“Then I think about Photoshopping a picture of Wolf and me together in the yearbook: Best Couple.In your face, mysterious ponytailed wench.”

“I turn to go, not wanting to be late, and almost run into a tray full of mystery meat."Where you going?" Wolf asks, his confident grin slipping. "I was about to join y'all.""Take my place,then," I say coldly. "Poor substitute, but whatever.”

“Wolf apparently holds me to some kind of moral standard that he himself doesn't even observe but thinks I should.”

“I sigh, feel the heat rise in my cheeks, and look at the clock. Wolf asks me to play a game with him-me! out of all the girls at our table!-and I injure him. Flick him right in the eye.”

“He makes lookin' good seem effortless. Like, he lives in that lookin'-good zone. I think I'll wear a long white gown and a short veil, and he and his groomsmen will wear sharp charcoal tuxedos. We'll get married on my farm and-"No, it's Ericka. She doesn't want to be called Ricki Jo anymore," I hear Mackenzie remind Laura.Oh,god. Wolf is looking right at me, wearing a lopsided, perfect, melt-me-into-a-pool-on-my-seat grin.”

“It was awful," I tell Luke at his locker. It's on the other side of the hall and I really feel like the air is cleaner over here or something. I almost suffocated trying to stuff my book bag into my own locker, squeezed right between Kimi and her voluptuousness and Wolf and his sexual-awakening-me-ness.”

“I take a deep breath and put on my best smile. You could sell ice to Eskimos, my dad always says, and looking at this crowd, I think I'm going to have to be quite the salesman.”