Marc was anything but athletic. Tall and slightly heavyset, he would have made one hell of a linebacker based on his build, but sports weren't his thing. Marc had always been more of the geeky type, enjoying video games and comic books.

Marc's room, similar to Josh's safe haven, had a big screen TV sitting on an entertainment center that held many cubbyholes, all of which were filled with various gaming systems. From the classics, like Sega Genesius and Super Nintendo, to Sega Dreamcast, then leading up to the modern systems like PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, and GameCube. Sitting off to the side, but still in perfect sight of the TV, was his computer. It was the ideal setup for gaming and everything in between—being able to play video games while still being able to roam the chat rooms.

Online chatrooms were an amazing escape in which you could talk with random people from around the world, anonymously. Marc was one of those people who never signed off; he simply put up the "away from my computer" tab. Unofficially, he held the world record for the longest days online.

Sitting in his room, legs propped up on the computer chair, he played Super Smash Bros on GameCube, while trolling the online chatrooms. My Chemical Romance played loudly in the background making it almost impossible for him to hear anything, let alone a knock on the door.

So Tony, after giving up knocking, tried to call him. Of course, Marc couldn't hear a thing.

"Open the goddamn door," Tony said as if he were just talking to himself—which for all intents and purposes, he was. Growing tired of waiting for Marc to open up, he walked around the side of the house to the front door. Giving it a little wiggle, he had no luck, growing frustrated.

"What the fuck," he muttered, looking through the windows to see anyone was walking around. Then he remembered that Marc had said his parents were away for the week.

In a final attempt to get inside, he walked around to the rear of the house, where Marc would stand outside and smoke. His parents knew he smoked cigarettes; they were old school in the sense that they didn't really care. They both smoked when they were his age, and knew if they fought him on it, that would only drive his motivation to do it more. Their one rule was no smoking in the house, so he always went to the deck.

Hoping it would be unlocked, Tony walked up to the back door, opening it without even the slightest of trouble. Marc hadn't even shut the door all the way. "Dumbass," he muttered.

He walked into the house and then Marc's room, where his friend was sitting in his computer chair, back facing him. Without a second thought, even though he could see that Marc's focus had been on the game on the TV and not the computer screen, he screamed out, "You've got company, put your dick away!"

Marc quickly turned in the chair and yelled, "I'm sorry, I can't stop, it feels too good!" He made a lewd hand gesture, all while holding the GameCube controller.

"Fuck you! You're one sick bastard, you know that?" Tony exclaimed as he walked by, Marc still making inappropriate gestures.

"How the hell did you get in?" Marc asked, confused.

"Why don't you answer the damn door?"

"I didn't hear you knocking," he replied nonchalantly as if there would have been any other answer.

"That's because you got the music too damn loud. I could hear that shit from across the street walking out of my backdoor. I thought someone was getting murdered and they turned the music up to drown out the sound of the screams."

Marc chuckled, then grinned. "So, you decide to walk instead of run. Well, thanks for just letting my pretend murderer hack me alive, all while you take your good old time." He stood from the chair. "Come on, I want to smoke real quick before Josh comes."

Standing on the back deck, Marc pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver Zippo lighter with a heart-gram on it, the symbol of the Finland-based gothic rock band H.I.M. He lit a cigarette then began to play with the lighter, attempting different tricks when he heard the house phone ring.

Flinging the door open, he ran through the house trying to find a portable phone, all while still holding his lit cigarette. Panicking, he realized he could smell the fumes from the smoke beginning to linger inside. "What the hell?!" he yelled, turning over all the decorative pillows and cushions, dropping to his knees to look under the couch.

"Fuck it," he screamed, powerwalking back towards the door, only to see the phone sitting on the kitchen counter. He grabbed it, pressed "talk" to answer, pushed the door open, and made it back to a safe space before breathlessly saying "Hello." His voice sounded like a middle-aged, overweight person who had just run a mile.

"Damn, you really need to stop smoking," the light and heartwarming voice of a girl said from the other side of the phone.

"It's not because I smoke. It's because I just lit a cigarette and then heard the phone ring. I had to run, find it, and get back outside before making the house smell." Marc explained.

"Well, if you didn't smoke, you wouldn't have that problem, now, would you?" the girl, Payton, said with sarcasm. "I'm surprised you ran to answer the phone, or that you even heard it for that matter."

Marc, still trying to catch his breath, continued, "My parents are out of town, and I thought they were calling. They get a little bent out of shape when I don't answer."

