The next moment found us surrounded by Brea's friends.

"Who is he?" Sharon asked eagerly, her dark hair brushing her shoulders. Suzanne Herbert jostled her, trying to get closer to Bree.

"Is he going to school here?" Nell Norton asked.

"Is he straight?" Justin Bartlett wondered aloud. Justin's been out of the closet since seventh grade.

I glanced at Chris. He was frowning. As Bree's friends reviewed the meager info, I stepped back, out of the crowd. I drifted to the entrance and put my hand on the heavy brass handle, swearing I could still feel the warmth from Cal's touch.

A week passed. As usual, I felt a tingle in my chest as I walked into physics class and saw Cal there. He still looked like a miracle sitting in a dinged-up wooden desk. A god on a mortal place. Today he was focusing his beam on Alessandra Spotford. "It's like a harvest festival? Up in Kinderhook?" I heard him asking her.

Alessandra smiled and looked flustered. "It's not till October," she explained. "We get our pumpkins there every year." She tucked a curl behind her ear.

I sat down and opened my notebook. In one week Cal had become the most popular guy at my school. Forget popular; he was a celebrity. Even a lot of the boys at my school liked him. Not Chris Holly or any guy whose girlfriend was salivating over Cal, but most of the others.

"What about you, Morgan?" Cal asked, turning to me. "Have you been to the harvest festival?"

Casually I flipped to the current chapter in our textbook and nodded, feeling a rush of giddiness at hearing him say my name. "Pretty much everyone goes. There's not a lot else to do around here unless you go down to New York City, and that's two hours away."

Cal had spoken to me several times over the past week, and each time it had gotten a little easier for me to reply to him. We had physics and calculus together everyday.