“That’s fair.” She nods in a way that makes me think she probably would have agreed with whatever I had said. “But I just think it’s always good to look at every angle of an argument.”

“Yeah, totally,” I say, looking back down at my notebook.

For a few moments, our quiet corner of the library is filled only with the sounds of putting pen to paper. But there’s a weird tension in the air.

“Tense” actually doesn’t seem to cover it. What’s the word for when you’re sitting at a table with someone you don’t know all that well and they maybe just implied that you’re gay and you are gay and you think they were trying to be inclusive or something but you kind of shut them down because they asked out your crush earlier and you really don’t want to be having this conversation and now there’s all this weird, unsaid stuff in the air that’s making it hard to focus on your debate prep?

Is there a word for that?

Before I can finish going through my mental thesaurus, Caitlin starts talking again.

“So … do you have any plans for the Sadie Hawkins dance?” she asks, faux-casual. Why is she asking? Does she want me to ask about her plans? Oh god, I do not want to hear about whatever sock hop fantasies she has about Caleb.

“Um, no,” I answer, not looking up, “dances aren’t really my thing.” Hopefully she’ll leave it at that.

“Gotcha,” she says, but I don’t think she does. “A little too cool for school, are we?”

“What?” I look up at her in surprise, but when I catch her smiling I realize she’s probably mostly kidding.

“To your earlier point,” I deflect, trying to steer us back to debate, “isn’t Sadie Hawkins pretty … heteronormative? I wouldn’t think you’d be into the whole mandatory ‘girls ask the guys’ thing.”

“Eh”—she shrugs one shoulder—“it’s pretty archaic, I’ll give you that. But, I don’t know, it can be a nice excuse to actually jump in and ask somebody out. Some guys still aren’t super comfortable with a girl making the first move, no matter what I feel about heteronormativity.”

“No offense, but I don’t think you want to go out with any guys like that,” I find myself saying.

“Ha, you’re probably right.” She tosses me that big, confident smile again and my mouth curves up involuntarily in response.

Are Caitlin and I … bonding?

“Hey, no offense—” I start.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that in, like, thirty seconds. I’m beginning to think you do mean offense—”

“What are you doing?” I blurt.

“What?” I’ve rarely seen Caitlin Park confused, so the look on her face is just a tiny bit satisfying.