The clean-cut, straight-arrow guys and blond-ponytailed girls from Greenhill had intrigued her. She even caught the attention of one of the boys, a kid with perfect teeth and a twinkle in his eye. He sat in one of the metal folding chairs in the back and patted the empty seat beside him.

She had practically floated as she went to sit next to the boy. “I’m Natalie,” she said. “I work here.”

“Prescott,” he’d said, and she wasn’t sure if that was his first or last name. Rich kids tended to have first names that sounded like last names.

“You like poetry?” she asked.

“Nah. Our English Nine teacher said we’d get extra credit if we came.”

Natalie’s mom introduced the poet, supposedly one of the most gifted protégés of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the pride of the Bay Area. He sure seemed to be channeling Ferlinghetti with that beard and bowler hat.

The boy named Prescott took notes in a theme book with a marbled cover. Tucked between the pages was a brochure from Mr. Lee’s Driving School—that was the place where everyone learned to drive. Everyone except probably Natalie. Even though driving was a few years away, her mom was already warning her that there was no point in taking driving lessons because number one, they didn’t have a car, and number two, driving in the city was impossible anyway.

Prescott noticed her looking and drew a little thumbs-up next to the brochure. Then in the margin of the page, he wrote, What’s your number?

Natalie nearly fainted, but she grabbed his pencil and wrote it on the page next to her name. When the author started reading, the poem seemed kind of low-key, a collection of images about trains and tunnels. Then she heard one too many references to grinding gears and thrusting pistons and a woman outlining her moist mouth with a lipsicle … and that was when the elbow jabs and snickers started. Most of the subsequent poems were filled with further obvious references. Natalie’s cheeks and ears caught fire, and she slumped in her chair, feeling trapped in a vortex of the poet’s loud, gruff voice and the hisses of suppressed amusement from the high school kids. When the guy recited a piece about going to the zoo and seeing a gorilla eating a raw hot dog, she nearly melted into a pool of mortification.

During a pause in the presentation, the earnest adults sitting in the front of the room started a discussion, and Prescott asked her what school she went to.

“St. Dymphna’s,” she whispered. It wasn’t as prestigious as Greenhill. “Maybe I’ll go to Greenhill for high school,” she added. Yeah, right. If she asked to go to Greenhill, her mom would say they Couldn’t Afford It, which was her answer to pretty much everything.

“You’re not in high school?” Prescott asked. He looked down at the number she had neatly penciled in his notebook. “Maybe I’ll call you in a few years, then.”