I have given up on men, I think, and I sink lower in this corporately-upholstered, itchy blue airline seat, my knees now firmly planted in the back of the chair in front of me.

There must be ways to have fun without boys. No, not really, not for a newly minted seventeen-year-old, anyway, and not for a girl going to Europe. Paris, Rome, the Greek Isles... they scream romance, and I scream, well, angst.

There are six guys in my party, counting my friend William, although he's only so much a "guy." He's behind me somewhere, down the aisle. I should make him switch seats so he's next to me.

Thud.

"Ouch!" I yell, a little too loudly as several fellow coach passengers turn to glare.

"Oops, sorry, sweetie," William mumbles as he stumbles down the aisle. He bumped into my shoulder, making my knee slam into the tray table that's now smacked my thighs. He's not looking so good, kind of green, at least more green than usual. His mom gave him some pills-- I saw her slide them into his hand right before we got in the security line.

"I thin... I think... I took too much dram... drama... haha...," he laughs, and he plops himself back in his seat diagonally across the aisle three rows behind me. He's passed out before I can ask him to switch. Sweet, so kind and confused, but nothing romantic there. I discovered that in seventh grade after I tried to get him to kiss me, at a birthday party out behind Grant's house late one night. His parents sent him away for a while after that, but he reappeared last year. My salvation.

So who else is there? Dave, sitting here next to me. He's tall, but sort of grotesque if kind. Ron has no inner-kindness-- too full of himself and how rich his parents are. Alex, the star quarterback, is hot but kind of cruel. I do think he's always had a she's-pretty-but-unattainably-smart crush on me. In ninth he picked me to be his Lady Capulet in our English class's reading of Romeo and Juliet, but was that because he liked me or because the teacher told him to pick the most "blood-thirsty" girl in the class? I did kick his ass in powderpuff football this past Homecoming, when he coached us and picked me to be the opposing tight end. I tackled him. He promptly reminded me we were playing two hand touch. And then there's his faithful side-kick, Matt, hilarious, in true sidekick-style, and plumply cute. Too short.

There's always Richard, the dark and brooding boarding school guy. Why is he on this trip anyway? He's oddly cute, curling hair falling into his wide-set green eyes, quietly scanning the pages of that well-worn Sci-Fi paperback.

I slide my knee over so it nonchalantly rests on Dave's, who's got his Roman beak buried deep in a book that's been opened so many times the creases on the spine have rendered the title completely unreadable.

"Whatcha reading?"

He gives me a side-long glance from underneath his dark brown bangs, so long they flutter when he blinks. "It's about war-- you wouldn't like it," he murmurs.

"Oh, don't be so sure about that. I read a lot of different things."

"It's called [something unintelligible and boring] by [some weirdo guy]"

"Never heard of that one," I smile at him, thinly veiling my boredom and waiting for an explanation of the plot.

"Figures. No one has." He slid his knee back over to his side. "I think I'm going to get some sleep," he said, and he snapped off his overhead light.

Yeah, I think, I give up on men. For the next eight hours anyway.