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say. “Just wanted to let you know I gotta go meet someone, so.”
    Q dims his eyes. “Oh my god.”
    “What?” says Paul. Paul Olmo looks exactly like his elven archer figurine.
    “We’ll pick up the campaign tomorrow,” I say. I mean the Dungeons & Dragons game. “Sorry.”
    “My god,” says Q.
    I just nod. Yes, Q. Yes.
    Q rises and hugs me like a father sending his son off to college.
    “I’ll see you guys later,” I say.
    “Oh my god,” shouts Q.
    “What happened?” shouts Paul.
    I leave.
    I walk the glossy hallways like an adventurer discovering acave full of crystals. Past the teachers’ lounge exuding coffee and microwave food. Through a seldom-used back door leading into the seldom-seen teachers’ section of the parking lot, at the end of which stands the almost-never-visited greenhouse.
    I’m halfway across the parking lot when I realize I’ve left my lunch in my locker.
    Whatever.
    Because behind the greenhouse, among the hoes and wheelbarrows and bags of soil, there she sits. On a large upturned pot, like a magical creature. Just smiling now at my arrival. Hair blowing in the wind like a ribbon in water.
    I glance behind me. No one there. I take a sidestep and put the greenhouse between me and the rest of the world.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “Hey,” says Brit Means.
    “Hey.”
    “Hey.”
    She stands. She takes a step toward me.
    And we just kiss.
    Everything falls silent. The birds stop singing. The wind stops. Blades of grass release their bend and straighten in the motionless air. A flap of corrugated metal pauses its squeaking as a courtesy.
    I long to feel those little muscles in the small of her back—and so I do, and I can’t believe I am allowed to do this. Even more unbelievable: she feels mine , too. As if she’s been longing, too.
    When we stop for air, the wind around us resumes. The grass relaxes.
    “Are you sure we won’t get caught back here?” she whispers.
    “If we did, I guess that would make things official.”
    “Last night didn’t make things official?”
    “I guess it did, huh,” I say.
    “Pretty sure we’re official.”
    “You said we .”
    “That’s right.”
    And we kiss some more. The sun, ignored, sprints around the earth and hurries back to its original position, just to see if it can sneak in a whole revolution without us noticing.
    We don’t notice a thing.
    I’m torn between wanting to kiss and wanting to stare at her face, so I decide to stare at her face for a minute. I can see myself actually reflected in her eyes, tiny bulbous Frank Li twins, and my gaze bounces back and forth between them. In the even tinier reflections of the eyes of those two reflected Frank Lis are in turn reflected two tiny Brit Means, and so on and so on infinity plus one.
    “Whoa,” says a girl’s voice.
    We freeze, as if freezing will make us somehow invisible.
    Brit dares a glance to the side. “Oh, Joy.”
    I turn, and there’s Joy Song standing there with a face like a lemur. She is tethered to a powerfully tracksuited Wu Tang, who gives me a chiseled smile like Nice, bro.
    We should spring apart, but I’m thrilled to find that Brit doesn’t move an inch; we stand there with both hands clasped, like defiant dancers interrupted.
    “Hey,” I say to Joy.
    “Awkward,” sings Joy after a moment, and finally we can all laugh a little.
    “Is this like your guys’ spot or something?” I say.
    “It’s all good,” says Wu Tang. Everything he says he turns into a little dance move. “We got other spots. Like the roof.” He does this little pointing maneuver.
    “Oh, word?” I say.
    “Wurd.” Point.
    “But Joy didn’t want to get her new skirt dirty.” He says it all stupid like durr-tay .
    Wu Tang is so stupid that he loops it all the way around until stupid starts to seem kinda cool.
    “Aha,” I say.
    “Okay, well,” says Joy, and turns to leave.
    Brit’s hands are getting sweaty in mine. I can feel my body cooling. I can feel the wind moving in