I’m sitting in my 6th period history class, and the teacher is talking about the hundred year old war, or something. I’m not really paying attention, and this time I can’t even blame it on a ghost. This is the class I have with Adrian Johnson. Adrian is gorgeous, with sharp cheekbones, full lips, thick frizzy hair shaved at the sides, and big, dark, sleepy eyes. We’ve been friends since freshman year, but every time I talk to him, I become someone else. All my words come out clunky and clumsy if I can even say them at all, and sometimes I get so distracted by the way his mouth moves when he speaks that I can’t even understand the things he’s saying.
We have an assigned seating chart in this class, and I’m sitting across the aisle from Adrian, so we never get to work together, but I get to stare at him all class long, and sometimes I catch him looking at me, too. I always take just enough time packing up my things after class that I walk out the door at the same time he does, and I walk with him to his next class, even though it usually makes me late for my own class. I tell Adrian that my class is just past his, down the same hall, but it’s actually the opposite direction down the hall and two floors down. It’s worth it, though— somehow I can never manage to run into him any other time, and I don’t know how I could ever ask for his number.
He’s twirling a bit of hair between his fingers, completely engrossed in the lesson— history is his favorite subject. I don’t have any feelings one way or the other about history, but if it were Adrian teaching the class, I’d ace every assignment. When he talks about history, it becomes fascinating. He can turn a mind-numbing list of dates and names and land acquisition into something the likes of fairytale. As I’m staring at him, he is engrossed in the lecture, leaning slightly forward in his seat, a slight smile playing at his lips. I’ll have to ask him after class what the lecture was about; he makes it look enthralling.
At first, I just thought he had a crush on the teacher. He wasn’t half as rapt in any of the other classes I’d had with him. But it became clear almost immediately that the object of his affection was the subject, not the teacher. I wish he would look at me the way he looks when he’s thinking about history.
The telltale rustling of papers and unzipping of bags indicates the last minute of class, and I start to pack up my bag, trying to match Adrian’s pace. He stands, then smiles at me. I smile back as I’m hastily shoving the rest of my shit into my backpack, trying to ignore the staticky feeling of
“Hey, Elliot,” he says, with a crooked smile, his dark features sublime.
“Adrian, hey! I’m, uh, I just…” Between the ghost and my pounding heart, it’s almost impossible to think. “Um, how are you?”
“Good, good!”
There is an awkward silence where he is just smiling at me, and I’m probably looking like I just walked through a wind tunnel, or something.
“So, uh,” he starts, flicking his eyes away from me, and back, and away again as though it hurts to meet my gaze for too long. “Do you wanna, like, walk to class, or?”
“Oh, yeah! Yeah, for sure, definitely, I do. Sorry.” I shove my notebook the rest of the way into my bag, wincing as I feel it crumple, zip the bag and sling it over my shoulder, then do a kind of half-hop half-speedwalk thing over to where Adrian is now waiting, by the door.
We walk in silence for the most agonizingly endless moment I’ve ever endured, and I spend the whole thing trying to think of something to say, with no luck.
“So… Joan of Arc was amazing, huh?” Adrian says finally, breaking the silence.
“Oh, yeah definitely! Uh… who, uh… what did she do again?”
Adrian laughed, giving me this look that was probably meant to be chastising, but only made me want to shove him against a locker and start kissing him right then. I bit my lip.
“Were you listening at all in class?”
I shrugged and shook my head.
“You know how I am with that teacher…”
“Yeah, yeah. Ok, well, Joan of Arc was this French peasant girl who started seeing angels when she was twelve years old, ended up leading the French army and bringing about the end of the Hundred Years War—” Ohh… “—when she was fuckin’ seventeen. She’s the youngest person in history to lead an army. Even Alexander the Great was twenty or something.”
“Wait, she saw angels?” I ask. “I thought she just heard voices or, like, the Voice of God…”
“Um, well, most people say that, yeah, but historians dug up some of her writings about it, and her visions were way more than just voices. She had entire conversations with her visions, she could see them, she could even touch them! As far as I know, she never saw God, but I think it was exclusively angels that appeared to her. Um, let’s see, it was… Michael, Gabriel, Saint Catherine, Saint… Margaret, I think? Oh, and sometimes she would see a bunch of angels, all at once, but I don’t know if she talked to all of them or not.”
“How did she know they were all angels? Couldn’t they have been ghosts, or maybe even demons?”
“Yeah, that’s what the Catholic church thought. They burned her at the stake, and it was a while after her death when she was finally proved innocent and made a saint. I’d rather believe that it was angels, wouldn’t you?”
I smile, and look around at all the ghosts passing through the halls in front of me.
“Yeah. I really would.”

You can't tell exactly where he's looking because of the dark shades hiding his eyes, but it feels like he's looking directly at you.
"What are you staring at, Thomas?" you snap. You're certain his answer will be no less evasive than his shades, but breaking the silence eases your self-consciousness at least. He is silent for a moment, continuing to stare at... you? But then he shrugs and turns his face away.
"Iunno," he says, and you're surprised by the fact that he can make even a mumble rhythmic and almost eloquent. "Just spacin', I guess."
"Well, can you 'just space' in somebody else's direction? You're really distracting." Thom's face breaks into a slow smirk in the silence after you speak, and it only dawns on you what that must have sounded like after his grin has become an unbearable amount of smug. "I don't mean it like that. I mean. I'm not even looking at you, I barely even notice you're there! It's just weird. I can feel you looking at me." He continues to smirk. "I mean, I don't even know if you are looking at me! It's weird! Are you looking at me?" you pause for half a beat to let Thom respond, but get too frustrated by that damn smirk to wait. "I don't care! It just feels like you are, but I can't tell, and--" Thom interrupts you.
"Do you want me to look at you, Jay?" he asks in a slow, steady drawl. He sounds so calculatedly laid back that you can't help but think he's plotting something.
"Wh-- what? No, what? No." you splutter, so enraged you can hardly speak. "Fuck no, that's exactly what I'm saying, I want you to stop staring at me. If you are staring at me." Thom just continues to smirk. "And if you're not staring at me, I want you to make it stop feeling like you are!" You can't stand his arrogance, the way he seems completely unaffected by your words, as if you hadn't spoken at all. The way he takes everything you say and only hears exactly the opposite. You brood for a moment, then spit out, "Fuck you," and move to turn away. Something stops you from turning all the way around. Before you have time to figure out what it is, something warm and soft and slightly wet is pressing against your mouth. Thom's face is right in front of yours. So close you can see his eyes closed behind his shades. You're kissing back before you realize that kissing is what you're doing.