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pitched than usual. For a moment she wondered if this was what flirting felt like. Curling her toes against the mattress she leaned back, smiling. Who is this?
    Those bubbles again, seeming to last forever. THAT WOULD GIVE AWAY THE PUNCH LINE.
    She stared at the response, the tip of her thumb running across the edge of her phone case. Snapping it off and back on again. What if this was a joke. Or a trick. What if out there a group of guys from school—from her math class, perhaps—were sitting around laughing at her?
    Making her want just to expose how pathetic she was.
    And why was it pathetic to want, anyway? Wasn’t that what life was about? Every action humans take is born of want:wanting to eat, wanting money, wanting friends and love and warmth and meaning.
    To just not be alone. Or invisible.
    Or other .
    HEY, YOU OKAY?
    Her thumbs hovered. The problem was, she didn’t know the answer.
    Ten minutes later, the screen an uninterrupted dark, she set the phone on her bedside table and lay down, staring at it. Her mind played an endless loop of all the ways the conversation could have gone, but there were too many possibilities and so many of them ended wrong.
    Better to be safe, she figured, than wrong.
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    She spent the week with her eyes up, watching those around her. Wondering which of her fellow students was the one who’d been texting her. She hovered by lockers and half-filled lunch tables whenever she saw the flash of a phone, hoping to catch a glimpse of its screen.
    Even though she knew it was ridiculous.
    But she’d heard nothing more, a fact that had caused her mouth to turn dry with a sort of desperate regret twined through with longing.
    Her imagination concocted more and more elaborate fantasies that sprouted like weeds in her mind. No matter how hard she tried to yank them out, they only spread wider, growing wilder.
    So that when Thursday morning’s chapel service rolled around, she was ready to try something more forceful. In the quiet of Communion, as students shuffled up the aisle toward the altar, Cynthia slipped her phone free and thumbed a text.
    You still there?
    Perched on the edge of her seat, she pressed send and scanned the auditorium. Waiting for a head to shift, a shoulder to drop as someone reached for their pocket. She held her breath, straining for the vibration in the silence.
    But there was nothing.
    Until.
    YES.
    Her heart quickened. She whipped her eyes across the other students. Of course several had phones hidden in their laps, but they all appeared bored. None of them with that sense of anticipation or expectation.
    Just to be sure she thumbed out Good and pressed send.
    None of them reacted.
    She turned back in her chair. A smile began threatening her face, but then she noticed the priest frowning at her and she forced her expression into something more neutral.
    But that didn’t stop her pulse from singing.
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    That night she waited. Expecting that since she’d reestablished contact, she’d hear from him at any moment. But the evening passed. Then the early night. Then the late night. Then thefirst of the morning. She considered texting him first, but that somehow felt too desperate.
    He’d been the one pursuing her, after all. What did it mean if he’d given up? Perhaps he’d moved on to other prey. She’d known it would only be a matter of time.
    Or maybe he’d realized she was the wrong number after all.
    Either way, when she fell asleep just before sunrise, something inside of her felt newly hollow and fragile, and she didn’t know how to handle it without breaking it.
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    It was early Sunday and of course Cynthia was awake. She didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep because of the waiting.
    The waiting and the dreaming.
    DON’T BE MAD AT ME.
    The text lit up her room. The corner of her lip twitched with