"You're starting to freak me out," Natalie says, eyeing me across the small table with a look of uncertainty. Her arched brow settles down, and then she says, "And there's also all the walking, the risk of getting raped, murdered, and tossed on the side of a freeway somewhere. Oh, and then there's all the walking..."

Clearly, she thinks I'm borderline crazy.

"What brought this on, anyway?" she asks, taking a quick sip of her drink. "That sounds like some kind of midlife-crisis stuff-you're only twenty." She points again, as if to underline her next words: "And you've hardly paid a bill in your life."

She takes another sip; an obnoxious slurping noise follows.

"Maybe not," I say, thinking quietly to myself, "but I will be once I move in with you."

"So true," she says, tapping her fingertips on her cup. "Everything split down the middle-Wait, you're not backing out on me, are you?" She sort of freezes, looking warily across at me.

"No, I'm still on. Next week I'll be out of my mom's house and living with a slut."

"You bitch!" she laughs.

I half-smile and go back to my brooding, the stuff before that she wasn't relating to, but I expected as much. Even before Ian died, I always kind of thought out of the box. Instead of sitting around dreaming up new sex positions, as Natalie often does about Damon, her boyfriend of five years, I dream about things that really matter. At least in my world, they matter. What the air in other countries feels like on my skin, how the ocean smells, why the sound of rain makes me gasp. "You're one deep chick." That's what Damon said to me on more than one occasion.

"Geez!" Natalie says. "You're a freakin' downer, you know that right?" She shakes her head with the straw between her lips.

"Come on," she says suddenly and stands up from the table. "I can't take this philosophical stuff anymore, and quaint little places like this seem to make you worse-we're going to the Underground tonight."

"What?-No, I'm not going to that place."

"Yes. You. Are." She chucks her empty drink into the trash can a few feet away and grabs my wrist. "You're going with me this time because you're supposed to be my best friend and I won't take no again for an answer." Her close-lipped smile is spread across the entirety of her slightly tanned face.

I know she means business. She always means business when she has that look in her eyes: the one brimmed with excitement and determination. It'll probably be easiest just to go this once and get it over with, or else she'll never leave me alone about it. Such is a necessary evil when it comes to having a pushy best friend.

I get up and slip my purse strap over my shoulder. "It's only two o'clock," I say. I drink down the last of my latte and toss the empty cup away in the same trash can.

"Yeah, but first we've got to get you a new outfit."

"Uh, no." I say resolutely as she's walking me out the glass doors and into the breezy summer air. "Going to the Underground with you is more than good deed enough. I refuse to go shopping. I've got plenty of clothes."

Natalie slips her arm around mine as we walk down the sidewalk and past a long line of parking meters. She grins and glances over at me. "Fine. Then you'll at least let me dress you from something out of my closet."

"What's wrong with my own wardrobe?"

She purses her lips at me and draws her chin in as if to quietly argue why I even asked a question so ridiculous. "It's the Underground," she says, as if there is no answer more obvious than that.

OK, she has a point. Natalie and me may be best friends, but with us it's an opposites attract sort of thing. She's a rocker chick who's had a crush on Jared Leto since Fight Club. I'm more of a laid-back kind of girl who rarely wears dark-colored clothes unless I'm attending a funeral. Not that Natalie wears all black and has some kind of emo hair thing going on, but she would never be caught dead in anything from my closet because, she says, it's all just too plain. I beg to differ. I know how to dress, and guys-when I used to pay attention to the way they eyed my ass in my favorite jeans-have never had a problem with the clothes I choose to wear.

But the Underground was made for people like Natalie, and so I guess I'll have to endure dressing like her for one night just to fit in. I'm not a follower. I never have been. But I'll definitely become someone I'm not for a few hours if it'll make me blend in rather than make me a blatant eyesore and draw attention.

Natalie's bedroom is the complete opposite of OCD clean. And this is yet another way she and I are so completely different. I hang my clothes up by color. She leaves hers in the basket at the foot of her bed for weeks before throwing them all back into the laundry to be washed again because of the wrinkles. I dust my room daily. I don't think she has ever actually dusted her room, unless you count wiping off the two inches of dust from her laptop keyboard, cleaning.

"This will look perfect on you," Natalie says holding up a thin, half-sleeve tight white shirt with Scars on Broadway written across the front. "It fits tight and your boobs are perfect." She puts the shirt up against my chest and examines what I might look like in it.

I snarl at her, not satisfied with her first pick.

She rolls her eyes and her shoulders slump over. "Fine," she says, tossing the shirt on the bed. She slides her hand in the closet and takes down another one, holding it up with a big smile that is at the same time a manipulation tactic of hers. Big toothy smiles equal me not wanting to crush her efforts.

"How about something that doesn't have some random band plastered across the front?" I say.

"It's Brandon Boyd," she says, her eyes bugging out at me. "How can you not like Brandon Boyd?"

"He's all right," I say. "I'm just not into advertising him on my chest."

