I don’t really know. Why do you do anything when you’re seventeen years old? I guess it had something to do with being in the popular group at school. Knowing I was in demand, at the top, so cool, just so damn cool. I guess it was a feeling of invulnerability. What could happen to me, right? Mandy Groves had been doing it with Colin Crowe since freshman year. And the Everson twins—they bragged about the guys they’d had as if it was some kind of competition between them. And, of course, I’d slept with Will a couple of times, including that feverish afternoon he got his notice from Princeton. No big deal, right, when you’re popular and on top and immortal? And I guess all the while—all four years—I had the sneaking suspicion that I didn’t really belong in the popular clique. I mean, I fit in okay and was friendly with just about everybody and all that. But I always had the feeling I was tagging along with my friends, who were prettier and hipper and smarter and richer. Like they were tolerating me for some reason—and I wasn’t sure why.
