“No way. She has a boyfriend,” I say. I’ve often seen her holding hands with Hunter, a basketball player who is part of a social echelon neither Will nor I could ever hope to reach unless gravity underwent a sudden reversal. And even if Hunter were out of the picture, Zoe probably has no shortage of willing suitors. Competition for a girl like her is undoubtedly stiff — in every sense of the word.

“Alas, my princess must be in another castle,” Will quips.

“Yeah, the comics shop,” I mutter, chucking my phone back in my bag. I can’t do it.

I’m spared from having to think about Zoe further as Will launches into a list of Kitty’s virtues that he’s clearly spent far too many hours developing.

“Why don’t you just ask her out already?” I say when he finally takes a breath.

“I’m not sure she likes me as more than a friend.”

I snort. “Get your eyes checked — she wants to climb you like a utility pole. You should go for it.” Just because I don’t see the appeal doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be happy.

“You think so?” He’s all smiles now.

“It makes more sense than stalking her like a creeper,” I say. We’ve had this conversation approximately five hundred times since the beginning of our junior year when she moved from California to Oregon and immediately fell in with his group of friends. I don’t understand how his optimism and boneheaded recalcitrance to actually do anything go together so comfortably.

“Maybe,” he says, running a hand through his tousled brown hair.

When we arrive at the comics shop, all six and a half feet of Will goes flying out of the car with the eagerness of a gawky puppy. I leave my messenger bag in the car and follow him, manually locking the passenger door since the electric door locks died sometime in the Mesozoic era. The sign above the comic book store reads AWESOMESAUCE COMICS in a neon-green typeface. The smell of freshly baked cookies wafts over me from the place next door, Karen’s Kookies. I grimace at the sign. Why businesses feel the need to abuse the English language in order to stand out has never made any sense to me. It’s the marketing equivalent of a taxidermist stapling a dead squirrel to his face to advertise his services: a unique idea, but not one that’s likely to give customers faith in anything besides the proprietor’s stupidity.

We walk into the shop and hardly anyone is in the place. A couple of middle school boys are trying to get their dad to buy them plastic light sabers, and a bored, stoned-looking dude with ragged facial hair and gauged ears watches them from behind the counter.