“This time I really mean it.” This time Jena really looks as if she really means it. No tears. No sparks. No drama. No woman of passion throwing emotions around like confetti. Today her voice has all the feeling of a block of ice. “No way am I ever going to have anything to do with Simon Copeland again — so long as I live. It is done. Over. If I never see him again it’ll be way too soon.”

Josh shakes his head as though trying to clear it. “It’s the damndest thing, Jen, but I’m having this déjà vu moment. It’s like I feel as if you’ve said this before.”

Jena, however, is not in a laughing mood right now. She is really serious. “You have heard it before. I know that, Josh. But you have my word as the daughter of a general in the United States Army that you will never hear it again.” She makes an X in the air over her chest. “Cross my heart and hope to grow a beard. I don’t care if Simon crawls over broken glass to apologize, we are once and forever through. Dead as the dinosaurs. Deader.”

“You’re upset,” says Josh, even as, vampire-like, Hope climbs out of its coffin and snuggles up beside him. Tapping its toes. Waiting. “When you calm down —”

“I am calm.” She is; she could only be calmer if she’d been turned to stone. “I know I can be a little superficial sometimes . . .” Something Simon has pointed out to her, and he should know. “But Simon’s not so awesomely good-looking or popular that he can get away with being such a jerk forever. Everything comes to an end sooner or later.” This party-size bottle of soda is empty. “Tilda’s not going to like it. You know, ’cause she wanted us to double for the prom in the spring. But that’s the way it goes. Cookies crumble.”

Josh would like to ignore Hope and its tapping toes — it’s screwed him over before — but nonetheless hears himself say, “Is this for real? You’re not going to change your mind five minutes from now? You really mean it this time?”

“Totally. The only word I want to hear from Simon Copeland is good-bye. When you hear what he did you’ll get it.”

This last fight introduced a new and deeper dimension to their disagreements. Simon went into nuclear meltdown because Jena was talking to another boy.

“Talking?” Maybe Simon got a head injury in one of his games that’s gone undiagnosed. “You talk to me all the time.”

But Simon isn’t jealous of Josh. Josh threatens him about as much as a cotton ball. Simon is, however, jealous of Lucas Adamani. Lucas Adamani is of the same species as Simon. He’s good-looking, is part of Tilda’s crowd, and is captain of the Parsons Falls varsity football team.

A bunch of them were hanging out at Starbucks, and Jena wound up sitting next to Lucas. Simon said that she ignored him completely and gave all her attention to Lucas. Simon said that she and Lucas were flirting. He’d never been so embarrassed in his life.

“Flirting! Can you believe it? That’s what Simon thinks of me! That right in front of him I’d flirt with someone else? Have we met? We were talking. That’s all we were doing.” Which is what she said to Simon. Talking. T-a-l-k-i-n-g. “Which, in case he hadn’t noticed, is what people do. It’s what separates them from other animals.” That and shopping and weapons of mass destruction. “Simon said that talking isn’t the only thing people do.” He said it in a sneering, leering way. “For God’s sake, I’ve known Lucas longer than I’ve known Simon Copeland. He’s been friends with Tilda since before she had her nose job. So, you know, I have talked to him before.”

Though not, perhaps, when Simon was around.

“And then he said that if I like talking to Lucas so much I can go to the freakin’ Valentine’s dance with him.” Jena reminded him that Lucas has a girlfriend. And Simon said that was a real coincidence, since Jena used to have a boyfriend. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I swear, if we’d been standing on a bridge I would’ve pushed him off.”

Josh has always been careful not to say anything even vaguely negative about Simon, but now — with Simon finally about to have the door slammed behind him — he breaks his own rule. “He has always been kind of controlling.”

And immediately remembers why he had the rule in the first place.

“Controlling?” She shakes her head. “Simon’s not controlling, Josh. He’s behaving like a pig-headed, jealous idiot, but that’s because he cares about me so much. Not because he always has to run the show.”

You could’ve fooled me.

“I just meant —” He breaks off. He meant that Simon always has to have things his way. Fortunately, she’s not really in conversational mode.

“Not that I’m going to be swayed by that,” Jena steams on. “I’ve had all I’m going to take of his moodiness and his temper and him putting me last.”

Josh believes her. The blindfold of love has been torn from her eyes, and at last she sees Simon for what he is: a handsome, athletic, and charming waste of time. A demanding bully in the clothing of a prince.

“So?” says Josh. The dance is two days away. “What happens now?” He laughs so she’ll know he’s joking. “Assuming you’re not going to the Valentine’s hoedown with Lucas and his girlfriend.”

This time she manages a small but bitter smile. “It would serve Simon right if I did. But I’m not doing that, am I?” She shrugs. What can you do? “Cinderella, there’s no way you’re going to the ball.” She sighs. “Why couldn’t I fall for someone reliable and considerate?”

“Don’t ask me,” says Josh.

“Some romantic evening,” says Jena. “Sitting at home watching The Great Escape with my dad for the nine hundredth time.”

“There’s no need for anything that drastic,” says Josh. “You still have me.”