"Well if you answered your cell, maybe you wouldn't have to rush to grab your house phone."

"Fuck!" Then it hit him—his phone was still in his bedroom next to his computer.

"Here, talk to Payton. I'll be right back," Marc told Tony as he took one last puff of his cigarette before setting it in the ashtray holder.

"Where are you going?" Tony asked as Marc tossed him the phone and took off.

"I'll be right back!" he yelled, running into the house.

Marc tore apart his room trying to find his cell phone; for the life of him, he couldn't remember where he had left it, since it hadn't been next to his computer as he originally thought. As he relentlessly searched, in walked Josh.

"What the hell are you doing?" Josh asked, laughing, and looking around at the destroyed room.

"I lost my phone again. I don't know how; I know I just had it."

"That's the big emergency."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Tony called, said that you needed me to come over asap. That you needed my help."

Marc's "oh" face quickly turned into a smile. "My brother's on his way back from the store. I thought you could lend us a hand."

Josh just glared at him. "Fucking Tony."

"No! Fucking Chasity! Tony didn't do shit. That cheap asshole wouldn't even chip in for the eggs."

"I told him not to tell anyone."

"Tony didn't tell me shit. Myspace told me everything I needed to know. Like to tell Scott to get jumbo eggs and three packs of the mega roll toilet paper, and three hundred plastic forks."

Marc hit a few buttons and pulled up Chasity's Myspace and AIM accounts. As soon as Marc opened her Myspace page, Scotty Doesn't Know began to play in the background.

Josh began looking at her profile, realizing she had changed her entire Myspace, far different than when he last looked. She had deleted every photo of them. Not that there were that many to erase, not that it should even come as a surprise, yet it kind of did for Josh. As he read the words written on her page, it took everything he could muster to hold back his emotions. Sometimes words unspoken, but written, burn worse and sting longer. This without a doubt was one of those times.

"I'm sorry, man," Marc said as Josh stared blankly into the computer screen, wondering why she wrote that. Was it true or a reputation stake, drawing first blood, ensuring she came out on top of the breakup as the winner?

"What the fuck?" Josh muttered, unsure how to feel.

"She metaphorically kicked you straight in the balls and is making you the laughingstock of the school. You can't honestly say that you don't feel that burning desire in the pit of your stomach to destroy something beautiful." Marc paused for a split second, enhancing a dramatic effect. "Like her mother's amazing vegetable garden, with the reddest, most delicious homegrown tomatoes."

"I can honestly admit, I can't stand her mother and it's becoming so clear where she gets her bubbly personality from." Sarcasm overwhelmed his demeanor, making it ever so clear that no matter how much he trying to compartmentalize, he was taking the breakup harder than even he thought he would.

While Marc was planting the idea of a clean break, and doing something bold and uncharacteristic, allowing Josh to fully cycle through the process, Jade—on the other hand—was trying to mend fences, indicating some breaks are worth repairing.

"Believe me when I say, don't rush it, you only have your first time once. As cliché as it sounds, it's true," Jade told Christy, sorrow in her voice. "You never forget your first."

"You've told me a lot about your sexual experiences, some things I wish you didn't. Although you never mentioned anything about your first," Chasity said, pondering all their previous conversations.

"Don't worry about it," Jade said trying to brush off the topic and move on.

"Come on, after everything you've told me, this story truly can't be that bad!" Chasity went on, pushing, trying anything to get Jade to tell her secret. Jade rarely kept the truth from anyone, let alone her—until now, which only drove her curiosity even more.

Chasity stared obnoxiously at her, gawking, waiting for her to begin the story.

"What?" Jade replied, hesitating. "Okay, fine." She sighed.

"Freshman year, at my old school I was one of the only freshmen to get asked to the junior prom," she began, her face lighting up like a tree on Christmas Eve. "His name was Cody— he was the sweetest guy. We had the same lunchtime; that's how we met. He would get the same thing every day, and we would run into each other a lot. More often than not, it was because I did it on purpose to try and get him to notice me." She smiled, blushing a little.

"You had a crush?" Chasity said in awe. "Here I thought you were a real-life Regina George."

"It took almost three months before he even said hello to me, but that's the only word he needed to speak. By the time I finally worked up the courage to ask him if he wanted to eat with me. He said okay, follow me." Caught up in the story, Jade didn't pay Chasity's mockery any mind.

"You made the first move?" Chasity said, surprised.

"Well, he wasn't going to—at least, I never thought he would have. We ended up getting lunch in the auditorium that day, and he showed me his secret spot. One only he knew about."

