My First Love Read Online Free PDF

Mr. Tayerle fumbled with his bifocals, then unfolded the note.
    “Ms. Wyse?” he asked when he’d finished reading. “Would you please do Mr. Shepherd the honor of joining him in—I hope I’m reading correctly—something called a carbo load?”
    “Is that legal?” someone called out, and the whole class started to laugh.
    “It—it just means carbohydrates,” I stammered, my cheeks turning bright red. “It’s a Dolphin tradition. We go out for a big lunch before every swim meet.”
    “Say yes, then,” Tayerle said, sending a humbler Chris back to his seat. “And with your permission, Ms. Wyse, we’ll continue our own tradition—that of talking about science, rather than romance, in class.”
    “Okay, yes,” I said to the ceiling. I couldn’t look at him.
    Tayerle went back to his lecture, reading from his ancient notes. He looked up every now and then, as if to make sure that we were still awake. Somehow, his droning voice had seemed tolerable until yesterday, when Chris hadsaid that Tayerle didn’t have any fire. Now I sat there trying to listen, but all I could think of was Chris.
    I tried to steal a look at him by moving my eyes in his direction without moving my neck. He sat three rows ahead and one over, so my view of him was limited to parts: a sinewy arm, his strong jawline, that thick brown hair.
    Then Tayerle lost his place, and the room was silent as twenty-five college-bound classmates used the momentary pause to catch up on their notes, taking down every single testable word. Chris and I were the only two who weren’t frantically writing, whose heads weren’t bent over our desks. Until yesterday, to tell you the truth, I would have been scribbling away with the rest of the class.
    Chris turned around and caught me staring, as if he’d read my mind. My heart beat faster as he held up his notebook so I could see the single word he’d written:
Sorry
. Meaning, I guessed, for the note. I blushed again, but I smiled and shrugged.
    It was too bad that Tayerle was such a boring teacher, because the unit on astronomy we’d started that week was actually really interesting. Luckily, I’d read ahead a chapter in our textbook, so while he droned on about the planets, I stared at Chris out of the corner of my eye and entertained myself with more interesting thoughts.
    Until yesterday, my life, like the universe, had a certain order to it: school, swimming, homework, friends. NowI sensed this unfamiliar pull. It was exciting but a little scary too.
    Tomorrow things will fall back into place
, I told myself. Tomorrow I’d be note-taking with the best of them, rather than daydreaming about Chris. The feelings I’d been having these last two days were unfamiliar, maybe, but they weren’t threatening. They didn’t mean anything had to change.
    Class dragged on for what seemed like hours. Then, just before the bell rang, Mr. Tayerle gave us an assignment to observe Saturday night’s lunar eclipse.
    “Since the eclipse will begin at twelve-oh-eight A . M .,” he said, “the project requires two people—one person to record the moon phases and the other to make coffee to keep that person awake.” I was surprised at Tayerle’s attempt to be funny. “But seriously,” he continued, as though we ever took him as anything but, “I’d like you to choose partners and write up your observations in the form of a lab report.”
    When Tayerle said the word “partner,” Chris turned around in his desk and raised a questioning eyebrow at me. I swallowed hard. I pictured Chris and me together at midnight, staring up at the night sky. Just the idea of it was incredibly romantic. I nodded.
    A split second later, I remembered Blythe. Ever since junior high, we’d had an unwritten rule that anytime we were in the same class, we worked on school projects together. The last thing I wanted was to make her mad, especially after what had happened yesterday. But the absolutelast, last, last thing I wanted was to