Collateral Damage

Prologue

Maybe things would have been different if I had actually gone to Chad Griffin's party.

Everyone else at Verndale High was going. Chad's house was practically a mansion, complete with a pool and a trampoline in the backyard, and his parents were conveniently out of town for the weekend, setting it up to be a legendary evening.

The second Matt and Ana heard about it, they were dead-set on going, and made it their mission for a whole week to try to convince to go with them. They spent the better half of a week trying to get me to go with them, right up to the afternoon before the party, when we were just walking out of the school building.

"Aw, come on, Wendy," Matt kept begging me. "You know you want to come with us..."

"No, I don't," I told him for the millionth time. "You know I'm not a party girl."

"Um, hello!" Ana yanked a red strand of hair from my ponytail, something she always did whenever I was annoying her. "What about the parties at my house?!"

"That's different," I retorted, smacking her hand away. "I've been to your house all the time. And stop doing that. How would you feel if I pulled your hair?" I pretended to reach for one of her thick black ringlets.

Ana narrowed her mascara-rimmed eyes in a "don't even try it" look. I dropped my hands in mock surrender.

"Wen-dyyyy..." Matt wrapped at arm around me, pulling me against him. "I don't want to go without you. You can stop being Miss Goody-Two-Shoes for one night, can't you?" He gave me his best puppy-dog look with those black eyes he knew I couldn't resist.

I ignored the melting feeling I always got when he looked at me that way. "No," I repeated, firmly but gently sliding out of his arm.

"Ugh." Ana rolled her eyes so hard that I could nothing but the whites. "Girl, you are way too uptight! How the hell can Sam be your brother?"

"I ask myself that question every day." Before he graduated, Sam went to every single party he could, and was no doubt partying harder than ever up at Central.

"Can't you just cut loose for just one night?" Ana went on. "We can't go through high school without going to one killer house party.

"I don't even know Chad Griffin," I argued.

She shrugged, tossing her curls back and making her hoop earrings jingle. "Neither do we, but who cares? It'll be fun!"

It was hard enough to say no to either of them; the two of them double-teaming me was a nightmare. If I wasn't so wiped out from studying for a particularly brutal math exam that week, I might have caved.

"Look." I gave them my most severe glare. "I'm tired. All I want is one night to myself, okay? Just have a good time without me. Tell me all about it afterwards."

Matt stuck out his bottom lip and let out a long-suffering sigh. "All right, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. But don't blame me if I hook up with a hot senior just because you're too worried about letting your precious GPA drop."

"You'd better not." I laughed and punching him lightly on the shoulder.

Ana wrapped her arms around the two of us, grinning. "Don't worry, Wendy, you know I wouldn't let this big dork get into any trouble," she promised.

I wasn't worried. Verndale was a small town where nothing ever happened; it wasn't even notable enough to be one of Michigan's "hidden gems" that were always advertised on TV. Even in-state vacationers wouldn't have thought twice about stopping there.