“Isn’t Heathcliff the one girls get all giggly over?” he continued while I just sat there and stared at him like an idiot. I wasn’t usually this moronic around guys. I hadn’t been like this last night when he’d scared the crap out of me. I’d been too busy trying to pretend my heart wasn’t trying to squeeze through my rib cage. Now I couldn’t stop trying to figure out what exact shade of blue his eyes were; not quite turquoise, as pale as a robin’s egg, but more like sapphires. Or cerulean? I had to stop myself from leaning forward to have a better look.

What the hell was wrong with me? I went for guys with tattoos and sneers.

“You’ve never read Wuthering Heights, have you?” I finally asked before the silence became this ridiculous thing that crushed us.

“No.” He leaned back against the bench, angled away from the crazy girl cataloging his eyeballs.

“Well, Heathcliff’s an ass. He’s not a romantic hero at all. I mean, he hangs a puppy off the back of a chair!” I sounded as if I knew Heathcliff personally, but I couldn’t help it. I took this stuff seriously. “Good book though,” I conceded. “And at least he doesn’t jump out of bushes and grab girls just for fun.”

Connor winced. “Oops. Sorry.”

A grin twitched at the corner of my mouth. He was kind of disarming, in a lean, intelligent way. You just knew he was a genius under all the casual slouching. He had that look: good heart, smart head. “It’s okay,” I said.

One of the girls from across the fire leaned forward. Her cleavage threatened us from all the way over there. Even her lip gloss was vaguely aggressive. “Are you one of the Drake brothers?” she asked breathlessly. I nearly asked her if she had asthma and needed an inhaler.

Connor nodded.

“Is it true that Lucy’s dating your brother Nicholas?” she pressed, sounding doubtful. I narrowed my eyes. If she was about to insult Lucy, she’d get more than she bargained for. I wasn’t nice like country folk. I once made a guy cry on the subway.

“Yeah,” Connor confirmed, not looking particularly interested. If the girl leaned over any farther, she’d fall right into the coals. I wondered briefly if he realized she was flirting with him. “He’s definitely into her. We all are,” he added pointedly.

The girl and her friends giggled. Connor glanced at me and leaned slightly toward my knee. He seemed disinclined to make them giggle further. He looked like he actually wanted to talk to me instead.

“You know those girls are flirting with you, right?” I whispered.

He blinked. And then he squirmed. “They are not.”

I laughed. “Are so.”

He looked utterly flummoxed. It was adorable.

“Save me,” he hissed.

Even more adorable.

“I’m serious,” he added.

“So what are you doing here, then?” I asked, still laughing. Even the guy hanging out by the water’s edge looked briefly interested in Connor. He might not be my type, but I wasn’t blind. I could see the appeal. “You don’t go to school in town, right?”

Connor shook his head. “I was homeschooled. I took my equivalency test when I was sixteen.”

Knew it. He was one of the smart ones. Suddenly he was even cuter, even if he hadn’t read Wuthering Heights.

“Do you like Violet Hill?” Connor asked as we watched a girl twirl devil sticks over her head. She could have traveled with a circus with her multicolored dreads and all the silver studs in her face. She was cute, as if she belonged in Alice in Wonderland. She was the part of Violet Hill I actually liked, and I told Connor that. “And I like all the art and the photocopied zines in the cafes,” I admitted. “But you don’t have enough bookstores. And your library is tiny.”

“You say that like we sacrifice babies.” He laughed. “And there are at least four bookstores in town.”

“Yeah, but they’re mostly full of vegetarian cookbooks and crystals. Which is fine, but I have Aunt Cass for that kind of thing.”

“I know how you feel. Getting decent comics or computer parts is always a challenge.”

I groaned. “Don’t remind me. My laptop has PMS.”

He chuckled. “I can take a look at it, if you want. And Guilty Pleasures in town has a second floor full of novels,” he added. “The first floor’s all chocolate and Johnny Depp memorabilia. There’s also a poetry stall in the farmer’s market on Saturdays.”

“Okay, that’s cool.” I felt a small seedling of hope that I’d survive the year.

“I can take you,” he said, somewhat shyly. “If you want.”

“Okay. Sure.” The seedling turned into a rosebud. It would be nice to have a friend here, even if he didn’t go to our school.

The wind shifted slightly, fanning the fire and shooting delicate sparks. I couldn’t smell the lake anymore, or the smoke, just Connor. It was something spicy and sweet, like black licorice. I wouldn’t have thought he wore cologne. And usually I hated cologne. But this one was different. I inhaled surreptitiously. There was something else, like sugar melting or a bakery first thing in the morning. And cinnamon? No, not cinnamon. Something else.

Now I was sniffing him?

Clearly having all this free time to sit around at parties wasn’t good for me.

He sat up suddenly, rising into a crouch. Something about the way he moved made my heart race. I couldn’t help but think about wolves and tigers and animals with a lot of teeth. Adrenaline and something that made me feel like blushing warred inside my body, confusing me. This was poetry, this push and pull, this mysterious need.