Thanks for reviewing. Sorry if it's confusing. It jumps around a lot. Usually the + signifies a time change. It usually jumps from. Lucas+Brooke now Lucas+Brooke before. Sorry if it's confusing how lucas and Brooke are together in one part then the next paragraph they're not.

Today, the BrookeBevin, PeytonHaley arrangement is in full-force. People step out of the way, they press themselves against their lockers, and Lucas is at the end of the hall, watching us. Me. Watching me. Nathan is with him, and Nathan glares, but Lucas's eyes are bloodshot and have bluish bruises underneath. He doesn't step back.

He never stepped back, and that was always his problem.

Bevin smirks, elbowing me in the ribs, and my gaze locks on my feet and the cracked linoleum, just like always. Because I'm a coward, and I can't look him in the eyes. I never will again. I can't. I'm not allowed.

Four is indivisible.

"Checkcheckcheck check it, Bevin . . . that kid . . . right there . . . wait for it . . . look . . ." I've got my chin resting on Peyton's shoulder, my leg trapped between both of hers under the table, and the smooth, silky material of her shirt makes my skin slide into the hollow of her throat. She smells like apricot shampoo, watermelon conditioner, and the tutti-frutti Chapstick she bummed off the loser in her homeroom, all mixed together and covered with cucumber melon body spray. My elbow is resting on the table in front of us, sticky with spilled juice from one of the long-forgotten meals before our lunch shift started, and I'm clicking my pinkie ring on the edge of Haley's tray. Bevin is leaning against the wall, her head barely brushing the bottom of the window casing, popping blue Skittles into her mouth with her left hand while the right rubs Haley's knuckles. It's lunch, again, and we're not eating.

Our lives are measured in lunches. At lunch, it all goes down.

There's a kid, a girl, walking past the vending machine, ten yards from our table, behind Bevin and Haley so they have to turn their heads to look. Younger than us, she is, but we watch her every day, because every day she gives us something new to talk about. Today, it's the black tracksuit, with the jacket that stops just above her navel, exposing several rolls of fat covered in pasty, bumpy skin. It hangs out over the white hem of the sweat pants, and maybe it wouldn't be so bad if her skin didn't contrast so much against the velour. Last week, she pierced her nose, and it looks like a cancerous mole has randomly sprouted out of her right nostril. Kena, her name is Kena, and I know this, but we never use it. When she turns to walk away, you can see the fat bounce, and this is what we are waiting for.

I'm the one who noticed. I'm the one who pointed it out. And I don't feel bad about that, so I'm probably going to Hell.

Peyton is holding her breath, so my face doesn't move with her chest, and Bevin and Haley have turned sideways in their chairs to stare, to wait. No one is exhaling; I think we've all gone comatose. It must look that way, to everyone who watches us, and everyone watches us, always. Ten, nine, eight, seven, and she's starting to turn around. Six, five, four, and Bevin has her purple nails digging into Haley's wrist. Three, two, . . . one . . . and she moves, we all inhale deeply, falling into our own personal brand of hysterics. Peyton almost tips her chair over backwards, her face is flushed and splotchy; Bevin, jolted by Haley's sudden movements, chokes on the Skittle She's been sucking at for the past five minutes, clutching at her throat and coughing through tears of laughter; Peyton and I have our heads together, her arm around my shoulders, and our laughs blend together, alto-soprano, baritone-tenor, all at the same time. Her neck is slick with my spit, and the girl in the tracksuit is watching us, trying to work out what happened. She smiles, a small, pathetic gesture, and that almost makes me swallow my tongue.

We are so wrong. We are not good people, we should be punished, and we probably will be, but not now. Not today. Not by that girl.


"Be all that you can be - the world deserves it."

Today was Monday, and the green chalkboard with the hand-painted border of leaves and autumn vegetables in the window of the bakery had that written across it in perfect, loopy handwriting. Lucas was leaning against the butter yellow side of the dance building, one foot wedged between pieces of clapboard. He was wearing his blue and red Nikes, the nice ones, with the stripes on the heel and toe. I liked those ones better than the brown, and I liked the way the wind blew his short hair up into spikes. I liked the way the cold made his cheeks turn pink, and how he shut his eyes when cars passed by, like the exhaust fumes made them itchy. I liked the way he'd sometimes sit on the steps, and he'd let me rest my head in his lap, nose against his stomach, and he'd play with the ends of my hair.

