Firelight by Sophie Jordan

can’t help it. He’s sweet and disarming and my nerves are racing. “Not even close.”
    The conversation goes no further as we move up in our lines. Catherine looks over her shoulder at me, her wide sea eyes assessing. Like she can’t quite figure me out. My smile fades and I look away. She can never figure me out. I can never let her. Never let anyone here.
    She faces me with her arms crossed. “You make friends fast. Since freshman year, I’ve spoken to like…” She pauses and looks upward as though mentally counting. “Three, no—four people. And you’re number four.”
    I shrug. “He’s just a guy.”
    Catherine squares up at the free-throw line, dribbles a few times, and shoots. The ball swishes cleanly through the net. She catches it and tosses it back to me.
    I try copying her moves, but my ball flies low, glides beneath the backboard. I head to the end of the line again.
    Will’s already waiting at half-court, letting others go before him. My face warms at his obvious stall.
    “You weren’t kidding,” he teases over the thunder of basketballs.
    “Did you make it?” I ask, wishing I had looked while he shot.
    “Yeah.”
    “Of course,” I mock.
    He lets another kid go before him. I do the same. Catherine is several ahead of me now.
    His gaze scans me, sweeping over my face and hair with deep intensity, like he’s memorizing my features. “Yeah, well. I can’t run like you.”
    I move up in line, but when I sneak a look behind me, he’s looking back, too.
    “Wow,” Catherine murmurs in her smoky low voice as she falls into line beside me. “I never knew it happened like that.”
    I snap my gaze to her. “What?”
    “You know. Romeo and Juliet stuff. Love at first sight and all that.”
    “It’s not like that,” I say quickly.
    “You could have fooled me.” We’re up again. Catherine takes her shot. It swishes cleanly through the hoop.
    When I shoot, the ball bounces hard off the backboard and flies wildly through the air, knocking the coach in the head. I slap a hand over my mouth. The coach barely catches herself from falling. Several students laugh. She glares at me and readjusts her cap.
    With a small wave of apology, I head back to the end of the line.
    Will’s there, fighting laughter. “Nice,” he says. “Glad I’m downcourt of you.”
    I cross my arms and resist smiling, resist letting myself feel good around him. But he makes it hard.
    I want to smile. I want to like him, to be around him, to know him. “Happy to amuse you.”
    His smile slips then, and he’s looking at me with that strange intensity again. Only I understand. I know why. He must remember…must recognize me on some level even though he can’t understand it.
    “You want to go out?” he asks suddenly.
    I blink. “As in a date?”

    “Yes. That’s what a guy usually means when he asks that question.”
    Whistles blow. The guys and girls head in opposite directions.
    “Half-court scrimmage,” Will mutters, looking unhappy as he watches the coaches toss out jerseys.
    “We’ll talk later in study hall. Okay?”
    I nod, my chest uncomfortably tight, breath hard to catch. Seventh period. A few hours to decide whether to date a hunter. The choice should be easy, obvious, but already my head aches. I doubt anything will ever be easy for me again.

    Catherine saves me a seat at lunch. I slide in across from her and her friend. Apparently one of the other three people she’s spoken to thus far in high school.
    She introduces us. Brendan is all gangly limbs and bobbing Adam’s apple. He hunkers over his packed lunch, nibbling on a peanut butter sandwich clutched between his two large hands as if someone might snatch it from him.
    “Hey,” he says quietly, almost inaudible. His darting brown eyes never looking too long at my face.
    At anything or anyone really, except Catherine.
    “Hi,” I return, then search for my sister, ignoring the faces staring back at me. Like I have tried to ignore them all