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way, I’ll do it. I will.
    The other cheerleaders and I do our halftime routine with the band. I swear, as I fly up and spin through the air, I think I catch his eye again. But when I land and turn around to look, I don’t see him anywhere.
    It’s me, not him, who, after the game is over, finds a place near their bus to hang out. I check my phone, as if I’m there by accident. It’s forever I’m standing here. The girls are texting me, trying to find me, but I don’t text back. I have to see him again. I have to give him a chance to see me.  
    He doesn’t come. Other boys straggle on the bus, freshly showered and dressed in clean clothes. They’re sullen, licking their wounds from the loss, a good school but not as good as ours. I wish for them we hadn’t won. And maybe for me too. I wish they’d made our banner a joke.
    The bus leaves without him, which I don’t understand. Whenever we travel, we have to go as a team on the bus. It doesn’t make sense. How did I miss him? Maybe he wasn’t real.
    I make my way to the locker room to get my stuff. When I come back out, Katie and Angela and Erica and Paige are hanging out in the hallway.
    “Emma!” Paige says. “There you are.”
    “Hey.” I say.
    “Where have you been? We’ve been texting you,” Katie asks. Her voice is irritated. I’ve forgotten I’m their ride to the after party.
    “You have?” I pull out my phone. “Sorry, my ringer’s off. Ready to go?”
    But before they can answer, my phone is snatched out of my hand.
    “Hey!” I say.
    He’s standing there, punching in numbers, his dark eyes twinkling, that same confident grin.
    “Emma, I’m Jackson. Nice to meet you.” He hands my phone back to me, and walks away backward. “I’ll call you.” He turns and jogs out.
    We’re all standing there, speechless.  
    What can I say? He’s a guy who knows what he wants.
    “What was that about?” Katie asks, her eyebrows raised. She’d love to catch me doing something wrong. She’s always had a thing for Mike.
    “I have no idea.” I say.
    Paige catches my eye. She raises her eyebrows, a gentle warning. She’s the only one here who can read my face. I may be just as surprised as they are, but I liked that, and she knows it.  
    She didn’t like it. I’m her brother’s girlfriend. Despite our friendship, I need to watch myself.
    I wipe my face clean of it, tuck away the moment for later.
    “Was that the same jerk from before?” It’s Mike. I didn’t see him come out of the locker room. But here he is. He must have seen the whole thing.
    “Who knows?” I say. “Just some random dude.” I tap my phone awake, roll my eyes. “I’m deleting his number right now.”
    “You want me to talk to him?”
    “No, that’s okay. Let’s just go to the party.”
    We go to the party, all of us together, and we laugh and play board games and eat pizza and do everything we always do. But the entire time all I can think about is the number burning a secret light in the center of my phone. The number I most certainly did not delete.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    T HERE ’ S DANGER COMING THROUGH my voice. It’s wretched and lovely, my heart scraping down a chalkboard.
    It’s for him. Just Jackson and no one else. His eyes lock on me through the glass. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.
    I keep going until the end. The last, long note of it is strangled from my throat like the dying embers from a campfire. When it’s over, I am empty, breathless. I gave all of myself to it, and there is nothing left.  
    “That. Was. Legit ,” Jackson says, his voice piped into the sound booth from a mic on the control board. “Seriously. We have it. I’ve never heard you sound so good.”
    “You think?” I say.
    “Yeah. Let me run to the john then we’ll listen to it together.”
    He’s grinning ear to ear as he takes off his headphones and darts into the hall.  
    I absentmindedly curl the mic cords back into place. I catch a glance at my reflection