"His secret spot, that no one knew about? And you were the first girl he ever took up there?" Chasity said back to her with serious disbelief, for not even a young Jade could have been that naïve. Jade shot her a "fuck you" look, indicating she shouldn't go there.

"Cody was different," she continued. "He wasn't the same as the other guys at the school or even the college ones that would sometimes come around. When we would hang out and talk, he always looked at my eyes, not my chest. Even when I purposely wore a low-cut top." She smiled, considering no guy she'd ever met could resist the urge to take a glance, especially when she tried everything to send his eyes in said direction.

"Sounds me to like he's too good to be true. Hell, even Josh would look. He even asked me to take pictures on my old Kodak camera once," Christy said, interrupting Jade's story. It was maybe for the best, since all the memories started to rush back to her and were becoming a bit overwhelming. Although the least thought about when looking back on relationships, a love story's origins possess the strongest emotions.

"His secret spot became our secret spot," Jade went on. Thinking about it, she pictured their spot. A long-abandoned communications box office once used for school productions, partly for the lighting team to get a good vantage point, and for the drama teacher to see his masterpieces with a bird's eye view.

According to what Cody had told her, no one had used that box spot for years. He said the final person to ever step foot in it before them had been the last great school theater director the county would ever see, Mr. Richard.

Cody's older cousin had attended the school years prior and told him the story of how Mr. Richard had died up there while watching his final play. The school had shut it down immediately after, deeming it a memorable piece not to be touched or tampered with. Of course, that was if you actually believed the stories. Rumor also had it that the school had a basement with an amazing in-ground pool, which no one had ever laid eyes on.

"It was the perfect spot, the one place you could be completely alone, yet surrounded by some of the happiest people in school!" Jade went on to say. She would know that better than anyone. "Our first date, our first kiss, first time he went to second base." She paused for a moment as she could tell she was getting ahead of herself. She takes a deep breath. "That first day we ate there, we were about to leave, and he stopped me and said, 'Will you be my girlfriend?' " Jade's eyes started to water, but she kept her emotions in check.

"Don't tell me you lost your virginity while the drama club was rehearsing Hamlet," Chasity muttered out laughing.

Jade chuckled, finding Chasity's joke slightly entertaining. She laughed it off and kept telling the story.

"No, it was the junior prom. He came to my house an hour early so he could see my parents, and we could take pictures, the whole nine yards. He pulled up to my house, knocked on the door. Of course, my father gave his speech, which was strange, to say the least."

"Did they do the Bad Boys II thing?" Chasity asked, making light of the conversation.

"No, my dad was surprisingly way more down to earth about the whole thing. He told Cody of course he knew there would be an after-party and that I would want to go. That he was okay with it, just have me home by midnight, untouched and unharmed. Cody, being Cody, told him he'd have me home with ten minutes to spare and gave him his cell phone number, along with his friend's cell phone number in cases of emergencies. Looked him right in the eyes and said he would never let anything bad happen to me." Jade smiled. "He really went all out."

"And you still slept with him? I would have thought after pulling something like that you would have given him the boot."

Jade paused for a moment, staring down at her hands. Her hard, bitchy façade temporarily disappeared. "Cody wasn't only my first." She paused, just about to reveal her truest self, let all the walls come down, but she quickly caught herself and switched gears back to the usual Jade. "He was an upperclassman with a Camaro. Not to mention he made me the only freshman at the prom," she said in her most artificial tone. Putting on her biggest, feigned smile, she pretended as if he were nothing more than a pawn to her. "I know I always say sex isn't a big deal," she went on.

Chasity interrupted her quickly and without remorse. "Your AIM username is Thatslut20!" she said, smirking. "Your bio, and I quote, says, 'I probably fucked your boyfriend.' " Chasity chuckled at the irony of Jade downplaying her views on causal sex. Jade rolled her eyes.

"Point being, if you're dying to explore, there are other ways to do so," Jade said in a heartless and malicious tone, one only a best friend could get away with without sounding like a complete and utter termagant.

Chasity noticed her sudden and irrational mood swings and wondered what she'd said or done to throw Jade for a loop. After having a minor moment, Jade went completely silent—which was very uncharacteristic of her.

"Are you alright?" Chasity asked, uncertain how Jade was going to react, uncertain if she should have asked at all.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" Jade replied.

Chasity stared at her for a moment. "You seem slightly uncharacteristically prudish."

