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made you want to lean your headagainst his, stroke his hair, and say, “Everything’s going to be all right, Tillman Grant.”
    Besides a lot of wrestling in the grass, nothing ever happened with Tillman till fourth grade. I couldn’t help myself. We were stuck together in the classroom during recess—the teacher sentenced us to hard time because she overheard us cussing—and we started to get rambunctious as usual. I chased Tillman around and around the room, both of us jumping from one desk to the next, and finally one of the desks toppled over and he crashed to the floor. In the next second, I straddled his hips and without thinking at all, I leaned down and smacked a big, wet kiss right on his mouth.
    This is the part I’ll probably never forget till the end of recorded time—he reached up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Damn you, Ceejay,” he said, all disgusted. “I don’t want your ugly frogmouth on me.”
    That’s what he said! It’s not enough that I’m what I guess some people would say is a little stocky—just a little—but now I’ve got a frogmouth!
    I know a lot of girls would’ve burst into tears at that, but not me. No. I punched him right in the eye and then rose up and sat at the back of the class with my arms folded across my chest. Didn’t talk to him for the rest of the week.
    But the bad thing is, still to this day, I’ll look in the mirror at my mouth and see he was right. My mouth is too wide and my lips are too thin, just like an ugly frog. I try sucking in my cheeks and it works for a moment—I actually look almost pretty—but you can’t hold them in forever. Lipstick doesn’t help either. I’m a frogface, and kissing Tillman didn’t turn me into any princess.
    Anyway, his sister Dani lives in a trailer home south of town with her two-year-old boy, Ian, and whatever stupid boyfriendshe’s hooked up with at the time. Right now it just happens to be a weed dealer named Jace. Most of the people who hang out over there are the typical Knowles late-teens, early-twenties losers, and this night is no different. You know the type—they probably dropped out of high school and can’t keep steady jobs. Most of them I see around town all the time, but there are also some out-of-towners who came in to buy weed and whatever else Jace has to sell. They’re not the best types to hang around, but I’ll take them over the goodie-goodies of this town any day.
    When we get to Dani’s, everyone is packed into the living room and kitchen, drinking beer and smoking weed. Plus, some idiot brought some OxyContin, which is like this extra-high-strength prescription painkiller, so half the gang gets to walking and talking like they just stepped out of a bad dream. Don’t worry, I stay away from that kind of thing—I don’t even like smoking weed—but Gillis, Tillman, and Brianna get a little more messed up than what they’re used to. I’d drag them out of there, but Sophie still hasn’t shown up.
    At one point, Dani has little Ian asleep on the floor between a couple of chairs and Gillis accidentally steps on his head. Ian barely lets out a whimper, but Jace gets all pissed off and righteous and threatens to kick Gillis’s ass. Like stepping on the kid’s head is somehow so much worse than having him lying around in the middle of a cloud of cigarette and weed smoke. Nothing comes of the threat, though. As soon as Jace starts to get up, he loses his balance and falls back over his metal folding chair and lies there laughing so hard he forgets about Gillis completely.
    Having had only a couple of beers, I see all this as very pathetic, but not as pathetic as what Brianna and Tillman get up to later. Brianna is a big girl, and I don’t mean stocky like me. She’s B-I-G. So she dyes her hair black, wears a nose ring andblack, baggy clothes and black fingernail polish. You just have to know that’s not the look her parents had in mind when they gazed down into the crib at