I pulled a face. “They sound like bitches.”

“They were.”

“You don’t have to worry about stuff like that with us,” I reassured her. “We’re not like that. Well...unless you came to a party dressed as a slutty Hermione, but I’d only be angry because that isn’t true to the books.”

Jessica laughed and we grinned at one another. Something glowing and growing between us. Then Kim yelled at us from outside the entrance to the shopping center.

“Come on, guys, by the time we get there Matt won’t even be an Aries anymore!”

“OK, so do I look more casual if I slurp from the front of my mouth? Or the side?” Kim positioned her striped straw into her heavily lipsticked lips.

Only Amy took the question seriously. “From the side of your mouth initially,” she said, nodding. “But then, once you start talking to him, move it to the front of your mouth.”

“OK, so like this?”

Jessica and I shared another look while Kim trialed her sucking technique. To be honest, it was hard to taste my milkshake over the cloud of fumes congregating above our booth. We all wore at least four different kinds of perfume, spritzed from Boots testers up various parts of our inner arms, looking for our “signature scent.” We all jumped whenever anyone pushed through into McDonald’s, then giggled. The manager shot us dirty looks. It had not gone unnoticed that we’d made our four milkshakes last over an hour. Matt was late. “By about twenty minutes,” Kim said, making me quite certain she really should be served a restraining order. The doors swung open and she let out a doglike squeak. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God, it’s HIM. Be casual, eyes down.”

I was kind of deliriously excited by the whole plan. I had literally no skin in the game, as that particular gang of boys were about as sexually enticing to me as a bunch of rats wearing human clothes. Since I’d got sick, my sexual awakening had been more like waking up from a series of afternoon naps—where you sleep too long, and wake up confused about what time it is, and still feel really exhausted. Sometimes I felt no pull to any guys at all, and quietly wondered if I was a lesbian, or a potato, the only two options available on the current agreed spectrum. Other times, I was feverishly horny, yet the source of my crushes were unequivocally unreciprocated, maybe out of self-protection. I’d narrowed my two options down to Francesco, a very good-looking Italian boy in the lower sixth; and Leonardo DiCaprio. I was slightly worried Leo would be put off by my scars though.

The boys ordered their shakes and wandered away from the counter, so I waved at Eric from my chemistry class, and said, “Hey, Eric.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Kim whispered.