"I'd like to actually have him on my chest," she says, admiring the tight-fitting V-neck top made much like the first one she tried to show me.

"Well, then you wear it."

She looks across at me, nodding as if contemplating the idea. "I think I will." She takes off the top she's already wearing and tosses it in the laundry basket next to the closet, then slips Brandon Boyd's face down over her huge boobs.

"Looks good on you," I say, watching her adjust herself and admiring what she sees in the mirror at several different angles.

"Damn right he does," she says.

"How's Jared Leto going to feel about this?" I joke.

Natalie spats out a laugh and she tosses her long dark hair back and reaches for the hairbrush. "He'll always be my number one."

"What about Damon, y'know, the nonimaginary boyfriend?"

"Stop it," she says, looking at me through the reflection in the mirror. "If you keep raggin' on me about Damon like you do-" She stops the brush midway in her hair and turns at the waist to face me. "Do you have a thing for Damon, or something?"

My head springs back and I feel my eyebrows knot thickly in my forehead.

"No, Nat! What the hell?"

Natalie laughs and goes back to brushing her hair. "We're going to find you a guy tonight. That's what you need. It'll fix everything."

My silence immediately tells her that she went too far. I hate it when she does this. Why does everybody have to be with somebody? It's a stupid delusion and a really pathetic way of thinking.

She places the brush back on the dresser and turns around fully, letting the jest disappear from her face and she sighs heavily. "I know I shouldn't say that-look I swear I won't pull any match-making stuff, all right?" She puts both of her hands up in surrender.

"I believe you," I say, giving in to her sincerity. Of course, I know too that a promise never stops her completely. She may not directly try to hook me up with somebody, but all she has to do is bat those dark eyelashes of hers at Damon about any guy in the place and Damon will know right away what she wants him to do.

But I don't need their help. I don't want to hook up with anyone.

"Oh!" Natalie says with her head in the closet. "This top is perfect!" She turns around dangling a loose-fitting black top with the fabric in the shoulders missing. Across the front it reads: SINNER.

"Got it at Hot Topic," she says, sliding it off the hanger.

Not wanting to drag this shirt-choosing session out any longer, I slip off my own shirt and then take it from her hand.

"Black bra," she says. "Good choice."

I slip the top on and check myself out in the mirror.

"Yeah? Say it," she says, coming up behind me with a big smile on her face. "You like it, dont'cha?"

I smile slimly back at her and turn to look at how the bottom of the shirt just barely covers the top of my hips.

And then I notice it says SAINT across the back.

"OK," I say, "I do like it." I turn around and point sternly at her. "But not enough to start raiding your closet, so don't get your hopes up. I'm content with my cute button-up tops, thank you very much."

"I never said your clothes weren't cute, Cam." She grins and reaches up and snaps my bra against my back. "You look frickin' sexy on a daily basis, girl-I'd totally do you if I wasn't with Damon."

My mouth falls open. "You're so damn sick, Nat!"

"I know," she says as I turn back to the mirror and I hear the devilish grin in her voice. "But it's the truth. I've told you before and I wasn't joking."

I just shake my head at her, smiling while picking her brush up from the dresser. Natalie had a girlfriend once, during a short breakup with Damon. But she claimed she was "way too cock-crazy" (her words, not mine) to spend her life with a girl. Natalie's not a real slut-she'll knock your face off if you ever call her one-but she is any boyfriend's nympho dream, that's for sure.

"Now let me do your makeup," she says, stepping up to the vanity with me.

"No!"

Natalie thrusts her hands on her hourglass hips and looks at me wide-eyed, as if she was my mom and I just mouthed-off to her.

"Do you want it to be painful?" she asks, glaring at me.

I give in and plop down on the vanity chair.

"Whatever," I say, holding up my chin to give her full access to my face, which has just become her blank canvas. "Just no raccoon-eye shit, all right?"

She cups my chin vigorously in her hand. "Now hush," she demands, barely breaking a smile and trying to look all serious. "An arteest," she says with a dramatic accent and the flourish of her free hand, "needs quiet to vork! Vut do you think these ees, a Deetroit beautee parlor?"

By the time she's finished with me, I look exactly like her. Except for the giant boobs and silky brown hair. My hair is the kind of blonde some girls pay a salon a lot of money to have, and it stops just to the middle of my back. I admit I was lucky in the perfect hair department. Natalie said that my hair would look better if I wore it down and so I did. I had no choice. She was very intimidating...

And she didn't make me look like a raccoon, but she didn't go light on the dark eye shadow, either. "Dark eyes with blonde hair," she had said as she went about applying the thick, black mascara. "It's sexy hot." And apparently my little open-toed sandals just weren't going to do, because she made me toss them and wear a pair of her pointy-heeled boots, which fit snugly over the legs of my skinny jeans.

"You are one sexy bitch," she says, looking me up and down.

"And you owe me big-time for doing this," I say.

