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knew why she called me by my first and middle names, but she was the only person who did, and I loved it.)
    Talking to anybody else was usually a depleting chore; conversation was disruptive and I avoided it whenever possible. But Kristen made it something to look forward to. Seeing her in the hallways was exciting, hanging out with her in the music room was calming. I didn’t have to work as hard with her. Sitting next to me in the auditorium during rehearsals, she would keep a stream of conversation flowing that I could actually get into. When I grew shy and couldn’t keep up, she would do something to lighten me up—launching a tiny thread of saliva onto the stage, for instance (a maneuver which she referred to as “gleeking”), or removing something from my backpack and asking me about it. “That’s quite a calculator! Can it spell my name?” The next day in math class, I’d turn it on to find her name written in variables across the screen: kR i ∫τEη. Her matching outfits, her bursts of laughter, her ability to spit on a target from thirty feet. I was hopelessly in like.
    I was thrilled when we began hanging out more often during school. Study periods once reserved in my mind for diligent work became hour-long blocks of Kristen Time. A daily note from our choir director excused me from my normal study room, so I could spend time “helping” Kristen in the music library, where she volunteered to organize stacks of sheet music—a bogus responsibility that excused her from her own study hall. Surrounded by cluttered shelves of choral arrangements, we would talk and find ways to make each other laugh. Sometimes, I helped her with homework and in return she prevented me from accomplishing anything academic whatsoever. “See, David James, isn’t talking to me more fun than outlining your biology chapters?” Yes, actually, and you’re the only person I can say that about.
    Once, I was cramming for a calculus test when she took my notebook and started quizzing me: “David James, find the derivative of x in this equation . . .” When it occurred to her that she couldn’t even pronounce the equation, she laughed and teasingly asked me what all the “squiggly little lines” meant. If anyone else had swiped my cherished math notebook and asked this question, it would have released the pin on a tantrum. But coming from Kristen, it was different. When I tried explaining the purpose and sheer beauty of derivatives and integrals, she got bored and began drawing something in the margin of my notebook.
    “Look,” she said. “It’s Duffy the Wonder Dog!”
    She handed the notebook back to me, and there, happily wagging its tail beside my meticulous proof, was a little cartoon version of her dog, Duffy, his superhero dog name written in large, bubbly letters across my solution. The next day I answered one of my extra-credit questions on the test, “Delta x with respect to time is . . . Duffy the Wonder Dog.” My dad got angry when I showed him the test. He is not a humorless man; far from it. But he didn’t see the humor in wasting valuable points on an exam. Kristen did. I still have the drawing.
    Our friendship was platonic. Kristen was so far out of my league that it didn’t even occur to me that we might be anything more than friends. But, then again, she was hot. I don’t know that any high school boy with a hot girl for a friend hasn’t from time to time imagined a steamy moment in, say, the girls’ dressing room behind the auditorium, while, perhaps, the drama geeks were starting their vocal warm-ups.
    Can you help me bustle this costume, David?
But the director is starting vocal warm-ups. They’ll know we’re missing.
Ooh, it will be so dangerous. Glue your mustache on and take me.
Just saying.
     
     
    I had successfully hosed down any thoughts ignited by my own sexual imagination by the time Kristen started going out with Mike. This was during her junior year, his senior year, my sophomore