And Zander Haaf is still looking at me.

Chapter 12

Before I get out of bed this morning in this clearly not haunted house, I would like to take a moment to picture Zander Haaf. In that moment. The moment in front of the Zipper.

He’s not tall, exactly. But he’s not short. Medium. And his hair is medium, too. Medium brown. Not dark brown. Not blond. Just medium brown. Like the color of a walnut. There’s a kind of flip to his hair, too, longer in the front. But nothing crazy. And he’s not even wearing anything special. Jeans. An olive green jacket that has lots of pockets for hiking or some other dreamy thing.

So, you see, nothing much.

Except.

Zander Haaf has sea-green eyes. Not olive green. Not gray green. Actual sea green. So, basically, his eyes are like a window into the vast depths of the ocean and the mystery of the world.

It’s the eyes. All of it.

You don’t believe me that I can see those Ocean Eyes from all the way across to the Zipper but I do. And so does Sally, and the rest of our friends. Sally exhales, a whisper.

“Oh my God. He’s looking at you. Daffodil. Oh my God, he’s still looking at you.”

And I, because I have no self-esteem and am feeling wildly self-conscious, look away. But I want to look back—I want to look back—I want to look back. . . .

“Okay, he’s still looking. Now the ticket guy is hurrying him. Okay, relax, now he’s gone,” Sally reports.

Somehow I feel like I have the wind knocked out of me.

Sally looks at me. “Daffodil. He was, like, totally checking you out. Like a stalker. Do you know what this means?!”

Sally is looking at me now like I’m Taylor Swift.

Callie comes back from the funnel cakes, empty-handed.

“No funnel cake?”

“Nope. If I’m going to make Zander Haaf fall in love with me I can never eat again,” Callie declares.

Sally glances over at me. We share a look. The international expression for never say anything about that ever again.

But in that moment, standing there at the Nebraska State Fair sans funnel cake, looking up at the Zipper lights going around and around at dizzying speed, I feel something I haven’t felt before. A kind of anticipation. A kind of fear. Like the inside of my skin has just been replaced by a jungle full of butterflies. They fly past each other and up and down and it could be that I am on the Zipper, too, flying across the sky at lightning speed.

And I wonder what will happen next year, sophomore year, and if I will ever see Zander Haaf again. And, if I do, if he’ll remember me.

The girl from across the fairgrounds.

Chapter 13

I could wait until the construction team gets here before I go outside and determine if there is anything of interest on the other side of the pantry. I could wait to discover if “the cat” left any scratches and, once it’s clear there is nothing there, I could go back to assuming that the whole episode was purely in my overly vivid imagination.