"You really think so?" I felt the urge to administer a polygraph test right there on the spot.

"Oh my god, are you kidding? I wish you could have seen yourselves. It's all we talked about all

weekend. We wanted to call you, but we don't know your cell. So we just kept going, 'Don't they

make the cutest couple?'"

I didn't know what to say. I'd never been part of a cute couple before.

"Hel- lo!" Madison called, walking toward us. She collapsed into the chair opposite Jessica's with her enormous backpack on her lap. "Please tell me one of you knows something about imagery

in The Great Gatsby."

"We read that first semester. It's all about the green

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light," said Jessica. "Just keep talking green light."

"For five typed pages}"" Madison shook her head and changed the subject. "But enough about me. How are you guys?"

My spokesperson responded with alacrity. "How do you think she is?" She put her arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. "She's only, like, Connor Pearson's girlfriend."

"I know!" Madison practically shouted. She pushed her backpack to the floor and leaned toward

me. "He's totally into you. He told Matt he thought you were really smart." She paused and

smiled at me. "And really sexy. He said he's going to ask you to come to the game on Friday."

She took my hand in hers and then reached out for Jessica's, too. "How incredibly cool is this?"

"Okay, tell us everything," said Jessica. She was smiling and squeezing my hand tightly.

"When was the last time anyone had wanted me to tell her anything, much less everything? Their curiosity was the warmth of the sun after a swim in the frigid ocean.

"Is he a good kisser?" asked Madison.

"Yeah," I admitted. "He's a good kisser."

Jessica and Madison each gave my hand a squeeze. "We knew it!" Madison said.

"So, wait," said Jessica. "How good?"

I couldn't help smiling at the memory of kissing Connor.

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"Oooh, she's smiling," said Madison.

I took my hands back and dropped my face into them. "Stop," I said through my fingers. "You're embarrassing me."

"Okay, we'll stop," said Jessica. But when I looked up she and Madison were still staring and

smiling at me.

"You are, like, so cool," Jessica announced, and Madison nodded as if Jessica had just recited a holy truth.

Looking at their awestruck faces, I could literally see the power of Connor's touch. With his kiss,

the prince had turned this unlovable stepdaughter into a popular girl.

I didn't run into Connor until after sixth period, when we were coming toward each other from

opposite ends of the hallway. I saw him before he saw me, and watching him from a distance, I

remembered all the times I'd passed him in the hall before today, totally aware of who he was

while he didn't even know I existed. Then he spotted me, and suddenly he was smiling from ear

to ear, like seeing me was the greatest thing that had happened to him all day.

Was he really my boyfriend now? It didn't seem possible.

"Hey, Red," he called, slowing down. He was wearing a soft-looking green sweater with his

basketball jacket over it. The hall swarmed with people going to class, and

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out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some of them checking us out.

"Hey, Connor," I said. A girl I didn't know walked by and said, "Hi, Connor," and he waved in her direction without looking up.

"So you're coming to the game Friday, right?"

"Right," I said. Thinking about the game and then going out with him after made me feel all

tingly, and I shivered a little.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"Oh, no, I'm just--"

But he was already slipping his jacket off and draping it over my shoulders. It was heavy and

smelled of whatever delicious soap or cologne or shampoo Connor used.

"Hey, you look pretty good in that," he said, admiring me. "Why don't you keep it for a while?"

He took my hand for a second.

"Yeah, sure," I said. "I'll keep it for a while." I felt faint. I actually felt faint. And I knew that if I fainted, Connor would pick me up in his arms and carry me to the nurse's office, and the image

of him doing that only made me feel fainter. Luckily, just then the warning bell sounded. "Gotta

go," he said. "Higby'll go nuts if I'm late." And he turned and was swallowed up by the crowd.

By the time I got to English, my last class of the day, I must have said hi to at least fifty people.

Maybe a

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hundred and fifty. It was like I was a celebrity or something. As I walked into the empty

classroom, I realized it was the first time I'd been alone since lunch. I sat down in my usual seat,

opened my notebook to a blank page, and started doodling, glad to have the quiet room to

myself. My solitude, however, was to be short lived. A minute later Rachel Smith came into the

room and rushed over to where I was sitting, pulling out the chair of the desk next to mine.

As she sat down, she blew a massive bubble in my direction. "I saw you at Piazzolla's Friday,"

she said.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I had dinner there." Was that what we'd done at Piazzolla's? I couldn't actually remember eating a thing.

"Want some gum?" she held out a pack in my direction. Through the wrapping I got a whiff of

something very strawberry.

"No thanks," I said.

She put the gum back in her bag. "I waved as you were leaving, but I guess you didn't see me."

She'd waved at me? "I guess not," I said. "Sorry." Just then Bethany Miller came in and made a beeline for the empty desk on my other side.

"Hey," said Bethany. She was wearing a miniskirt that would have been too small on a house cat.

When she took off her jacket, her boobs practically fell out of her low-cut shirt and onto her

desk. She gave me an enormous smile.

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"Hey," I said. Rachel and Bethany, who were best friends, usually sat right next to each other so they could pass notes from the second class started to the second it ended. Once, in September, I

made the mistake of sitting at the empty desk next to Bethany's, and she asked me to move.

Actually, she didn't ask me to move, she told me to move. What she said was, "You're sitting in my friend's seat."

"You and Connor Pearson are the cutest couple," Bethany squealed. "You guys looked so good together Friday." She squeezed my shoulder when she said "Friday." Then she dropped her hand onto my desk.

"Um, thanks."

'"Cause you're both, like, tall and thin and stuff. You look like two models."

"Thanks," I said again. If there's one thing I know I don't look like, it's a model. I looked down at my doodle as the rest of the class started filing in. A few people smiled at me or said hey.

"Oooh, that's cool," said Rachel, looking at my notebook. "It really looks like a glass of water."

Bethany looked down to admire my drawing, too. "Totally. Are you, like, a really good artist?

Because that's really good." She nodded enthusiastically, then repeated. "Really."

"Oh, I'm not--" I started to say, but just then Miss Merriam walked in.