PROLOGUE

Giving Up

I gave up a year ago. Let's face it. Anyone who hasn't had a boyfriend by sixteen is doomed forever. Therefore it wasn't very hard for me to swear to have nothing to do with the male species. Friends, sure. But anything more? No. Not that it made much of a difference. The male species had already given up on me, so what I did was nothing new. Just no more flirting and laughing at jokes that aren't funny. No more pretending to be impressed at stupid things.

Any other person would have thought I struggled to keep my vow. Especially since Riley moved on and on and on and on like the Energizer Bunny—girl style. But it wasn't hard at all. I simply continued to live my life normally, and all was well my world without boys.

"Guess what?" Riley squealed.

I hated Riley for being pretty. Her looks were stunning. We're talking movie star, Miss United States beauty here. And she wasn't blonde either. No, she had dark hair with cascading curls and green eyes. But man, once a guy saw her, he never saw anything else again.

"What?" I asked.

I made a bet with myself that Riley had found a new boyfriend already. She had dumped Jake two days ago, cried for approximately one hour, and made a December Third Resolution to quickly get a new boyfriend. Well, she didn't actually make a December Third Resolution, but you get the general idea.

"I'm going out with Tim!" she cried excitedly, waiting for the enthusiastic smile she craved.

Faking enthusiasm is tough. Especially when you are completely unsurprised by the thing you're supposed to be enthusiastic about. So I smiled with fake-enthusiasm.

"Awesome."

Tim. Tim Harlow. The Tim Harlow. The only Tim in our entire school. Riley's new boyfriend.

Sometimes I wondered why she was still my friend. She was popular—I was not. People loved her—people thought I was strange. End of story. Yet she still laughed with me and cried on me and sought out my shoulder. Courtney and Lila would have killed to be in my place. They practically worshiped the ground Riley walked on. And there I was. Friendless, unpopular me hogging Riley. How selfish of me.

"And Jake was right there and everything. It was so perfect."

If there was one thing Riley liked more than boys, it was revenge. She loved to ask people out in front of her ex-boyfriends. Almost had an unhealthy obsession with it, you might say.

And I knew what was coming next.

"Alyssa, I need to hook you up with someone." She grinned and scanned the crowd.

No, Riley didn't know I had sworn to give up on the male species. Pathetic, I know. But if your confidant was someone like her, you wouldn't exactly jump to the occasion of informing her either. Even if I had told her, she would have laughed and thought I was joking.

My secrets are harder to share with Riley than they used to be.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Energizer Bunny. He belongs to the Energizer battery people.