For a moment Jessica almost wished that Dad hadn’t decided to start packing lunches for her. Waiting in line for official Bixby High School slop would have given her more time to scope out where to sit. Maybe that was why high school lunches had been invented. It certainly hadn’t been for their nutritional value. Or their flavor.

As her eyes scanned the room, the butterflies in Jessica’s stomach started fluttering again. There was Dess, looking straight at her. The girl must have used some quicker route to the lunchroom through the Bixby High maze. She sat at a table in a distant corner with two friends. Like her, they wore all black. Jess recognized the boy from the first day of school. She remembered that moment of anxiety entering Bixby High for the first time, terrified that she was late. The memory was strangely clear; the image of his glasses getting knocked off was cemented in her mind. Jessica wondered why she hadn’t seen him around since then. With his long black coat the guy should have stood out at Bixby. There’d been a lot of kids like him and Dess back in PS 141, but there were only three or four here. It was too warm and sunny in Oklahoma to do the whole vampire thing.

Unless, of course, you were “photophobic,” if Dess had even been telling the truth about that.

Now the boy was looking at Jessica too, as if he and Dess were both expecting her to join them. The other girl at the table was staring off into space, headphones over her ears.

Jessica looked around for somewhere else to sit. She wasn’t up for any more head games today. She looked for Constanza or Liz, but she couldn’t see them or any of the other girls from the library table. Her eyes searched for a familiar face, but Jess recognized no one. The horde of faces blurred together into a bewildering mass. The cafeteria slipped out of focus, the dizzying roar of voices assaulting her from all sides. Her moment of hesitation stretched out, suddenly transformed into total confusion.

But somehow her feet kept walking, bringing her closer to Dess’s table. The girl and her friends were the only stable part of the room. Instinct carried Jessica toward them.

“Jessica?”

She turned, recognized a face out of the blur. A very attractive face.

“I’m Jonathan, from physics class. Remember?”

His smile cut through the fog enveloping her. His dark brown eyes were very much in focus.

“Sure. Jonathan. Physics.” She had noticed him in class. Anyone would have.

Jessica stood there, unable to say anything more. But at least she had managed to stop walking toward Dess’s table.

A look of concern crossed his face. “Want to sit down?”

“Yeah. That would be great.”