“Thanks,” he yelled back as he raced toward his friends.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Kaylie said, glaring at him. “He’s such a leech.”

I shrugged, trying to play it off. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I wasn’t on her side. “I’m loaded, remember?”

We still had fifteen minutes until the movie started, so I tried to decide if I wanted to blow more money on an industrialsized box of Milk Duds. They were such a rip-off here, but what was a movie without gobs of melted chocolate and caramel stuck to the roof of your mouth? Kaylie stood on her tiptoes beside me, looking for people she knew. She nudged me with her elbow. “He’s totally staring at you.”

“Who?” I asked, looking around. Somebody staring was generally not a good sign. Even worse if they were pointing.

She glanced over my shoulder and then back to me. “Like you don’t know who. Josh Lee who. In the popcorn line.”

As if I didn’t already know where he was standing, or that he was wearing the blue jacket with the koi design he got at the beginning of the year. As if I didn’t secretly watch him at lunch on the quad or practically lose my powers of speech every time our hands touched passing papers in physics.

“Right. I’m sure he’s staring at you, not me.” I pushed my hair out of my face and tried to look casually around. Kaylie was the one guys always stared at—tiny and cute, she could have been a cheerleader if she wanted to. Why she picked me to be her friend was still a mystery, but hanging out with her made my life seem almost normal.

She also never let a little thing like subtlety bother her. “Ooh, he’s with Steve Romero! We should totally go over there and talk to them.” She was a foot shorter than me but freakishly strong, pulling me in that direction before I could think up a good excuse not to go.