I could eat my sandwich in peace here and draw something in the sketchbook I carried around with me. I flipped the book open and took out my 2B pencil. It was the perfect pencil for sketching: soft, yet still hard enough, giving just the right combination of perfect lines and shading. I decided to sketch my sandwich wrapper, so I crumpled it and dropped it to the ground. But just as I was about to take a bite and lower my pencil to the paper, something whacked me on the back. My entire body fell forward and my face hit the ground.

“What . . . ah . . . what?” I scrambled to my feet in a state of shock. What was that? A bomb? A meteorite? A . . . a . . . a . . .

Bloody rugby ball. Loud laughter erupted behind me and I froze. Had that been on purpose? I certainly wasn’t going to wait around to find out. I grabbed my things and was just about to rush off when I heard a voice.

“You okay?” I turned, only to find him standing there.

Jake Jock Jones Double Barrel.

“Sorry about that. Vuyo got a bit carried away,” he said. Vuyo, I knew that name . . . oh, TikTok-famous guy who deliberately fell down flights of stairs. God, I hoped he hadn’t filmed that: I don’t want to be trending tomorrow.

“Sure. No worries. Sorry,” I replied, shrugging. This was my default response to things like this. I brushed them off with carefully rehearsed nonchalance. I’d learned that when you reacted, it spurred them on. Dulling your emotions and reactions was the only way for girls like me to handle situations like this.

“Why’re you saying sorry?” he asked.

“Uh . . . what?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were just sitting here, having lunch.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks . . . I think.” I blinked a few times, utterly confused.

He smiled at me. He really was gorgeous. Still, not my type. But there was no denying his obvious hotness. Michelangelo believed that beauty could be boiled down to a simple equation. The golden ratio that dictated how features should fit together in perfect, mathematical symmetry. But Jake’s hotness seemed to defy this. His lopsided smile, the scar through his left eyebrow, the random and imperfect waves in his hair, the way it was mostly brown except for those gold strands that made it look like the sun was directly above him, casting a constant glow over him. Nothing about his face was in proportion, and yet it fit together perfectly. Michelangelo was definitely wrong.

“I’m Jake, by the way.” And then he did something strange. He extended his hand for me to shake.

“I—I know,” I stammered, taking it sheepishly. “Lori.”

“I know,” he said.

And then, as quickly as he’d appeared, he was gone. He jogged back to his friends, who were all still laughing.

“Shut up,” Jake shouted, throwing the ball at Vuyo.