“I was planning to study last night, but when I heard it would be surprise holiday, I blew it off.”

I smiled. “Me, too.”

“Surprise holiday is like this illusion.” John leaned back, and his voice sounded far away. “It makes you feel like you have all the time in the world, but before you know it, the day is over. They should give us surprise week.”

“You’d get so bored,” Cross said.

“Nah, I have a million things I could do.” John was still talking when Cross lifted his left arm. At first, I thought he was setting it on the seat behind my back, and I felt a bolt of anticipation in my chest; then I realized he was setting it on me. His hand cupped my shoulder, and there was the slightest pull, a pull toward him. I gave into it. My body fell against his: my leg pressed to his leg, my arm filling the hollow between us, the top of my head just below his collarbone. This development struck me as remarkable-there I was, with Cross’s arm around me, when Martin or John could have turned at any moment and seen-but it also seemed unsurprising. Sitting in the diner earlier in the day, I had thought how much I wanted to be touching Cross and now I was; I could feel the rise and fall of his chest. And we matched each other well, our bodies fit. I didn’t know enough then to realize that doesn’t always happen-that sometimes you cannot settle on an angle with the other person, your weight won’t balance, your bones poke.

Whenever Cross responded to John, his voice was perfectly placid. Once Cross said, “Okay, but when would spring break be?”-they were still talking about a whole week of surprise holidays-and they could have been at a table in the dining hall, shooting the shit after dinner. I decided that I liked this gulf between the normality of Cross’s tone and the abnormality of the situation; it made what was happening between us a secret.

He touched my hair, first so briefly that it felt accidental; then his fingers raked through and started over again, and every so often, he rubbed the back of my neck with his thumb. My whole body was hot liquid; I felt beholden to him, and painfully happy. From the radio came the sound of trumpets. The rain outside made everything soft, the roll of the tires over the road, the fuzzy traffic lights, and on Cross’s other side, John was talking and talking, and I wished that we could keep driving all night long and that for the whole ride, everything would stay just as it was in this moment.

It did last, but only for a little bit. Then we were turning in to the gates of Ault. Cross leaned between the two front seats and, just like that, his arm was not around me, his fingers were not in my hair. “Left,” he said to the driver. “Past the chapel.”

In front of a cluster of dorms-not the cluster I lived in, because Broussard’s was on the other side of the circle-the taxi stopped, and the driver turned on the inside light. I blinked as if I’d been awakened. I didn’t dare look at Cross, so I turned and peered out the window, but all I could see was darkness. Other people would be able to see in, I thought, if they were passing by, and I found myself hoping they were not. I did not want anyone to wonder what I was doing in a taxi with Cross and John and Martin.

“Okay,” Cross said, and I could tell that he was talking to me. I glanced over, and we looked at each other for several seconds. Martin and John were getting out of the car. “Bye, Lee.” Cross nodded his head once.

I said, “But what-” and he turned back. I had no idea what to say next, though, and after a few seconds, he turned again. For a long time, I wondered if there were a certain thing I could have uttered to change the outcome of the situation. I imagined what I didn’t say as a single perfect sentence, a narrow, discrete rectangle, like a ruler; it was unknowable to me, but somewhere in the world, it existed. When Cross shut the door behind him, the light inside the taxi went off, and I was able to see the three of them walk away. I heard laughter as the taxi pulled forward.

In the rearview mirror, I made eye contact with the driver. I had not really looked at him before-he was middle-aged and heavyset, with gray stubble and a plaid cap. “Now where?” he said. He had a thick Boston accent. “What building?”

I pointed. “That one.”

When he stopped the taxi again, I was horrified to see that the meter read 48.80. I said, “I have to run inside and get some money. I promise I’ll come back.”

He shook his head. “Your boyfriend paid.”

“My boyfriend?”

“But you pay again if you want, I won’t stop you.” He had a rumbling laugh.

“Thanks.” I pulled the door handle.

“What college is this?” the driver said.

“It’s a high school. It’s called Ault.”

“All this for a high school?” He gave an impressed whistle.

“I know,” I said. “We’re lucky.”

When I entered the room, Sin-Jun and Dede looked up from their desks. “Lee is back, “ Sin-Jun said, and Dede said, “We thought you’d died.”

“I missed the bus from the mall,” I said. “I had to take a taxi.”

“Okay, so?” Dede said. “Did you go through with it?”

“Oh,” I said. “No, I did.” I pulled back my hair and angled my ears toward them, first my right and then my left. They approached me, and I wished that I had chosen more interesting earrings; there really wasn’t much to see.

“Ahh,” Sin-Jun said. “Very exquisite.”

“The left one looks red,” Dede said. “But I’m sure if you use hydrogen peroxide, it’ll be fine.”

“What does hydrogen peroxide do?”

“Didn’t they explain this to you when they did the piercing?”

“A man did it,” I said. “He was kind of mean.”

“You’re supposed to clean them every night so they don’t get infected. You do it at the same time that you turn the earrings.”

“You turn the earrings?”

“God, Lee, they didn’t tell you anything. Hold on.” Dede walked to her bed, squatted, pulled out a clear plastic box from under it, and returned to Sin-Jun and me with a brown bottle and several cotton balls.

I turned to Sin-Jun. “How was Boston?”

“Boston is good, but it rains all day.”

“Yeah,” I said. “At the mall, too.”

“Here,” Dede said. “Sit down.”

I sat on her desk chair. Sin-Jun sat on Dede’s desk and propped her bare feet on the seat of my chair. Dede stood beside me and tucked a lock of hair behind my left ear. Our positions reminded me of the piercing itself, and I thought of telling them how I had fainted. But I wasn’t sure yet if it was a funny story or just a weird story, and besides, if I mentioned fainting, I’d have to mention Cross.

Dede unscrewed the cap of the hydrogen peroxide, pressed a cotton ball to the opening, and tipped the bottle upside down. She set the bottle on the desk and held the cotton ball against my earlobe. Very gently, she rubbed it around the earring.

I couldn’t tell them about Cross, I thought. I couldn’t tell them because Dede liked him and because she wouldn’t believe or understand it, and I couldn’t tell them because I myself was unsure what there was to believe or understand. It wasn’t like he’d kissed me, or made any declarations. What could I claim? For years and years, I felt this way, not just about Cross but about other guys-if they didn’t kiss you, it didn’t mean anything. Their interest in you had been so negligible as, perhaps, to have all been in your head.

I thought of how it had felt to sit so close to Cross in the taxi, the weight of his arm across my shoulders, the warmth of his body beneath his clothes. I thought how that was what I wanted, that if I could just have that-just Cross next to me, not flowers, not poems, not the approval of other students, not rich parents or good grades or a prettier face-I would be happy. That was the thing that if it were happening to me, I wouldn’t feel distracted or wish to be somewhere else; all by itself, it would be enough. As I thought this, I also thought that I wouldn’t get it-surely, I wouldn’t-and I felt my eyes fill. When I blinked, tears ran down my face.