The jokes were on me for a solid week. Getting rescued by a nerd-girl was too easy for my friends to pass up. If any good came from it, I now had a justifiable reason to my friends for why I defended Elizabeth despite her Less than stellar appearance. And they quickly Learned not to pick on her or make any bad remarks ever again.

There were even a couple of times I ran into her in the hallways and

I'd walk with her towards her next class whenever it was in the same direction as mine. These encounters were a bit like pulling teeth.

First she kept her binder pressed over her chest with her arms folded and she said little.

But after a few weeks of trying to crack through her shell, she was honestly able to hold a conversation for the three minutes or whatever we had.

She even picked up a nickname because of me. One day, while trying to get her attention so she'd wait for me to catch up to her, I yelled

“Hey E-Beth!" Accidentally, I'd shorted the name to make a better yell.

She and three other people turned around, trying to figure out who the hell was E-Beth.

The name stuck. I liked the way it sounded and used it constantly. For some reason, having a popular Senior jock use the nickname made it a requirement for everyone else. Luckily for both of us, Elizabeth seemed to like it.

I knew it was permanent when our Chemistry teacher called her "E-Beth".

But really, other than her, I didn't develop any new friendships. I was too busy coming to terms with all my old ones. We had very little time left.

One thing I couldn't get used to was the idea of being separated from

Nate. I mean, he'd been my best friend since kindergarten. But it was looking more and more likely he'd be attending school somewhere else.

Some of his acceptance letters had come thru, along with several good football scholarship offers. More to the point, Monica had gotten into

Stanford, and one of Nate's scholarship offers was to Cal Berkeley, only 30 minutes away.

And so Nate and I found ourselves parked on the bridge over the river, our usual spot. Showing off his star quarterback arm, he sent an empty beer can fifty yards downstream.

“What should I do, man?"

“You want to be with her?" I queried.

“Of course."

I frowned and asked more carefully, "Of course' it'd be nice? Or ‘of course’ I'd move Heaven and Earth to stay close to her?"

“I'm not sure." He popped the top on his next beer.

“Right now ‘Heaven and Earth' sounds about right, but I don't know how much of that is just teenaged crushing. Should I tie myself down already? There are plenty of fish in the sea, right?"

I smirked and chugged the last of my beer.

“Hey dude. That was my line, remember?"

"Yeah." I Looked down at his feet for a moment.