Carla Vega: Psst! The psst is not exactly soft. In fact, it's kind of loud. It's not at all an appropriate volume for the library, but whatever, I guess. It's Cal.

He smiles when I look over at him, revealing his dimples, and my heart catches in my throat. (It sometimes hurts my eyes how pretty he is.) For a minute, I think he's calling for Amelia. But then I remember Amelia's not here yet, which means that psst was for me.

"Hi," he whispers.

"Hi," I whisper back, unable to wipe what is definitely a goofy grin off my face.

"Whatcha up to?" He's sitting a table away.

I definitely didn't carefully choose my seat so I could steal glances at him. Nope.

"Nothing. Reading." I hold up my book. In class, we're reading The Catcher in the Rye. I hate it. Holden Caulfield is not a sympathetic character to me, and I'm over the way he calls everyone a phony. "What about you?"

"Trying to convince you to let me borrow your history notes?"

For some reason, I giggle at that. "So?" he pushes. "Can I?"

"Oh! Yeah, of course," I say, letting go of my book (and not bookmarking my page), digging through my bag (and dropping some pens on the floor in the process), and pulling out my notebook.

Cal, Amelia, and I are in the same history class, even though Cal is a year ahead of us. He almost never shows up to class . . . which is probably why he's repeating junior history. He always asks to borrow my notes and I always say yes.

I turn to the correct page and hold the notebook out to him. He gets up from where he's sitting so smoothly it's like he's practiced it. Confidence just comes naturally to him. What's that like?

When he reaches me, he leans down and scoops up my pens and holds them out to me.

"You dropped these," he says.

"Thanks," I say softly, trying to hide how badly my hands are shaking when I take them from him. In exchange, he swipes my notebook and his eyes scan the page.

"So, all this, huh?" he asks.

I glanced at the meticulously highlighted notes. "Oh. Yeah, I sometimes go a little overboard." I'm kind of embarrassed he noticed. "You don't have to copy all of that. The highlighted stuff is what's really important."

"It's all highlighted. . . ." he chuckles and rubs his hand on the back of his neck, and I find myself wishing I were his hand. "So, like . . . let's just say you were only going to focus on the really, really super-important parts. You know, the stuff Mrs. Patel would probably put on a test. What might those be?" He leans over me, holding my notebook, glancing at the paper and then at me. "Think you could help me figure that out?"

And then he adds, "You're just really good at this, Charlie."

"Oh, um, s-sure," I stammer, feeling heat creep up my neck. He's so close to me now. "She spent most of class time talking about the Boston Tea Party. Here." I point to that section in the notes. "'No taxation without representation.' That was really what she lectured on, so . . . probably that."

"So, focus on this," he says, pointing his finger where I'm pointing so that our hands are touching. "And I can ignore all this other stuff?"

That's absolutely not what I'm saying, but his hand by my hand has me nearly breaking out in a full-on sweat. "Yes," I look at him. "More or less."

His gaze meets mine and he smiles at me, dimples and all, letting the look linger a bit longer than it needs to. "Great. Really great. You're the best Charlie."

My neck and face get even hotter. "Oh, I don't know about that," I managed to say.

He rises to his feet, motioning toward the notebook, "I'll give these back to you in class, okay?"

"Okay. No problem," I say, and he takes the notebook and goes to sit back down at his table.

Did we just . . . have a moment?

Kind of felt like a moment.