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sound like fingernails down a chalkboard.
    She glanced at the screen before handing it over. The text stood out against the background picture of a blurry selfie taken at camp last summer.
    HEY BEAUTIFUL.
    One of her feet refused to move, staying rooted a split second longer than expected, and she pitched forward before regaining her balance. The wash of murmurs behind her notched higher. She tried to clear the lock screen, intent onerasing the words but her fingers were too clumsy, and Mr. Banks plucked the phone from her before she could finish.
    The words still blazed on the screen. Of course Mr. Banks read them. His eyebrows twitched. The corners of his mouth tightened. Not in a frown, but a smirk. He glanced at her, and she read it all in his expression. In the way he shook his head once before dropping the phone in a drawer.
    That he’d known instantly what she’d already figured out: It was a mistake. Those words hadn’t been meant for her.
    For a moment she was afraid he’d actually laugh. Or worse, read the text out loud, demanding to know who’d sent it. Instead, he slid the drawer closed and hunched back over his stack of papers. “You can pick it up at the end of school.”
    She turned back to her desk, eyes firmly glued to the ground. Every inch of exposed skin burned so hot she was sure those around her could feel the heat of her. For the rest of class she strained, trying to find words in the whispers. Trying to discern the tone of laughter. Feeling eyes on her, their judgment an iron casket closing tight.
    That afternoon she hovered in the hallway, tucked between two banks of lockers, and waited for Mr. Banks to step out of his room. When he did, she darted in, yanked open his desk drawer, and fumbled for her phone. It was tangled among a nest of paper clips and old rubber bands. Capless pens and staples that had broken ranks from their glued brethren.
    Sweat beaded on her neck. Though there was nothingpersonal in the desk, it still felt like a violation to dig through it. An inviolate rule broken. But she couldn’t face him. Couldn’t risk him asking about the message. Phone in hand, she ran-walked to the door, the relief of near success practically choking her.
    Mr. Banks was halfway down the hallway, headed her way. There was no way he missed her hasty retreat. But he said nothing as she scuttled past him with arms crossed and shoulders hunched. Eyes to the ground at all costs.
    In her car she let the heat-soaked interior flush over her as she cupped the phone in hands shaky with adrenaline.
    HEY BEAUTIFUL.
    She didn’t have the sender’s number in her contacts, but that wasn’t surprising. She had only three contacts beyond those of her family: a friend from camp, the owner of a local gaming shop, and a popular boy she’d overheard giving out his number at lunch one day. The area code was local, but running a reverse phone lookup yielded nothing.
    She allowed a moment of unrestrained imagination. What it would be like if she had been the intended recipient. If she perhaps had some secret admirer. At first she pictured the boys in her class at school, but they all felt too familiar—too childish and immature.
    They didn’t feel enough for her.
    No, she wanted someone sophisticated. Someone worldly who could pull her from her dull existence and introduce herto bolder and brighter worlds. He’d be older, much older, with the beginning edges of salt threading otherwise pepper hair. His skin would be dark, his lips lush, and his accent lilting as his tongue curled around poetry in her ear.
    He’d be like the heroes in books and movies. The kind who could offer forever and not just right now.
    Her problem was that she wanted it so much that even the fantasy of it turned her stomach sour. With a tight shake of her head, she wiped the screen and dropped the phone onto the passenger seat. Her car started with a coughing wheeze, and she drove home