to do.

"I was born ready," I try to say, but my voice cracks like I'm twelve and she flips me off. I kind of want to run for the hills as we near the platform, and I nearly do except Emily grabs the scruff of my Bikini Kill tee-shirt and shoves me out in front of the crowd.

It seems like every teenager in the Park County area has gathered on the old train tracks, cramming like sardines into the narrow drop off below the platform. I can still remember when trains used to come through here, and feel irrationally nervous for half a second before I push those nerves aside and try to focus. Focus. Because even if everyone's looking at me, I've done this before. Because even if Craig Tucker did show, I know how to play a fucking guitar.

My guitar is waiting for me, resting in an unassuming position against my amp. I think for a second that if I could get my old Les Paul into lingerie, I'd fuck it. Fuck love. Fuck romance. It's all a fucking illusion—there is only me, my electric, and crotchless panties. I sigh and pick her up off the ground, slipping the strap over my shoulder. The weight of my baby works like a Xanax. I'm calmer than I've been in weeks, and I feel like I can think clearly. My thoughts come at a slow, reasonable place and I have time to experience each of them before they flit off somewhere else. I think this is what it's like to be normal, and thank God for the riot grrrl scene and cheap drugs.

I'm actually thinking this might go really well. It's too dark for me to see anyone's faces properly, so I can't really tell who's showed up at this thing and who hasn't. That's good. I hate when I know people I know are looking at me. I hate being looked at, period. I feel like when people look at me they're passing judgment, and since I don't know what it is they're thinking when they pass said judgment I just get really worked up and throw hissy fits. No one's looking at me now, though. Not tonight. Not with Lola in that outfit.

She's wearing a pair of bubble gum pink short-alls over a black lamé bra, with these Hello Kitty Chuck's and the word SLUT painted across her stomach in glitter glue. I kind of want to give Jenny a thumbs up for that one, because it looks fucking cool. With her long, straight hair and her fucking headband, Lola has got to be the most bangable chick in Colorado this evening. And me, I am practically invisible. Incognito. And tomorrow no one will recall if Junk's guitarist was a pumped up teenage boy or a really intense lipstick les and I will resume my life as a seventeen year old nobody and that will be all peas and carrots for me. Peas and carrots for everyone really because if anyone ever tried to ask me about our music I'd probably stutter like a moron and puke on their shoes. I cannot handle attention from peers, especially people I'm not familiar with.

Someone flips on the platform's fluorescent light, and without much warning at all, Jenny barrels into a story about a girl who sewed up her pussy so that men couldn't touch her cat, and how the cat was really handsome and well groomed and eventually became some sort of world renowned riot superstar, until one day it jumped over the moon and ran off with Cheese because it liked the way Swiss junk smelled.

If I'm being honest with myself, Jenny's stories kind of freak me out. When we first started this band, I used to have nightmares about some of the shit she'd write on her blog. She's always been fond of fucked up cat stories especially, and I can't count on two hands how many bad dreams I've had about having my dick cut off by a whiskered cat-fiend with a custom guitar. The crowd seems to eat them up though, and as she continues on about some gender confused spoon, I come in with a riff. And then another. And another.

And just as I'm falling into the groove of the cover we're about to do, someone flashes a light across the crowd and I can see Craig Tucker in the very back, arms folded as he leans his stupidly tall figure against the fence.

My first instinct is to suffocate. To simply refuse breath, and let my tongue swell up until no air can possibly come through and die right on the spot where no one will have the wits to resuscitate me. My next instinct is to get angry, to throw my entire body into these next chords and show Craig Tucker what a total axewound he is for even thinking of coming to this fucking gig. My final instinct is to be flattered, and I decide instantly that it's my most stupid. Because being flattered means I wanted him to come, and wanting him to come means I was hoping he'd be impressed, and needing to impress someone as seemingly unimpressable as Craig Tucker is enough to make me forget the entire song like I've never held an instrument in my entire life. Emily is laying into the drums behind me, and Jenny comes in on bass, and I know that I'm next but all I can seem to comprehend are Craig Tucker's catlike violet eyes and I turn and heave right onto the cold pavement next to my foot. The crowd is cheering, I'm not sure if it's for me. Lola is screeching into the microphone about Pussycats, and I stare at the floor with my hands totally stiff. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad. Why would he come to this? Why does Craig care? I'm sure that I haven't seen Craig at any show I've ever been to around here. Which means…

Which means what exactly?

I grunt, closing my eyes. Just play the riff, Trevor. Just play the fucking riff.

You know this song, asshole.

You know this song.

I sink my teeth into my lower lip and begin to play the chords. I can taste blood welling up on my tongue, and I know it's dripping down my chin, and the pain in my mouth is all that keeps my mind off of Craig and more on the phenomenally more terrifying ass whooping I'll receive from the girls later if I totally fuck this up. We make it through our next four songs this way, and when we close out our set and make way for the next group, Twolip, Emily claps me on the shoulder and says something about being a supertrooper but I'm too dazed to really reply. My stomach is churning and my lip is burning and there's blood all down the front of my Bikini Kill tee-shirt.

Why would he come to see this? Why does Craig Tucker care about my fucking band? About the band that I am in, since music doesn't belong to anybody? Why does Craig Tucker care about anything to do with me, at all? The last time I checked this guy was an animal-hoarding sociopath with a penchant for Red Racer reruns and Mary Jane. Okay, so having a couple of Guinea Pigs doesn't exactly make you an animal hoarder but the point is, is that this guy has no interest in the niceties of human interaction and suddenly he's stalking me.

Okay, he's not stalking me. Exactly. But it seems a little out of character for this douchebag, and since the idea that he's actually interested in me just because I kissed him is inconceivable, I decide he must just be trying to fuck me around and that really pisses me off. I may not be the most mentally sound individual on the planet but I have fucking rights and fucking feelings and just because I have junk doesn't mean that they can't be wounded by some asshole being a fucking dick about a fucking stupid drunk kiss. I think of saying something to the girls about this, but they're all so charged up about the performance that we've just done that me being a Debbie seems pretty inconsiderate, so instead I grumble, "See you guys" and step away from the platform. They all seem to understand that I'm in the middle of a manstrual cycle and don't follow after me.

Twolip begins to play and I know that I won't run into anyone on the way to my car. Everyone and their fucking sister loves Twolip, because the lead singer's got her nipples done and always wears wet tee shirts to show them off. I kind of revel in the fact that I won't have to see any dickweeds tonight, or any drunk asslickers who will inevitably assume that I am a very flat-chested dyke and try to take me home. Home. I'm dying to be there. I wish I could disappear from where I am now and just pop into my fucking bed, pajamas on and all. I want to wash my face and maybe smoke a cigarette out my window and maybe jack off and then maybe go to sleep. Or maybe browse Web MD and see if I can prevent this mouth wound from becoming septic. Maybe watch some porn, and then jack off, and then Web MD and go to sleep. Maybe face, porn, jacking, Web MD, ice cream, cigarette, and then pass out?

I'm rearranging this routine in my head when I realize that the night isn't going to go that way at all, because Craig Tucker is once again leaning against my property like he belongs there, and I have the sinking feeling that this time I'm not gonna fucking escape.