Paul sneered. “Dumb bitch,” he said. I guess as long as I was in front of him, icing him out, he was in control of the game. But now that I’d broken the rules, he couldn’t play anymore. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Ethan slapped his hands on his desk.

“Shut up, Paul,” Ethan snapped. “We’ve all watched you try to get her attention with your bullshit. We saw you, we heard you, you failed. So stop talking.”

The only indication that Paul had heard any of this was a slight twitch of his mouth. But he wasn’t about to let Ethan deflect the attention away from me. “You know he’s gay, right, Princess? If you’re so desperate, I could’ve given you some.” He looked suggestively at his crotch.

“From what I’ve heard,” Ethan said, waving his hand toward Paul’s nether regions, “you don’t have that much to spare.” He put his index finger and thumb about two inches apart.

That did it. Paul’s eyes went directly to Ethan as he stood up and took a scary step toward him. But I stood up, too. As I did, I tightened my core, threw my shoulders back, and straightened my spine. With all the adrenaline pumping through my body, my ballet posture automatically kicked in. Paul kept moving toward Ethan, so I lifted my arm in front of me, blocking his way.

“Paul,” I said, “if you want people to stop talking about the size of your penis, stop being such a giant dick. It’s negative correlation. The more you act like a dick, the smaller people will assume your actual dick is. So be a normal human being—stop hitting on girls who don’t want to be hit on, stop making racist jokes—and everyone will assume it’s normal-sized. Okay?”

Silence. Then a snicker, followed by an all-out laugh. Then someone cleared their throat and my eyes shot to the door. Ms. Belson was there. “All right,” she said, swiftly taking in the scene. “We’ll keep these seating arrangements for now. Alina, please see me after class.”

Apparently there was no punishment for saying “dick” in Ms. Belson’s class. It helped that I told her Paul and Jake had been harassing me since the beginning of the semester. It also helped that Ethan stayed to back me up, and that he had been keeping a record of it. Like, writing down everything Paul and Jake said to me and when in his notebook. He’d even kept the record up for the two weeks we weren’t talking. Because, of course he did.