"Come on, I was kidding." Jade paused for a moment. "Well, partly. In all honesty, the only reason I was pushing for you to lose it was because of Josh. The way you always talk about him, the way he's always fucking looking at you. Not just staring at you, because you're looking extra fly or something, but gazing into your eyes, that soul-crushing puppy dog stare. Sometimes it's a little overbearing, nauseating even."

"I guess, I mean... I'm not sure I even really love him," Chasity confessed. She looked down at her feet before getting the courage to make eye contact with Jade. Something was off, and she could feel it.

"How do you know?" she asked. "I mean, it's not like there's a checklist or a gauge. Something that measures noise frequency, equivalent to feelings. I'm not a penguin, for fuck's sake." Frustrated, Chasity begins to lash out as if everyone possessed the magical answer and refused to share it with her.

"The secret is, there is no magical answer. If there is, no one has told me either." Jade saw her answer wasn't very helpful, so in a last-ditch effort, she tried to explain the unexplainable. "If I had to try and put it into words... it's a feeling. It's being comfortable enough to tell them anything and everything. Accepting them for their truest self and believing that they will do the same. It's knowing they're imperfect, and accepting it, because... life without them would be meaningless and empty."

"Fuck..." Chasity said, looking up at the sky, her head completely lying back. "I could never be truly open with him... about so much... I remember when we first met, he said he was against weed, and would never smoke it, that he doesn't like to hang around people who do." She paused as she reminisced, playing the conversation back in her head. "He asked me if I did, and I told him no, I never have." She let a chuckle out. "The first thing he asked me about myself, and I lied."

"You smoke weed?" Jade asked her, confused because she had always thought that Chasity was against it, or at least kept her distance from it.

"No. I mean, I did a few times. Then I met Josh. I liked him, so when he told me he didn't like people who did, I pretended I never had and haven't since." She paused for a moment and pondered. "Maybe we were just too different, and it's not just about the smoking thing. It's everything. I always felt like I had to ask myself what Josh think would before doing something remotely edgy."

"I wouldn't say that's a bad thing. Having someone who inspires you to be better, to do better. Having someone who keeps you grounded and on the right path isn't the worse thing," Jade tried to reassure her.

"Try dating the last fucking Boy Scout. Being a self-righteous teenager isn't so splendid." Frustrated and irritated, her sarcasm came off less witty and bitchier.

"He can't be that bad... and as your friend," Jade proclaimed, "it's my civic duty to tell you if and when you're approaching the bitchy-ness point of no return. Good news, there's still hope for you—bad news, it's small and fleeing."

"Why don't you start talking to him? I see why you trample over and go through every guy you sleep with. The only ones that make you weak in the knees are the ones who would never approach you," Christy blurted out.

Jade, taken back by her comment, stared at her momentarily, glancing her up and down. "So, it would appear someone got an extra two pumps of sassy bitch in their latte this morning," she finally said, playing off the comment as meaningless.

"I know, right? I've been even more Regina than McAdams. I'm going to have to talk to the lover boy at Starbucks. Only two shots of espresso, not three!" Lighthearted and sincere, Chasity tried to apologize in her own warped way.

All the while, Tony was still at Marc's, talking to Payton on the phone while rummaging through the fridge, looking for the Code Red. Josh stormed past him, knocking into the refrigerator door on his way out the back door without even acknowledging Tony's presence.

"What the hell, man?" Tony exclaimed.

"What's going on?" Payton asked, confused by his words on the other end of the line.

"I don't know. Josh just ran by—probably something to with his girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend now. Your boy went after him, he can fill you in later," Tony said with a playful tone.

"My boy?" Payton replied, unsure who Tony was referring to.

"Marc," Tony replied without hesitation. He knew they weren't together, but he didn't know if she in fact did have a boyfriend or someone she might have been talking to. What better way to find out? he thought.

To his delight, Payton then said those five magical words, the ones which sent a chill down Tony's spine. "I don't have a boyfriend," Payton muttered.

"You can be honest with me. I know there's something going on between you and Marc. I can keep a secret," Tony replied, coming off sly—or so he thought.

"I'm telling you the truth; I would never lie about something like that. No offense to Marc, but I would never date him," she went on to say, and not in a snobby or degrading way. Tony could hear the sincerity in her voice, pure honesty, that she never had, or would ever, see Marc in that way.

"I don't know if I believe you. How do you know that you would never date him? You don't know what the future holds," Tony continued teasing.

Her reply was smooth and quick. "I don't see him like that. He's one of my best friends, but that's all. There are some people you just don't see in that light, and Marc is one of those people to me."

