Chapter One - Part One

Meeting the Idiots
Bianca

Megan Tesarik was intimidating. Or at least I thought so. We took a class together our first semester. I still remember where she sat - five seats to my left around an oval table in the honors seminar room. She was smart and I, used to being the big fish in a small pond, did not take kindly to other people doing better than me. Plus, she was pretty and I was... not. At my high school, that was how it went. The pretty ones weren't smart and the smart ones weren't pretty. I was at least at the top of one of the piles. But pretty and smart? How was I supposed to compete with that? Because that's how I saw her. Competition. So, if someone had told me that a year later she'd be one of my best friends, I would have thought they were crazy. But that's what happened. How it happened is... strange.

I had this friend, Mike Sparrow, who, at the end of freshman year, was my only friend left from the beginning. He and his girlfriend and me and my boyfriend had double dated a lot. And then his girlfriend cheated on him. So Mike became our lost puppy / third wheel that we couldn't shake. That was, until I got dumped. My boyfriend, Tim, had sat me down on my bed three days before Valentine's day to tell me he didn't love me and that we were breaking up. Tim did a lot of telling, so looking back, it was for the best, but at the time, I was crushed. So I did the only natural thing. I developed a crush on Mike. He was broken, too. He'd gotten his girlfriend pregnant and she'd had an abortion without telling him and then cheated on him. She had been my friend - I sat with her while we waited for the pregnancy test to come back - but what she did to Mike was like kicking an already hurt puppy. Mike was my only friend left and I was convinced we should get together. It made sense in my head.

So, my own relationship up in flames, I jumped at the chance when he asked me to hang out with him and this other group of people on a Friday night. I usually spent my fridays alone in my room, working on homework. I actually thought that it might be my chance to convince Mike it was a good thing for us to be together. Little did I know, a girl I was sorta friends with had already told Mike how I felt and he'd let her know that he only liked me as a friend. Well, no one told me that. Retrospectively, it makes sense how many times Kim told me that I should give up on Mike. She knew and she didn't want to see me hurt.

But I was determined. So the night for us to hang out rolls around and I'm in my room trying to figure out what to wear. Not exactly knowing where we were going, I opted for a lowcut shirt and a pair of jeans. Now, you have to understand, I had huge boobs, so a lowcut shirt was definitely putting on a show. Well, Mike shows up at my room wearing a hockey jersey and smelling oddly... was that cologne? By this point, I'm convinced it's a date and I bound out of my room, giddy, my wavy hair having been meticulously curled and put up. I asked him where we were going and he told that we were going to hang out with some folks a few floors down and that he was so glad that I'd agreed to come with him.

My heart raced. This was totally a date. So we're walking down the stairs and I ask him who we're hanging out with. He doesn't give me names, just vague 'people I know from class' and 'thanks again so so much.' By this point, I'm getting confused, majorly. My smile is faltering and we get to the door and he stops. I remember what he said like it was yesterday because my heart sunk into my stomach and it took everything I had not to burst into tears. "There's this girl I really like," he says, "and she's going to be here. I'm really glad you came along. It's nice to have a friend for support."

Before I could answer, Mike knocks on the door. I feel like I've been punched in the gut. I'm a WINGMAN? The cologne, the 'what do girls like' questions, the nervous energy... all for another girl. I had half a mind to turn and leave, but my feet wouldn't let me. All I could do was meekly smile, trying not to burst into tears.

That's when the door opened. And standing in that doorway? Megan Tesarik.