The screen is blurring in front of my eyes and my head is swimming trying to parse out this problem. I feel dizzy and confused and …

Hopeful. I have hope. Hope against hope. Confusing hope. It can’t be. But I have to know. My phone still sits in my trembling hands and I realize that minutes have passed and I haven’t responded. I need to get it together. I can’t lose this chance.

I text back.

How is it not weird? It’s so weird. And humiliating.

Just because I have hope doesn’t mean I’m going to make an ass of myself. I’ve already revealed so much by just spending time with Boy Wonder—I can’t expose myself more. I need more information.

My phone buzzes.

What do you have to be humiliated about?

Apparently, all plans I had to keep my dignity are completely hopeless. Looks like we’re going to drag everything out in the open. I was trying to protect my soft spots, curl in on myself, but Caleb insists on breaking me open.

Come on, you must know by now. If you can really feel everything I feel, then you must know. No point beating around the bush about it.

But that’s exactly what I’m doing. I don’t want to say it so he’ll have to.

I get up from my desk chair and start pacing my bedroom. I’m being too harsh, too prickly. But Caleb knows me, he knows that this is who I am. He can’t expect to vague-text me and not get hostile texts back. Right?

To be totally honest, I wasn’t sure. Sometimes things get really muddled and it was easy to confuse that with my own feelings.

Oh, goddammit, there’s that hope again. I start to compose another text, saying god only knows what, when my hands—still shaking—stop themselves. We’re getting nowhere like this.

Here it is, Adam. Now is the time to be brave. Now is the time to jump in and say what you feel and find out how he feels. This is your moment.

I slump down on my bed, the nervous energy of the past ten minutes dissolved like wind sucked out of my sails. I’m not this person. Caleb is. Caleb is the guy who defends the weird kid in the hallway, his non-date at the school dance; the guy who always puts his apple slices on my lunch tray because he doesn’t like them and he knows that I do. Caleb is the guy who is terrified to give an in-class presentation but will never cower in front of a bully. And who am I? I’m nobody.