Excerpt: FOR SALE: WEDDING DRESS. NEVER USED.

The whole mess started with...a mess. A bunch of idiots (seniors) decided the lake that had taken over the Commons would make a perfect football field. Mud football is the sport for real men, supposedly.

Real men didn't believe in avoiding hundred-year-old trees.

I was heading to the cafeteria for lunch with Tonia and Lynn and a couple girls from the basement. We heard the shouting and stopped to watch the battle of mudmen. I didn't even know Andy was playing. Any sensible person would have been catching the last half hour of lunch and maybe studying.

Then again, these were senior boys. Proof that testosterone caused brain damage.

I heard my name. Honestly, even in a Christian college, how many Eves could there be? I turned, and there was this muddy figure waving at me and jumping up and down, holding the ball. At least, I assumed that dripping glob in his hands was the ball.

Tonia laughed. "That can't be Andy!"

I had my doubts, until he pulled off his stocking cap, revealing semi-clean blond hair. He waved the hat, spattering mud in every direction, and shouted for me to stay and watch.

"No way," one of the basement girls said. "There's Tim McCarr!" She shrieked and ran. We all ran.

Tim McCarr made the Incredible Hulk look like a featherweight. Plowing through mud and water, he churned up a wake the Loch Ness Monster would have envied. Waves swamped the sidewalk as McCarr headed straight for us.

Some guys shouted for him to leave us alone. Andy led the charge of five guys headed on a collision course to stop McCarr. When they hit him en masse, they changed his direction and went rolling and sliding through the mud and water.

The whole ugly, tumbling knot of them hit probably the biggest tree in the entire county, sitting in the corner of the crisscross of sidewalks through the Commons. Naturally, Andy was the point of impact.