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going to work, it was about all I could do to keep from grabbing that hand and twisting Rob’s arm behind his back until he said uncle. All that kept me from doing it, really, was that I have found that boys don’t really like it when you do things like this to them, and I wanted Rob to like me. To more than like me.
    So instead of twisting his arm behind his back, I put my hands on my hips, cocked my head, and went, “Does this have something to do with that Gary dude?”
    Rob unfolded his arms and turned back to his bike. “No,” he said. “This is between you and me, Mastriani.”
    “Because I noticed you don’t seem to like him very much.”
    “You’re sixteen years old,” Rob said, to the bike. “
Sixteen
!”
    “I mean, I guess I could understand why you don’t like him. It must be weird to see your mom with some guy other than your dad. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to take it out on me.”
    “Jess.” It always meant trouble when Rob called me by my first name. “You’ve got to see that this can’t go anywhere. I’m on probation, okay? I can’t get caught hanging out with some
kid
—”
    The kid part stung, but I graciously chose to ignore it, observing that Rob, in the words of Great-aunt Rose’s hero, Oprah, was in some psychic pain.
    “What I hear you saying,” I said, talking the way Mr. Goodhart had advised me to talk when I was in a situation that might turn adversarial, “is that you don’t want to see me anymore because you feel that our age and socioeconomic differences are too great—”
    “Don’t even tell me that you don’t agree,” Rob interrupted, in a warning tone. “Otherwise, why haven’t you told your parents about me? Huh? Why am I this dark secret in your life? If you were so sure that we have something that could work, you’d have introduced me to them by now.”
    “What I am saying to you in response,” I went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “is that I believe you are pushing me away because your father pushed you away, and you can’t stand to be hurt that way again.”
    Rob looked at me over his shoulder. His smokey gray eyes, in the light from the single bulb hanging from the wooden beam overhead, were shadowed.
    “You’re nuts,” was all he said. But he really seemed to mean it sincerely.
    “Rob,” I said, taking a step toward him. “I just want you to know, I am not like your dad. I will never leave you.”
    “Because you’re a freaking psycho,” Rob said.
    “No,” I said. “That’s not why. It’s because I lo—”
    “Don’t!” he said, thrusting the rag out at me like it was a weapon. There was a look of naked panic on his face. “Don’t say it! Mastriani, I am warning you—”
    “—ve you.”
    “I
told
you”—He wadded the rag up and threw it viciously into a far corner of the barn—“not to say it.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, gravely. “But I am afraid my unbridled passion was simply too great to hold in check a moment longer.”
    A second later it appeared that in actuality Rob was the one suffering from the unbridled passion, not me. At least if the way he grabbed me by the shoulders, dragged me toward him, and started kissing me was any indication.
    While it was, of course, highly gratifying to be kissed by a young man who was clearly so incapable of controlling his tremendous ardor for me, it has to be remembered that we were kissing in a barn, which at the end of November is not the warmest place to be at night. Furthermore, it wasn’t like there were any comfy couches or beds nearby for him to throw me down on or anything. I suppose we could have done it in the hay, but
    a)
eew,
and
    b) my passion for Rob is not
that
unbridled
.
    I mean, sex is a big enough step in any relationship without doing it in an old barn. Um, no thank you. I am willing to wait until the moment is right—such as prom night. In the unlikely event I am ever invited to prom. Which, considering that my boyfriend is already a high school