His fingers were long, delicate almost. I wrote poetry about them, late at night, long past my bedtime under a dim lamp.

I watched the other students, brows furrowed, answering essay questions in a hurry. Time was slipping away. Their teacher was gone, but they did not act out in her presence.

I was always more lenient on them, since they were my peers, and I didn't want to make enemies. No one wants enemies in high school. And, I didn't want my crush, Bryan Winthrop, Pastor Winthrop’s son, to think I was more of a square than he surely did already.

I pulled my eyes from his hands and focused back on my desk, pressed against Mrs. Michaels’. I was doodling, a small snail stared back at me with oval cartoon eyes. I looked at my own hands. Long and delicate fingers, just like his. Piano hands. I wondered what they would look like interlocked, threaded.

There was rain pelting the open windows that day. The hot September air had cooled, and the second period English class begged their teacher to open the windows.

The light inside the classroom was a shade or two brighter than the sky outside.

When it happened, I thought perhaps it was static in the air. My hair rose at the back of my neck, so I reached back, rubbing the area. I looked over my shoulder, trying to find the window again, but my eyes caught on Bryan.

He was staring at me, his pencil dangling from his lips. I knew he wasn't done with his test. I had helped grade his papers and though I hated to admit it, my crush was not at the top of the class.

I blushed at the smile sitting at the corner of his mouth.

I wanted to mouth what? or do something. But I always froze. I knew he liked that about me. He toyed with my reactions, the color of my skin. And I marched on, slowly, like I'd been wound up by his delicate fingers, though they'd never touched my own burning flesh.

But really it was those stares that kept my crush going, that fueled me. These heated, locked-in moments were all I had. They were between us alone, and I knew they would never step over the edge, free fall into something more profound.

Social status denied us that. We were slaves to high school hierarchy. Well, he was a slave to it. I didn't care.

I broke the connection with him then, suddenly, a little angry. I stared at my hands and the trembling there. I clenched my fists to steady myself.

How could a teenage boy hold such arrogance? Such power over another? It should be illegal.

I was so easily pliable, pushed to a reaction. My friends said they loved that about me. They loved my firecracker ways. I didn't have Bryan's restraint, his ability to pull a smile, a blush, from someone. I reacted to him. I never made moves of my own. I never tested my power, because I knew, with him, I had none.

I knew this truth of me, reminded myself of it daily, because if I had that power he wielded so carelessly, I would have used it on him already. It had been two years of this torturous crush, and I needed a release. One he could give me, or a self-given freedom from this attraction.

He wasn't always this person in front of me, with this ability to pull something, anything from me, so quickly.

Hell, I remember joking with my friend as I passed him in the hall freshman year. I remarked at the fuss over him, not understanding it. He was skinny, all spindly arms and a mouth too big for his face. His eyes were too small, and his voice cracked every time he spoke. He was a late bloomer, his beauty was ready to wound us though.

Sophomore year Bryan got his braces off. And he grew taller every damn summer.

My infatuation, my obsession, was instantaneous. I had come out of the restroom at a basketball game. He was arriving late, running down the hall.

Suddenly I was on the floor, and he was on top of me. Just for a second, I felt all of him. Warm skin and his voice near my ear. Unintentional, but devastating. He jumped to his feet, reached for my elbow, and hauled me upright.

“I'm so sorry, so so sorry,” he muttered.

I never knew the color of his eyes before that moment. Navy blue, wide and worried about me. Heavy brows and full lips so close I could reach out and touch them. I was done for. A goner. Stick a fucking fork in me.

"It's okay," I managed. His hand was still on my elbow, those long slender fingers wrapped around it.

I looked down at them. Pale and soft. His eyes followed, and he dropped my elbow quickly, rushed past me.

I kept my eyes on him the rest of the night. Watched him run back and forth across the court. I didn't tell my friends, Akia, Britt, and Christina, of my crush until a few weeks later. My sudden interest in basketball games finally made sense to them. When I confessed, they laughed at me, knowing full well how useless it was to be in love with a boy like him, so above us.

Mrs. Michaels returned, pulling me from my memory. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been dropped on me. She smiled at me, and I mirrored her. She was my favorite teacher, and I sometimes worried she suspected my crush, had observed my lamely disguised wanting and watching. It was her job to pay attention to us.

The bell rang before she made it to her desk, and the students started to stir, picking up their tests, bringing them to my desk.

I reached for my backpack on the floor. I didn't need to stay for this. My desk was merely the landing place for finished and unfinished tests. I slipped between two students, making my escape. I didn't want to be there when Bryan walked up. I didn't need to be set on fire again.

It would be simple, right? Hijack homecoming. That's what we called it a week later when the plan arose. We didn't want to see the same faces competing for the crown. We didn't want to stand in the shadows anymore.

