We walked to the house, my ancient Subaru sandwiched between two tiny economy cars, which were sandwiched between two SUVs. There was no hope of any car in that driveway escaping anytime soon, but that was okay. Devi’s parents knew she was staying at my apartment overnight, and my mom was fine with us going out as long as I never ever drove drunk and we were home “at a reasonable hour.” Her interpretation of “reasonable hour” and mine were probably different, but we’d hash out the details later, if and when I got into trouble.

As we crested the brick walkway leading to the front door, Devi reached into her over-the-shoulder bag to hand me a bottle of Boone’s. Her twenty-one-year-old cousin, Jakob, had offered to buy booze for us if she’d agreed to fill up his gas tank, which she had, and so we were the not-so-proud owners of terrible wine. I’d had a drink or two at parties before, but never a bottle to myself. For that matter, I’d never been drunk before but there was a first time for everything, and really, it was Boone’s. What could possibly go wrong?

Answer: a lot, but I wouldn’t know that until a weird aversion to the smell of eggs. A hard lesson learned that night: if you’re drinking, make sure you have a sober friend on hand at all times to keep your fat out of the fire. Or to keep your butt out of F-150 trucks at two o’clock in the morning with guys named Jack.

“Crap.” Devi pointed to the side lawn at a cluster of kids setting up plastic cups in lines on the picnic table. “Aaron.”

I frowned. “Hey, our first Skank One sighting. Is Skank Two with him?”

“Unfortunately.”

Aaron Weller had been my on-again, off-again, but definitely-never-would-be-on-again boyfriend. We’d been together since eighth grade, had broken up a few times over stupid stuff, but we’d always reconnected. That all changed when Aaron left his cell phone on my coffee table over April vacation and I got an eyeful of Samantha Wuchowski’s thonged butt in a text message. I wouldn’t have cared that she was sending a dude pictures of her butt cleavage. What I cared about was that she’d sent my dude pictures of her butt cleavage and had messed around with him for three months behind my back.

Thus Skank One, Skank Two.

They could wallow in their skantitude together.