Tess

As a rule, it’s hard to make desperation look attractive. Unless one finds oneself in the kind of situation depicted in your standard Hollywood action movie, where a desperate act (like flinging yourself out of a soaring plane or down a flaming elevator shaft) might just save your life ―as well as the life of your totally hot costar― it’s generally best avoided.

Unfortunately, desperation is patient. It can smell fear and uncertainty. It loves vulnerability. It can worm its way into a girl’s psyche bit by bit until it’s driven out the calm, cool, collected reputation a girl has spent her entire high school career building. In fact, if a girl didn’t totally watch her ass, she could end up making the kind of rash, stupid, panicky decisions that people driven by desperation tend to make.

Tess Larsson had no intention of making rash, stupid, panicky decisions. But neither could she pretend any longer that desperation wasn’t dogging her. Lately it seemed to sneak up and hit her out of the blue, with almost no warning whatsoever. The trigger today had been the center ad in the September issue of Vogue magazine, a two-page spread for Tommy Hilfiger jeans.

A young couple stood in the center a very messy, very girly bedroom. They were both naked from the waist up, bodies locked in a sweaty embrace, jeans artfully unbuttoned and loose about their hips. They wore twin expressions of alarm, as though the viewer had just stumbled upon their secret tryst. Ignoring the voyeuristic aspects of the ad, or the larger question of why the image of a half-naked young girl getting caught in her bedroom with an equally half-naked guy would compel anyone to rush out and buy a pair of Tommy Hilfiger jeans, Tess turned her attention to the models.

The male model ―aka Mr. Perfect― had olive skin, chestnut brown hair with artfully placed gold streaks that screamed insanely expensive Manhattan salon, and a bod so tight and toned it looked like he’d stolen it from a statue of a Roman god. He’d been around awhile. She’d seen him lathered up in ads for Gillette razors, pared down to tighty-whiteys for Jockey briefs, strutting out of corporate boardrooms in Armani suits, and once, just recently, the loving husband in a TV commercial who surprised his wife with a gift-wrapped box of odor-free kitty litter. (Was that really all she’d hoped to get for her birthday?)

Either way, he was unbelievably gorgeous, but he was old news. It was the girl who caught Tess’s attention and set off her current pangs of impending doom.