“Okay. We have four crowns to capture,” Christina said. She held up her hand and listed them off as she leaned against the back wall. At the top of the bleachers, we could see the entire school, assembled, ready to vote for an arbitrary crown that always went to the same names. Maybe it would work. Maybe we could pull this off. I looked down at the popular girls below us, laughing and looking like porcelain dolls. Aurora, Amy, Jenny, Angela, and the new foreign exchange student they took in, Luta. My eyes pulled from their perfect hair and perfect skin, to the rest of our class.

I wrote in my notebook as my friend spoke. "Fall Fest queen. Miss Merry Christmas. Homecoming queen. Prom queen."

I dotted my last period and looked up from my papers. “This isn't going to work.” I sounded as defeated as I felt. I was fiery when it came to battles we could win. This was out of our league.

“Yes, it will,” my other friend Britt said, with a light in her eyes. “We outnumber them. It's simple math. What have the popular kids done for anyone but themselves? They have all the trophies from every year. Every crown. I'm sick and tired of it. It's time we took control of this.” Britt loved control. She was a science nerd, and I had the unfortunate luck of being her lab partner junior year. My artistic, flighty mind, did not mix well with her type, A traits.

And maybe I agreed with her. Some part of me thought it would work, but I feared the crash. I feared for the first of us, putting ourselves out there only to fail. It would be humiliating. And the popular girls would never let us live it down if they caught on to what we were doing.

Then, I thought about the guys. Who would be nominated on their end? I looked over at my three friends and tried to guess who we would nominate for which crown, how we would choose.

Prom, for example, would be a bigger crown, both physically and metaphorically, than Fall Festival. Akia answered my question as she reached for my notebook.

“Okay, so let's write them on pieces of paper. Britt, give me your hat. We will throw them in and pick. That way it's fair.”

I handed my notebook over and sucked in a breath. I didn't want Akia to flip to the poem I wrote during study hall about Bryan.

They all knew about my all-consuming crush on our classmate, the most popular boy in school, and our star basketball player, but I didn't want them to see my lame rhymes and longing.

Across the gym, I caught Bryan's eyes. He was turned around, talking to dickhead jock Rodney Bartholomew, but he was watching me. I blushed and looked back at my friends.

Why did he always have to stare? I wanted him to stop, or act on it.

When Akia finished, she tossed the tiny folded scraps of paper that held our fate into Britt's hat. Christina went first, reaching in, grabbing hers. “Do I open it now?” she asked.

“No, wait. Let's all pick and open ours at once,” Akia answered. We nodded, murmuring our consent.

When I reached in, I felt the hairs on my arms lift. Was Bryan looking again? I didn't investigate. I couldn't let him see me staring back for the 20th damn time today. I had some pride. Some.

My thumb ran over the tiny scrap of paper, over and over, as I waited for my friends to pick their fates. We all leaned back in our seats, silent, lost in our own unique thoughts. Perhaps all mulling over our escort options if we were lucky enough to choose Homecoming Queen. Fall Fest and Miss Merry Christmas nominees didn’t have school dances erected in their honor. And the prom candidate would walk in with one of our male classmates who was nominated.

We all had crushes, no boyfriends. Akia couldn’t ask her crush to walk her in since she spent the better half of French 1 lusting over Mr. Arseneau, with his full head of hair and lulling accent. Britt spent most hours in between classes giving us play by plays of her latest sighting of Ritchie Tenfield, a Burlingame High graduate who came home on the weekends to visit his family from the community college he attended in Topeka. And Christina, she was in purgatory, like me. Her crush, going six months strong now, was on Rodney. He was one of Bryan’s best friends, our baseball team’s pitcher, and a complete dick. In my opinion, and in Akia’s opinion, and in Britt’s opinion, most days. She often tried to play mediator or to pacify Christina when she was upset with us for pointing out his multitude of flaws. Love was blind, I knew that well enough. But was it deaf too? His loud booming voice grated on me.

Down on the gym floor, I saw our principal talking to Mrs. Michaels. “Guys, we better get this going. We better pick and start talking to everyone if we plan to pull this miracle off.” I pulled my hand up and tapped my tiny paper to my forehead. For luck? I didn't know.

“Okay. Yes. Let’s do this.” Britt bounced in her seat. “One. Two. Three.” I watched her open her paper. Then Christina. Then Akia. I watched their faces. The multitude of emotions rippling.

I pulled my eyes away, locked onto my long white fingers. I gripped the paper so tight it hurt. Slowly I let the pressure release, unfolding, opening my fate. I heard my friends murmuring, naming their crowns, their goals. It was all jumbled, garbled, white noise.

“Sev, we need to get down there and start talking to everyone! Britt needs to take Fall Fest Queen. We need to start on a good note. We need to take this first one. That confidence is going to help us take the others!” Akia was electric, excited. “Are you okay?”

I looked up, away from my paper. “No,” I whispered. And then louder, “How the fuck am I going to get nominated for Homecoming Queen?”

And how am I going to get the guts to ask Bryan to escort me in, in front of the entire school?