She couldn’t stop thinking about Jeff Jackson . . . smiling, imagining his manly chest under the sun, his yellow hair, what it would be like to kiss him . . . She couldn’t concentrate on anything at all. She tried picking up the vampire novel she was reading, but the words blurred in front of her and instead she saw Jeff Jackson standing there, gazing at her with those crackling blue eyes of his. “Ava,” he whispered. “You’re so beautiful you make my eyes ache.” She tried watching television but then there he was sliding next to her on the couch, reaching for her hand, telling her that he’d loved her for as long as he could remember and thought she was the smartest and coolest girl in the whole school. More than once her father caught her smiling to herself, and asked her what was making her act so goofy. “It’s that boy, isn’t it?” he’d say. “Do you want to talk about it?” “No!” How embarrassing! But she couldn’t even concentrate on the old Greta Garbo movie her dad put on that evening, and spent the whole time staring into space.
