“I play it cool."Uh,yeah, I think so," I say, furioously kicking my feet in the air. "You?""Yeah,it should be pretty fun," he says."Yeah,it should be," I say.Pause,pause,pause,heartbeat racing. I can't catch my breath."You know who you're going with?" he asks.I'm sorry,but OH.MY.GOD."Nah," I say, pulling off nonchalance like a pro. "You know me; it's hard to choose when half the school is beating down my door."He chuckles. "I don't doubt it."Beat down my door, Wolf. Beat it down right now.I'll say yes!”

“That's cool," he says."Yeah," I say, and we go into another marathon pause."So..." he finally says. "Think you can start talking to me again?""Oh,so you noticed the silencio treatment?" I tease. My horoscope in Seventeen this month encourages me to "take a romantic risk," so I'm going for it."Yeah,I noticed when I had to do Actividad thirty-three as both fruit vendor and customer," he says, and I can hear him grinning through the phone.”

“Hey, if you're going to say what I think you're going to say…wait, are you going to say it?” he asked, smiling down at me.“Yes, yes I think so.” I grinned shyly back.“Well, then I think we should say it at the same time, yes?” he suggested.“Count of three?” I asked. He nodded.“One…” I started.“Two…” he said, eyes twinkling.“Three,” we said together. We both paused, smiling hugely, and then I took a deep breath.“Jack, I love you.”“I know,” he said at the same time.Ass…“Ass!” I said, smacking him on the arm.“That was great!” he laughed.”

“I dialed the number slowly, wanting to get it right. Two rings, and he picked up. "Yes," I said after his hello. "Mclean?" he asked. "Is that you?""Yeah," I said, swallowing and looking out my open door, at the ocean. "The answer's yes." "The answer . . ." he said slowly. "You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you." He was very quiet for a moment. "Where are you?" I started crying again, my voice ragged. He told me to calm down. He told me it was going to be all right. And then, he told he'd be there soon.”

“I never got along with my dad. Kids used to come up to me and say, "My dad can beat up your dad." I'd say Yeah? When?”

“Something occurred to me, and I sat up to face him. "Earlier, I asked you if you brought the guitar everywhere," I said, "and you got kind of wierd. Why? It's not like you're one of those jerks who always has a guitar but can't actually play it." "Don't you know?" "No." He grinned. "Everyone knows that the whole point of learning guitar is to impress girls. You can't just say, 'sorry, I'd love to show off, but I forgot my guitar at home,' can you?" Now it was my turn to laugh. "I guess not." "So now you know my secret," he said. "Did it work?" I pretended to think about it. "Yeah, it worked.”