"Huh? I owe you?" She cocks her head to the side. "No, honey, I think not. You'll owe me before this is over with because you're going to have a great time and will be begging me to take you there more often."

I sneer playfully at her with my arms crossed and my hip popped out. "I doubt that," I say. "But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that I have a good time, at least."

"Good," she says, slipping on her boots. "Now let's get out of here; Damon's waiting for us."

2.

We make it to the Underground just as night falls, but not before driving around in Damon's souped-up truck to various houses. He would pull into the driveway, get out and stay inside no more than three or four minutes and never say a word when he came back out. At least, not about what he went inside for, or who he talked to-the usual stuff that would make these visits normal. But not much about Damon is usual or normal. I love him to death. I've known him almost as long as I've known Natalie, but I've never been able to accept his drug habits. He grows copious amounts of weed in his basement, but he's not a pothead. In fact, no one but me and a few of his close friends would ever suspect that a hot piece of ass like Damon Winters would be a grower, because most growers look like white trash and often have hairdos that are stuck somewhere between the '70s and '90s. Damon is far from looking like white trash-he could be Alex Pettyfer's younger brother. And Damon says weed just isn't his thing. No, Damon's drug of choice is cocaine, and he only grows and sells weed to pay for his cocaine habit.

Natalie pretends that what Damon does is perfectly harmless. She knows that he doesn't smoke weed and says that weed really isn't that bad and if other people want to smoke it to chill out and relax, that she sees no harm in Damon helping with that.

She refuses to believe, however, that cocaine has seen more action from his face than any part of her body has.

"OK, you're going to have a good time, right?" Natalie bumps my backseat door shut with her butt after I get out and then she looks hopelessly at me. "Just don't fight it and try to enjoy yourself."

I roll my eyes. "Nat, I wouldn't deliberately try to hate it," I say. "I do want to enjoy myself."

Damon comes around to our side of the truck and slips his arms around both of our waists. "I get to go in with two hot chicks on my arms."

Natalie elbows him with a pretend resentful smirk. "Shut up, baby. You'll make me jealous." Already she's grinning impishly up at him.

Damon lets his hand drop from her waist and he grabs a handful of her butt cheek. She makes a sickening moaning sound and reaches up on her toes to kiss him. I want to tell them to get a room, but I'd be wasting my breath.

The Underground is the hottest spot just outside of downtown North Carolina, but you won't find it listed in the phone book. Only people like us know it exists. Some guy named Rob rented out an abandoned warehouse two years ago and spent about one million of his rich daddy's money to convert it into a secret nightclub. Two years and going strong; the place has since become a spot where local rock sex gods can live the rock 'n' roll dream with screaming fans and groupies. But it's not a trashy joint. From the outside it might look like an abandoned building in a partial ghost town, but the inside is like any upscale hard-rock nightclub equipped with colorful strobe lights that shoot continuously across the space, slutty-looking waitresses, and a stage big enough for two bands to play at the same time.

To keep the Underground private, everybody who goes has to park elsewhere in the city and walk to it because a street lined with vehicles outside an "abandoned" warehouse is a dead giveaway.

We park in the back of a nearby Mickey D's and walk about ten minutes through spooky town.

Natalie moves from Damon's right side and gets in between us, but it's just so she can torture me before we go inside.

"OK," she says as if about to run down a list of dos and don'ts for me, "If anybody asks, you're single, all right?" She waves her hand at me. "None of that stuff you pulled like with that guy who was hitting on you at Office Depot."

"What was she doing at Office Depot?" Damon says, laughing.

"Damon, this guy was on her," Natalie says, totally ignoring the fact that I'm right here. "I mean, like all she had to do was bat her eyes once and he would've bought her a car-you know what she said to him?"

I roll my eyes and pull my arm out of hers. "Nat, you're so stupid. It wasn't like that."

"Yeah, babe," Damon says. "If the guy works at Office Depot he's not going to be buying anybody any cars."

Natalie smacks him across the shoulder playfully. "I didn't say he worked there-anyway, the guy looked like the lovechild of... Adam Levine and...," she twirls her fingers around above her head to let another famous example materialize on her tongue, "... Jensen Ackles, and Miss Prudeness here told him she was a lesbian when he asked for her number."

"Oh shut up, Nat!" I say, irritated at her serious over-exaggeration illness. "He did not look like either one of those guys. He was just a regular guy who didn't happen to be fugly."

She waves me away and turns back to Damon. "Whatever. The point is that she'll lie to keep them away. I don't doubt for a second that she'd go as far as to tell a guy she has Chlamydia and an out of control case of crabs."

Damon laughs.

I stop on the dark sidewalk and cross my arms over my chest, chewing on the inside of my bottom lip in agitation.

Natalie, realizing I'm not walking beside her anymore runs back towards me. "OK! OK! Look, I just don't want you to ruin it for yourself, that's all. I'm just asking that if someone-who isn't a total hunchback-hits on you that you not immediately push him away. Nothing wrong with talking and getting to know one another. I'm not asking you to go home with him."