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Spider Rock, looking down at me.

CHAPTER FOUR
    His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
    I screamed and almost fell off the raft.
    “Oh, sorry,” Will said. He’d been smiling. After I screamed, he stopped. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    “Wh-what are you doing here?” I stammered, staring up at him. I couldn’t believe he was just…well, standing there. Beside my pool. In my yard. On Spider Rock.
    “Uh,” Will said, starting to look a little self-conscious. “I knocked. Your dad said you were out here, and let me in. Is this a bad time? I can come back, if it is.”
    I stared at him, completely dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had lived for sixteen years without any boy ever having paid the slightest bit of attention to me, and then one day, without any warningat all, the cutest guy I had ever seen—and I do mean ever—just shows up at my house. Having come, apparently, to see me.
    I mean, why else would he be here?
    “How—how do you know where I live?” I asked him. “How do you even know who I am?”
    “Student guide,” he said. Then, seeming to realize that I was more than a little freaked, he added, “Look, I’m sorry if I startled you. I didn’t mean to. I just thought…well, never mind. You know what? I was wrong.”
    “Wrong about what?” I asked. My heart was still thumping really hard inside my bikini. He had startled me much more than that spider that lived on Spider Rock ever had.
    But it wasn’t just that he’d startled me that was making my heart hammer. I have to admit, a lot of it was because of how good he looked, up there on that rock, with the late-afternoon sun glinting off his dark head.
    “Nothing,” he said. “I just—I mean, you smiled at me that day in the park like…”
    “Like what?” I sounded casual, but inwardly, I was freaking out on multiple levels: one, that he remembered me—he really remembered me!—from that day at the park, and two, that it hadn’t just been me. The smile thing, I mean. He’d felt it, too!
    Or maybe not.
    “Look, never mind,” Will said. “It’s stupid. When I saw you—first in the park, and then again today, it just seemed like…I don’t know. That we’d met before, orsomething. But we haven’t, obviously. I mean, I can see that now. I’m Will, by the way. Will Wagner.”
    I didn’t let on that I already knew this, from having looked him up the same way he’d looked me up. Because I didn’t want him to think that I had a crush on him, or anything. Because how could I have a crush on him? I had only seen him twice before. This made it three times. You can’t get a crush on someone you’ve seen only three times. I mean, if you’re Nancy, you can. But not if you’re practical, like me.
    “I’m Ellie,” I said. “Ellie Harrison. But then…I guess you knew that.”
    The blue-eyed gaze was back on mine, but this time, it didn’t seem as intense. Plus, Will was grinning.
    “Pretty much,” he said.
    He really was very good-looking. It wasn’t often that good-looking guys so much as looked my way, let alone showed up at my house to see me. I’m not ugly, or anything, but I’m no Jennifer Gold. I mean, she’s one of those Oh, I’m so little and helpless, please rescue me, you big strong man types of girls. You know, the kind all the cute guys in school fall in love with? I’m more the kind of girl little old ladies come up to in grocery stores and ask, “Can you get that can of cat food down off that really high grocery store shelf for me, dear?”
    Which basically translates to Invisible to Boys.
    “I just moved here,” I said. “From St. Paul. I’ve never been to the East Coast before. So I don’t know how we could have met before…. Unless”—I eyedhim uncertainly—“you’ve been to St. Paul?”
    Which was nuts, because if he