“He’s not Jack,” I say to them. “You’re John,” I tell him accusingly.

“Mr. Hoffman doesn’t do nicknames,” he says. “As you’re aware, Adeleina.”

I scowl. I already dislike it when Mr. Hoffman calls me Adeleina. But when John does? I scowl harder.

“Crushed anyone else’s soul with your pedantry lately, Jack?” I say.

“I don’t recall anything like that, no,” he says. He smiles slightly. “I wonder, have you refused to accept any apologies lately, Addie?”

I gasp. “When did you ever apologize?!”

Nevaeh, Katherine, and Taylor are looking back and forth between us like I’m Serena Williams and he’s someone at Wimbledon who sucks.

“You two know each other?” Katherine says, her eyes wide with anxiety.

“He’s that guy!” I say, pointing. “The awful one! In history! Who keeps correcting me! Who ruined my presentation on the women’s suffrage movement!” Jack looks skeptical, which makes me even madder. I turn to my friends. “He complained that I was leaving out the men who were also—what did you say, Jack?—‘an integral piece of the historical contextualization of the immunization of the mumble, mumble, blah, blah, blah’?” I’m even worse at presentations than just speaking in class, and I froze when he started talking.

“Oh, that guy!” Taylor says.

John’s dark eyes narrow. “I didn’t complain! And that is not what I said! I was interested to know what you thought about the concurrent behavior of the men at the time who were both—”

“Not a part of my presentation and also not important!”

He throws his hands in the air. His hair has fallen on his forehead in an unforgivably aesthetically pleasing way. “Typical of you to take it all wrong, I’m starting to learn, I guess.”

“Typical of you to be so superior and condescending!”

His eyes widen. “Well! Typical of you to be willfully ignorant of my intentions—”

“Typical of you to be a toad,” I interrupt. Nevaeh laughs, and Katherine makes an odd squeaking noise, like she’s not sure if she should laugh or cut in.

“Typical of you to—” He starts to say, and then glances at Katherine, her big eyes. He stops and looks frustrated, pushes his hair off his face.

“To what?” I challenge.

“To nothing!” He throws up his hands again.

“Clever,” I sniff.

“Maybe you can sit down? And we can talk?” Katherine says to him, looking back and forth at us both.

“Or he could go fall down a well, actually,” I say.

Katherine is startled into laughing, then slaps her hand over her mouth. I don’t look at John—Jack! Nevaeh and Taylor are grinning at each other.

“I can go,” Jack says. He’s got his hand on the back of the chair.

“No,” Katherine says. “I mean—” She looks at me pleadingly.