It’s like it was made for this show! It evokes the main character’s longing for the home he can’t remember (another planet). Also, it’s incredibly professional-looking. You’re really talented.

My stomach does a weird little flip.

I put my phone down on my nightstand for a minute and then pick it up again. The words are still there. She’s given me the opening I spent all afternoon trying to figure out how to create. If Will can ask Kitty out without quacking it up, surely I can compose one text message.

Me: *opens databank and activates thinking.exe*

Microseconds after I hit send, I curse my stupidity. Zoe can’t possibly even know what I’m talking about. I’m babbling the kind of ridiculous gobbledygook only Will would make sense of, and he probably only understands me because of his obsessive interest in robotics and vintage computers. Attempting to be human is a waste of time. I should do my homework or think about how I’m going to respond to my dad — or if I should even bother. After all, if he wanted to see me, maybe he should have thought about that before he put an ocean between us.

Zoe’s response comes through faster than I expected.

*admires processing capacity*

Instead of flipping, this time it feels like my stomach is trying to exit through a random hole. She’s playing my game. I can’t resist responding.

Me: *completes processing; concludes that painting may be used*

Quack me.

My immunity to Zoe Miller has been compromised.

Zoe

The October trees sing with crimson and rust and amber outside the library’s great bank of windows. I’m trying to focus on trigonometry, but the shimmer of the Willamette River in the late afternoon sun hypnotizes me. It reminds me of Sam Jones’s painting, even though hers had an unreal quality. I don’t understand her reluctance to display her work. The idea of creating something that extraordinary and not caring if anyone sees it is something I can’t quite fathom. Approval and admiration are like oxygen to me. What does Sam survive on?

The ruffling of pages brings me back to the task at hand. Hunter sits across from me, trying to help me study for the math quiz I’m anxious about. He knows me well enough to know we’re not going to escape the library and make out in his car until my work is done. An essay completed or a quiz well prepared for means a tangle of tongues, the shiver of warm breath in an ear, a large hand gently tracing a small breast . . . Business before pleasure.

“Trig identities: go!” Hunter has my book open, his finger poised over the definition I’m meant to recite.

“Um . . . Sine squared u plus cosine squared u equals one.”