Mythology. The boy had looked like someone from mythology to me, so larger than life and so inhumanly handsome. He looked like an Adonis… Or even better, a Cupid—not that pudgy baby with angel wings most people think of, but the handsome young Greek god. I sighed heavily, remembering the story. Forbidden love. Cupid, romancing innocent, beautiful Psyche in the secret dark. The terrible things Psyche had to suffer before she earned the right to truly marry her Cupid. Most of all, though, I could envision Cupid standing in the dark… with those bright, gleaming green eyes.

And then I was gone for a moment in the darkness. Then I was Psyche, gazing into the emerald eyes of Cupid (and knowing that he had another name). The crashing of great waves came back as the Cupid consumed me with his simmering gaze, louder and faster this time…

“Miss Slate?”

Crap!

Mrs. Phillips, a frumpy old biddy with glasses that sank into her face, was giving me a look that Bree would have called ‘wicked harsh.’ I tried to grin back.

“Oh, hi. Sorry, what was the question?” I felt like I was about to melt with embarrassment. I glanced at my desk for my book… and found something else instead. A work of art. Somehow my hand had been drawing by itself, slowly tracing out the image of a very familiar, very impossible boy. He looked up at me from the paper with an expression that seemed too real for a mere drawing.

“The question,” scolded Mrs. Phillips coldly, “was about the purpose of the scene in which Bottom turns into a donkey. Miss Slate, you are one of my best students, but that’s no excuse for not paying attention… or drawing shirtless young men while we’re supposed to be discussing a classic work of literature.”

My face flushed red. I could feel the eyes of all the other students on me as Mrs. Phillips waddled up to my desk, snatched the drawing and tossed it into the trash can.

The rest of first period was spent in a haze of white-hot anger mingled with a fog of light-magenta embarrassment. I knew I should have been paying attention, but how could she make an example of me like that in front of the whole class? Then again, I was zoning out more than usual. Even though English was my best subject, was that really an excuse to just not pay attention?

My next class, French, was no better. Even sitting next to Bree didn’t cheer me up, and Monsieur Cousteau dropped a mountain of homework on us right before the bell rang.

“Zis iz ze most important class you shall all take!” he proclaimed in his outrageous accent as we all zombie-shuffled into the hall once again. Right, my most important class. That would probably mean something if every single teacher didn’t say the exact same thing about their classes.