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the hallway and down the stairs.
    â€œDid you just say ‘shit’ in French?” Mason says.
    â€œYeah, it’s . . .” A ballet thing. “Not important. Let’s get out of here.”
    We pile into James’s pickup truck with Mason’s motorcycle in the bed. I sit in the backseat next to Bianca and swallow, and swallow, and swallow.
    â€œYou okay?” she whispers.
    I nod and close my eyes and tell myself what I’m hearing in my head is Mendel, or Sondheim.
    Is anything but the damn “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

6
    â€œHELMET,” MASON SAYS, SNAPPING HIS into place.
    â€œPlease, I know. This isn’t a Lifetime movie.”
    We’re on a silent road by a cornfield, like that’s at all descriptive when you’re in damn Nebraska. The town has started to grow in the past thirty years, hence the snobby girls’ school, as a lot of rich people are moving here for some reason I still haven’t figured out—my mom runs social work which is probably why she’s weirdly supportive of my goals to be a destitute Bohemian—but the town is still like 95 percent cornfields. This time of year, it’s just a corn graveyard, dried-up creepy stalks and dry dirt. No snow yet.
    Bianca and James are waiting by his pickup truck. Well, James is, leaning against the hood, looking up at the stars like he’scounting them. Bianca’s inside the car shivering and looking at the dashboard.
    â€œAll right, climb on!”
    I haul myself onto the seat and press myself into him. I’m suddenly all conscious of my body, how my boobs and stomach must feel against his back.
    So I’m a person with aspirations of being in a motorcycle gang who has never actually been on a motorcycle before. He takes off, and I wasn’t prepared for how much I would feel it through my whole body, vibrate with it, somehow feel like I’m causing it to happen.
    It’s pretty amazing. Way to go with those based-on-nothing dreams, Etta. Good taste.
    I squeeze him around the waist a little tighter than I need to as we speed up and the dead corn blurs into gray-brown wallpaper. The headlights make the road look blue, and the helmet hushes everything, and as much as I’m enjoying being wrapped around him, a part of me wishes I were alone, that it were just me and this thing that I have no idea how to drive, yeah, but besides that just the road and me and however many stars there are.
    But being here with him, this cute boy I just met yesterday, this cute boy who knows I’m not good at food or ex-girlfriends and still wants me pressed against his back . . . I am just not really complaining, is the thing.
    Especially when he pulls over the motorcycle and tugs me into some dead corn and kisses me, hands big around my ears and neck and pulling me close.
    Not complaining, not at all.
    I like him.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    â€œSo. Um.” Bianca’s out of the car now, wearing James’s coat and Mason’s and my scarves. The boys are drinking beers by the trunk. Like one each, this really is not going to be a Lifetime movie. But what up, good little Christian boy! Iiiinteresting.
    I tuck her under my arm a little and rub her head to warm her up. She leans into me. “Yeah?” I say.
    â€œIs Mason maybe gonna be your boyfriend?”
    â€œHa! I don’t know. Aw, I’m not laughing at you. I just don’t think that much about boys.”
    â€œOr girls?” She’s totally interested. Sweet girl.
    â€œOr girls. Not with dating, anyway.” Anymore , my brain goes all melodramatically, but really it’s not like I lost my faith in love after Danielle or something. To quote Rent , “It’s not that kind of movie, honey.”
    The boys come back around to stand with us and start talking about something singing-related with words I don’t even know, so I drift away a few paces and twist my