“I didn’t take that many. It was pretty basic—just an overview of the themes we should be looking for as we read, that kind of stuff.”

“Cool, yeah, I just totally spaced out, I don’t know what happened.” He rubs the back of his neck, looking down again.

“You’ll catch up in no time, I’m sure,” Caitlin offers, swaying slightly.

“All right, well, I’ll let you get back to it,” Caleb says, gesturing at the table, where I’m still sitting in complete silence like some weird forgotten puppet. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“It’s fine,” Caitlin assures him. “We just got started.”

“Yeah, but I know you’ve been stressed about the competition coming up—” Caleb cuts himself off midsentence and there’s a flash of panic on his face.

“Uh, yeah, I guess I have been.” Caitlin’s face scrunches up and that’s now twice in one day I’ve seen her confused. What in the world is even happening? “God, I must be talking about it all the time.”

But she hasn’t been. She always seems insanely confident in debate club. I’ve never overheard her and Jessica talk about it either, and I feel like I get the full rundown every day sitting in front of them in English. I had no idea she was nervous about our competition. I wonder if that’s why she was going on and on about the dance just now—was she trying to distract herself?

“Yeah, well, anyway,” Caleb says, edging away from the table, “I’m sure you guys will do great.”

“Yeah.” Caitlin nods, some confidence reentering her voice. “Yeah, I mean, we’ve got the dream team right here.” She throws a grin at me and I give a single nod in concurrence, my ability to speak apparently still out of reach.

“Right, yeah, for sure.” Caleb stumbles briefly, having backed into another table. “Well, good luck with all the … debating. I’ll see you guys later.”

He brings his hand up in a strange little wave before turning around and rushing out of the library. Caitlin looks after him for a moment before slowly retaking her seat.

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” I say as brightly as I can. “If you waited for a guy like that to ask you out, you might have been waiting forever.”

The comment leaves a funny taste in my mouth—joking about Caleb this way feels weird and wrong—but Caitlin’s shoulders relax slightly and it’s almost worth it.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know, part of me thinks he only said yes because he was too flustered to say anything else.”

She shrugs it off.

“Well, never mind about all that,” she says, full bravado back. “We have a moratorium on talking about personal things and we’re sticking to it.”