“No, Kaylie. Wait . . . ,” I tried, but we were already there.

“Hey, Steve, hey, Josh,” she said effortlessly. “What are you guys going to see?”

“That new Will Smith movie,” Steve said, peering over the heads in front of him. “If this line ever gets moving.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, sounding surprised. “We are too.” She bumped me with her hip and I managed a weak smile. I knew the smartest move I could make right then was to stand there and shut up.

“Hey,” Josh said to me. He didn’t look too annoyed and was even smiling a little.

“Hi,” I managed, glancing up at those deep brown eyes. He had a certain Johnny Depp-ness that made my heart race and my cheeks burn. Somebody somewhere in his family must have been Asian—he had the deepest almond-shaped brown eyes. I was afraid to look at them too long in case they swallowed me up.

Josh had been in my eighth-grade English class when I’d first transferred in from Catholic school three years ago. He’d sat right in front of me, and I spent the entire semester staring at the back of his head, fighting with myself not to reach out and run my hand over the short, bristly hairs where they faded into his neck. He always smelled like soap and laundry detergent, and I leaned forward on my desk as often as I could to get a whiff of the light, clean scent. No matter how hard I tried, I could never smell like that.

“Poetry,” Mr. Manillo had written on the board that first week. I groaned inside. I liked English well enough, but I absolutely hated poetry. Poets never said what they really meant, and your job was to spend hours trying to figure it out. In the end it usually wasn’t worth the effort.

Mr. Manillo turned to face us as he spoke about the mysteries of poetry. His eyes locked on mine and I quickly glanced down at my desk.

Too late. “Ms. Tompkins,” he said. “You must have a favorite poet. I’m sure they gave you a good poetry foundation over at St. Ignatius.”