Peyton was at work, then, but Bevin and Haley weren't sick anymore. They were back, but they spent that time together. It was their thing. This was five weeks after the first time, and Peyton had been making more money. Those minutes were Lucas's, now. That time was for him. He liked the way my hair slid through his fingers; he liked how it stuck to the sleeve of his shirt, stiff with static. He liked how I'd bitch at him about it, how he'd screwed up the style, and I'd never get it normal again, thank you much.

On that Monday, the chalkboard sign in the bakery next door said that thing about the being what you can be. That was the first day he let his whole hand go under my shirt. The Friday before, he'd gotten as far as pushing up the edge with his fingertips, drawing circles in the sensitive skin at the base of my spine, and the chalkboard had said, 'carpe diem - seize the day'. The Tuesday before that, he'd allowed himself to rest his hand, palm down, on the outside of my thigh, let himself feel the heat through my jeans, the navy blue ones with the faded patches on the knees and ass. The chalkboard said, 'God believes in you'. The week before that, he'd pulled my head onto his shoulder, wrapped his arm around my waist, kept his hands as far away from me as he could. The board said, 'live and let live'.

He always read them out loud.

I rolled my eyes, pretending like I didn't feel his hand, like I didn't know where this was going. I knew, I knew what boys wanted, I knew how they always pretend to care about something that meant a lot to you - they offered to walk you home from those weekend parties at the lake that went on too late, so that you wouldn't have to be alone in the dark; they'd offer to tutor you in the hard subjects, the ones with too many numbers and not enough explanation. Then they realized that there was no chance of getting any, so they suddenly didn't care about the possibility that you'd be jumped by a psychotic rapist, or failing grades.

The thing about the four is that we don't have sex. Not with anyone. We are four, and four works without a lot of significant others getting in the way. Haley had a boyfriend, once - he thought we were too close; he wanted them to spend more time alone, blah blah blah. She broke up with him and three months later, he switched schools. Four doesn't take commands from people outside the group. We deal with problems. We cut out the cancers that could tear us apart; we drown the rats who rock the boat.

I looked at Lucas's hoodie, my eyelashes got caught in the soft, over-washed fabric, and I snorted. "If I were all I could be, sweetie, the world would implode one continent at a time."

He laughed, and the vibrations ran through my face. "I think I could handle that, though. It'd be like watching a fighter jet kamikaze." His legs moved, so my body started to slip down, and he had to grab the back of my shirt to keep me from landing in a pile at his feet. It was quiet, a little girl came out of the building and stepped over us, leaving the seashell wind chime rattling behind her, and Lucas put his hand on the back of my neck, squeezing. "I was thinking . . . you want to do something this weekend? I dunno, just . . . hang out, or . . . like that? I mean, my Sunday's are pretty much booked - church, and all, my mom's a fanatic - but you know, Saturday is cool . . . if you want."

"Can't. Plans. Friends. Sorry."

" . . . we're not friends?"

I sat up, a little bit thrown off by that quiet question, and the sharp, hard edge of the step bit into my thigh. My hair was everywhere, screaming infidelities and taking its wear, and he looked so far into my eyes that I thought he could see through my head, into the parking lot behind me. "No . . . you have your friends. Remember? And I have mine. We aren't . . . it's not like that." I blew the hair out of my face, scratching at a cut on my ankle. "I'm sorry if you thought we were. Because. No. I'm not. We're not friends." That was when he cupped my face, the hollow cheeks and he tipped my head back until I thought my neck would crack.

This was the part where I figured out that his lips were better than Haley's, and that his tongue tasted like Pepsi, the kind Peyton liked, and peanuts, the kind Bevin hated, and a something that didn't register with any flavor I had stored in my brain.

It was nice. It was. New. It.

Wasn't four.

Lucas licked my lips. And I thought that my mouth was going to bruise, or swell, or something, because it felt as though all the pressure in the world had suddenly been thrust onto my face.

"Brooke . . . I like you. And I know you like me, too. So . . . I don't know why you don't consider us friends. Because that's what being friends means, isn't it? That you care about another person, you want them to be happy." He sighed, and the trail of saliva he left on my face felt like ice. "I hope you're as happy as you're pretending . . . cause . . . it's the weight that's gonna bring you down."

And all I could think of, was that his definition of 'friends' was fucked.