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clay. “Sculpt your way to a happier self.”
    Spencer is the greatest—totally laid back and unbelievably talented. You’d never know it from his hard-as-nails exterior—complete with straggly long hair, torn up jeans, and a three-inch scar down the side of his face—but he sculpts the most feminine of figurines using the most unyielding of materials.
    I take his clay-mound offering but refrain from telling him that it’s not exactly unhappiness I’m dealing with right now. It’s confusion. I mean, why did Ben touch me like that? Why was he being so weird in lab? And what’s with all the mixed signals?
    “Is it a guy?” Spencer asks, setting up the tables for tonight’s pottery class.
    I nod and slip on an apron.
    “Care to elaborate? I can give you the male perspective— free of charge, of course.”
    “Maybe after I wedge,” I say, slamming the clay down on my work board.
    Spencer is barely twenty-five, but he’s owned this shop for a little over two years now. I first met him during my freshman year, when he was substituting for Ms. Mazur, his supposed mentor—something he does only sparingly now that he has the shop. He told me I was a natural with the potter’s wheel and asked if I wanted a job. About a year and a half later—the time it took me to convince my parents I was responsible enough to handle work and school— I finally took him up on it.
    And it’s been my dream job ever since.
    After only three weeks of working for him, he gave me free run of the place: “So you can work on your stuff whenever inspiration hits,” he said, dropping the shop’s keys into my palm, “be it eleven o’clock at night or three in the morning.” And, though I’ve yet to take him up on the generous offer to work whenever I please, I have a feeling those days are coming.
    I honestly can’t remember another time in my life when I felt this unhinged.
    “Will you be needing something a bit stronger than that?” Spencer asks, referring to the clay. “A little maple wood? Or some iron, maybe?”
    “No,” I smile, giving my clay another good thwack against the board. “This will do just fine.”
    Spencer gives me a thumbs-up and then leaves me alone. But I’m not alone for long. Not even ten minutes later, Kimmie comes bursting through the door. “I knew I’d find you here,” she announces.
    “Is something wrong?”
    She sets her design portfolio down against the table with a thud. “I’ll say something’s wrong. You didn’t even call me. Word is he practically took you down in chemistry.”
    “Wait— what ?”
    “Everybody’s talking about it—about him—and how he tried to maul you today.”
    “Ben?”
    “Was there someone else who tried to maul you?”
    “That’s not how it happened,” I say, squeezing and resqueezing my clay in an effort to remain calm.
    “I know, because apparently you didn’t even put up a fight. Apparently you didn’t even seem to mind.”
    “He touched me again,” I say, my heart tightening at the mere words.
    “From what I heard, it was way more than just a touch.” She folds her arms and taps her patent-leather Mary Jane against the linoleum floor.
    “No,” I say. “You don’t understand. He touched me, like in the parking lot that day—and it got all weird.”
    “Weird as in creepy?”
    “Weird as in unbelievable,” I say, still able to picture it, to picture him—the way our faces were only inches apart and how his bottom lip quivered when he told me to shush. “It’s like he touches me on my arm or my stomach, but my whole body feels it.”
    “Honestly, Camelia, do you know how cheesy that sounds? Even for you.”
    “You know what I mean. I need to know what he’s all about.”
    “Is everything okay?” Spencer asks, inserting himself into our conversation. I glance toward his work area at the back of the shop, wondering how long he’s been standing behind us and how much he actually heard.
    “Better than okay,” Kimmie says, openly