She couldn’t do it. Instead, she darted into Trader Joe’s to buy a demi baguette and whatever the Trader Joe’s version of Coke was. The huge store was busy and crowded, the line even longer than at Starbucks. She pulled out her phone to check the time. Her mother’s meeting was just getting started. After lunch she had American history, Algebra II, and physics—all of her very worst subjects, taught by teachers who would most certainly not leave her to space out at the back of the classroom now that her mother had told them how clever she was and how she was wasting her potential. School’s over, she decided. She was almost home anyway. She put back the baguette and ducked outside again.

“Salve, Shy Clarke,” Mr. Streko greeted her, his Chipotle bag clutched in his fist. “Grabbing lunch?”

“I—I. Um,” Shy stammered. She raised her hand in greeting. “Salve, Mr. Streko.” Show me your tattoos. Take me away from here. I can’t live either with you or without you.

He grinned in reply, suddenly seeming very young and hip outside the confines of the classroom. He probably played guitar and surfed and ate in those outdoor pop-up barbecue restaurants near the Gowanus Canal with dumb names like Pig Party and Cow Town. He probably had a beautiful twenty-three-year-old girlfriend with a perfect body and amazing hair, piercings in all the right places, and even more tattoos.

“Wanna walk back to school with me?” he offered.

Shy shook her head. “I’m actually going home. I’m… um… not feeling that well.”

The corners of Mr. Streko’s expressive mouth turned down in sympathy, his black mustache glinting sexily in the bright sun. He patted her on the shoulder and Shy flinched. He’d never touched her before. Was her face red? Could he tell how nervous and pathetic she was?

“Bummer. Well, get some rest and feel better quick, okay?” He raised the brown paper Chipotle bag in his hand. “Think it’s rude to eat a burrito in a meeting?”

Shy shrugged her shoulders and smiled, embarrassed that he’d asked for her opinion on an issue of such grown-up, professional importance and embarrassed that he was most likely meeting her mother.

“Ita est vita,” Mr. Streko said, which was the Latin equivalent of c’est la vie. He said it all the time in class when the students moaned about an upcoming quiz or too much homework. “I get weird when I’m hungry.” He chuckled and Shy half smiled back. “Sometimes when I get weird I post dorky Latin quotes on Twitter.”

Shy stared at him stoically. She wasn’t on Twitter, but in about thirty seconds she would be, just as soon as they parted ways.

“See ya,” Mr. Streko called, striding away to make the light.