“I don’t mind. It’s all ancient history anyway.”

But it wasn’t. Mac doubted she could hear the hurt that resonated even as she attempted flippancy.

“In middle school, the boys started snapping my bra in the lunch line. It became a contest to see who could get to me the most times in a day. I started carrying my books around in a heavy backpack so they couldn’t get to my bra.”

“Doesn’t that count as assault or something?”

“Reporting them would’ve only made things worse for me.”

“That’s so wrong.”

“I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but I got my period in eighth grade, and within six months I was a D. Suddenly, every boy in school wanted to date Maddie Chester and her big boobs.”

“Did you go out with any of them?”

“There was this one boy. . . John.” Her voice went soft, her tone wistful. “He was really nice to me. For months he walked me home and carried my backpack. He wouldn’t let the other boys snap my bra. I thought he was different.”

Mac’s stomach began to hurt. He so didn’t want to hear this. With every tale she related, the mountain before him seemed to get a little steeper and the potential fall that much more sheer. “But he wasn’t?”

“Turns out all that time he was pretending to be my friend, he was really hoping to get his hands on my breasts. The first time I let him kiss me, he went right for second base. He was quick, and before I could even react, he had his hands under my bra, mauling me. I’m pretty sure he . . . you know . . . in his pants.”

Mac uttered an expletive under his breath. If that guy walked into the room right then, Mac would’ve beat the hell out of him.

“He was the first to kiss and tell. It was all over school the next day that he’d scored the first feel of Maddie Chester’s famous boobs. After that, I faked sick for a week so I wouldn’t have to face them.”

“But eventually you had to go back.”

“Uh huh, and everyone looked at me differently. That was the start of people thinking I was easy.”

“It’s just so unfair,” he said, pained for the defenseless girl who had been betrayed by someone she considered a friend.

“Since then I’ve never known if a guy was interested in me or in them, you know?”

“I can imagine.”

“It got worse in high school. The boys were all over me, and the other girls hated me because I was so popular with the guys.”

“Sounds like it was lonely for you.”

“It was. After awhile, I got sick of being alone all the time and decided to go out with one of them.”

“How’d that go?”