He led Jessica to an empty table, in the corner opposite Dess’s. Her dizziness began to subside. She gratefully dumped her book bag and lunch sack onto the table as she sat down.

“You okay?” Jonathan asked.

Jessica blinked. The cafeteria was back to its normal self: loud, chaotic, and a bit smelly, but no longer a roller coaster. Her disorientation had vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. “Much better.”

“You looked like you were going to take a spill.”

“No, I…Yeah, maybe. Tough week.” Jessica wanted to add that she didn’t usually act like a zombie in front of cute guys but somehow couldn’t find the right words. “I think I just need to eat.”

“Me too.”

Jonathan overturned his lunch bag, spilling its contents onto the table. An apple rolled perilously close to the edge of the table, but he ignored it. It stopped just before falling to the floor. Jessica raised an eyebrow as she looked at his pile of food. It included three sandwiches, a bag of chips, a banana, and a carton of yogurt in addition to the wayward apple.

Jonathan was thin as a rail. A hungry rail. He grabbed a sandwich from the pile, pulled off its plastic wrap, and tore into it.

Jessica looked at her own lunch. As always, Dad had gotten bored last night and created something complicated. Grated cheese, ground meat, chopped lettuce, and tomato all occupied their own corners of a multisection container. A couple of hard taco shells were visible through the plastic of another. The tacos were already broken. Jess sighed and popped open the containers, dumping all the ingredients together and starting to mix them up.

“Mmm, taco salad,” Jonathan said. “Smells good.”

Jessica nodded. The spicy aroma coming from the meat had taken the edge off the fried smell of high school cafeteria. “My dad’s getting into southwestern cuisine in a big way.”

“Beats sandwiches.”

“That one looks good.”

“They’re peanut butter on banana bread.”

“Peanut butter on banana bread? All three? That’s a…time-saver, I guess.”

“Saves slicing bananas. I can’t ever wake up early enough to make anything fancy.”

“But three of them?” she asked.

He shrugged. “That’s nothing. Some birds eat their own body weight every hour.”

“Sorry, I missed the feathers on you.”

Jonathan grinned. He looked sleepy. His eyes never quite opened all the way, but they twinkled when he smiled. “Hey, if I don’t get enough calories, I’m the one who’s fainting.” He opened the second sandwich and took a huge bite, as if talking this much had put him behind schedule.

“That reminds me,” Jessica said, “thanks for saving me. That would have been a smooth move, falling on my face in front of the whole school my first week here.”

“You could always blame the Bixby water.”

Jessica’s fork halted a few inches from her mouth. “You don’t like it either?”