"So would you ever go out with me?" Tony let the words flow out as if they were as meaningless as any other phrase one might say without thinking or caring. He had thrown up a wall, hiding, keeping from putting himself out there, at least so he thought. Not realizing that it was nothing more than mere glass in which Payton undoubtedly could see right through.

"Maybe... I wouldn't say 'never' because I don't know you like that." Her response was flawless and on point, answering the question, withholding almost any true emotion, only giving the slightest hint of attraction by allowing her voice to get high-pitched.

"Why, do you like me or something?" she then asked, the standard follow-up question anyone in her shoes would have thrown out.

Of course, Tony wasn't going to be upfront with Payton, for the same reasons she wouldn't be overly willing to share her infatuation with him. Their conversation got cut short when Marc came back into the house.

"We're going for a little run to help Josh clear his head. Tell Payton I'll call her later," Marc said, interrupting their conversation abruptly.

"I heard him, and I don't believe him. I've known him for almost four years, and never once seen him run!" Paytonlaughed on the phone, amused not only at her own joke, but the thought of Marc trying to run.

Tony burst out in laughter. "I've known him since we were six and I haven't seen him run since we were nine. And even then, we weren't running by choice. There were two huge dogs chasing us."

"Hurry the hell up, I'll give you her number later!" Marc yelled from the back door.

"I gotta go—your, Marc, is starting to get impatient, to say the least. I guess I'll see you around," Tony said nervously, unsure what to offer as a goodbye.

"See ya," Payton replied before hanging up.

All the guys jumped in the back of a white Chevy van, the type of vehicle a carpenter or electrician would generally have. Sitting on the floor was a forty-eight-ounce Rubbermaid container full of egg cartons.

"Sorry took me so long," Scott, Marc's older brother, said. "I had to run to Sam's Club to get the eggs."

"Why did you go to Sam's Club? Was the regular grocery store out of them?" Marc asked.

"I figured we needed more than the usual amount."

"What do you mean, more than the usual amount? How often do you do this?" Josh asked, irritated. Broken up or not, he still cared about Chasity. In his heart, he still thought of her as his girlfriend.

"I can't speak for everyone else in the vehicle. However, this is the first time I helped egg your ex-girlfriend's house," Scott replied.

"Don't worry about it. Plausible deniability. The less you know, the better," Tony said to Josh, smirking.

"That's not helping. That without a doubt makes it worse. She's going to know it was us. Especially if you two do it every time we break up," Josh replied.

"Well, you two break up and get back together so much. Honestly, we just do it every seven to twenty days. Unpredictable and unconnectable, since we egg a few of the neighbors' houses too. That way it looks like it's random chaos, instead of planned payback," Marc chimed in.

"That has to be the dumbest shit I've ever heard. You're just asking to get caught," Josh said.

"Loosen up, Boy Scout, and believe me when I tell you, you'll never forget the first time you egg an ex's house. It's one of those moments that stay with you forever. It's a rite of passage. One simply can't go through adolescence without egging an ex's house," Marc preached.

"Is that so?" Josh said, questioning his theory.

"Samantha. Dumped me the first week into freshman year. I egged her house seventeen times between September first and Halloween," Marc proclaimed.

"What's her name... Eighth grade. We dated for like three weeks before she dumped me, because someone said I made out with her best friend behind the bleachers," Tony said, puzzled as he tried to remember the events, which clearly weren't as dramatic or life-altering as to justify payback in any form.

"But you did make out with her best friend behind the bleachers, then ended up making out with her cousin at the carnival a couple weeks after that," Josh proclaimed. He remembered the situation rather well, or so he thought. At the very least he could remember her name. It was Becky.

"That was only after she dumped me, and then started dating that one dude from her bus. Bragging she didn't care because she was cheating on me the whole time anyway," Tony said.

"I'm sure you were so heartbroken by the breakup," Josh replied sarcastically.

Scott shook his head, smirking. "I remember when I egged my ex's house. It started because she dumped me the night before prom. Then she ended up becoming prom queen after blowing the captain of the football team under the bleachers. After that, we started egging her house every few nights for like two months straight. Then one day, you realize, none of that shit matters. That there's a whole world after high school and petty things, like egging your ex's house. Doesn't really accomplish anything. It doesn't change the past or help with the healing process."

"So, what's the secret? What's the key to truly getting over the girl that broke you?" Josh asked.

"You want the truth?" Scott replied.

"No. I want you to lie to me so I can continue to feel like shit," Josh said sarcastically.

"You don't."