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to talk to me, Elisa, you can,” Dr. Charmin said, between tightening lips.
    “I’m fine,” I said. “I really am.”
    “I gave you an A on your paper.” Dr. Charmin leaned forward on her desk and stared hard and into me. She straightened and stood and faced the chalkboard, then turned back around with her lecturing face. I stood, for it seemed it was time to go. I fixed the backpack on my back.
    “Appreciate it, Dr. Charmin,” I mumbled.
    “You’re free to go,” she said. I noticed how thin the skin on her face had gotten. And how much paler, too.
    “Thank you, Dr. Charmin,” I said, and my backpack was like a ton of bricks and I was hot as Hades. I ran down the hall, though hall running isn’t legal. I ran every single block back home through the wintry world.

 
    Lila,
    Last night the moon was as big as an orchestra playing a song for you.
    Love, Theo

 
    Lila,
    You are the card I was needing to be dealt.
    Love, Theo

 
    Lila,
    It was a red fox in the snow, and I wanted the color of its coat same as I want you.
    Love, Theo

 
    Lila,
    You know how a river goes on and on? That is my love for you.
    Love, Theo

14
    “I T’S UP TO YOU,” I was telling Theo, “to decide.” It was Tuesday, and most of the snow had gone to wherever snow goes—underneath the grass, I guess. Down the sewer lines. Beneath the iced-over stream.
    He was standing near my locker; this was his early-morning habit now. My habit too—I had begun to get there early, begun, in spite of myself, to look for him, to imagine, against my better judgment, that we were pals or something. That we had more than a Cyrano conspiracy. His hair was longer now than it had been, and the spikes had grown softand fell forward; he’d replaced the gold-colored dot in his ear with a tiny silver circle. When he talked to me, he looked at me. When I laughed, he laughed along too. The night before, I’d gone overboard with the Lila poems, and maybe it’s true that I was hoping that in them he’d see the genius of me, the beauty of my words in his hands.
    “Well, doesn’t it depend on her mood,” he was asking, “if a card is right, or a moon?” He was sifting through my masterpieces, one by one. I stood against my locker, proud.
    “She’s your girlfriend, Theo.” I said it like I felt sorry for him, like I could convince him to feel sorry for himself.
    “I guess.”
    “I wasn’t trying to confuse you.”
    “Right.” He looked up and he smiled, that great Theo Moses smile.
    “Options, Theo. It’s all about options. Just give her the one that fits.” I grabbed my math book and my notes from science lab. I raised my eyebrow,laughed. A couple of the buses had just let out along the curb near Romance Hill. “Don’t look now,” I told Theo, “but she’s coming.”
    “Lila?”
    “Your moon. Your card. Your—”
    “Yeah,” he said. “I get it,” and maybe he’d have said more except that Sammy Bolten was slithering by. Sammy, who has always been hot for Lila, and for whom I won’t write a single word. He asked me once, end of eighth grade, and I said no flat out. There are those who don’t deserve the blessing of our talent. Sammy Bolten is one of those.
    “Trading down?” Sammy said to Theo, giving the once-all-over to me. You could have won Olympic gold if you’d ski-jumped down his nose. You could have tobogganed straight to China. What could it matter, what he thought of me? He was the biggest whatever on the planet.
    “Leave it alone, Bolten,” Theo said. “Shut your trap.” He wasn’t slumped against the locker now; he’d stepped sideways, stood much straighter. Ilooked at Bolten. Looked back at Theo. How can it be that a fight begins precisely where something pleasant was?
    “Shut my trap ?” Sammy said. “Did I hear you right?” He jabbed his elbow into Theo’s rib cage. Theo didn’t flinch.
    “Go to Hell.” Theo’s voice was even and hard, and suddenly Sammy was pitching forward, his face red.
    “You