Parallel

paragraph of the chapter, then shove the book in my bag and follow her out.
    Astronomy is different from any class I’ve ever taken. We have at least thirty pages of reading every night—sometimes closer to fifty—but there aren’t quizzes or questions to complete at the end of each chapter, forcing us to keep up. Dr. Mann seems to just assume that we will. And it’s not like he walks us through what we’re supposed to have read. His lectures are more like philosophical discussions in which he asks more questions than he answers. It’s actually kind of fun. I just wish our teacher had better face-name recall. He insists on calling us by our last names, but he can’t remember all of them. So he makes us sit in alphabetical order and uses the class roster as his cheat sheet, putting me five rows and two seats away from Astronomy Boy Wagner.
    Why couldn’t Josh’s last name have been Barney or Barr or Bartlett?
    I get to class a few minutes before the warning bell rings. Most of the seats are already filled, their occupants scrambling to get through the reading before class starts. Josh’s seat is empty as usual. He always slips in right before the late bell, carrying nothing but his notebook and a pencil. No backpack, no textbook. Just the notebook and a pencil. I’d assume he was a total slacker were it not for the fact that he’s fairly vocal in class, always raising his hand and participating, but only when no one else is. It’s like he waits to make sure that the rest of us aren’t going to answer, then puts his hand in the air just before Dr. Mann becomes Mr. Hyde (the man is a teddy bear, but does not like it when he asks a question and no one responds).
    Smart and cute and considerate. And totally not interested.
    Things seemed promising the day we met. Pointing at the empty seat next to him, all that talk about fate and the stars. It felt like the start of something. But I must have misread it, because Josh hasn’t made any effort to talk to me since then, despite the fact that I’ve casually lingered at my desk every day after class.
    I am That Girl.
    More evidence? The fact that I am now completely turned around in my seat, blatantly staring at the classroom door, just waiting for him to walk through it. Less than a minute later, he does. Pencil behind his ear, notebook under his arm, brown T-shirt tucked neatly into khaki shorts. He meets my gaze and smiles. I quickly drop my eyes, mortified that he caught me looking at him again. It’s the third time this week.
    Okay, seriously, it’s getting to be kind of ridiculous. All he has to do is look in my direction, and my insides get all fluttery and my eyes go hot, and all I can think about is how badly I want to touch him. The inside of his forearm, the dip in his upper lip, the place where his earlobe meets his neck. It’s borderline creepy how preoccupied I am with this boy’s body. He, meanwhile, doesn’t seem at all preoccupied with me. Right now he’s thumbing through his notebook, looking for a blank page.
    The late bell rings, and Dr. Mann appears. “Parallax,” he begins. “Miss Watts, define it for us, if you would.”
    The smiley blond girl behind Josh scrambles for the definition. She’s flipping pages so fast I’m surprised she hasn’t ripped one.
    “Uh . . . parallax is, like, the difference in how you see something,” the girl stammers, hiding behind her blond curls. “Like, when a star seems like it’s in one place, but then you look from another angle, and it’s somewhere else.”
    “Correct!” Teacher and student look equally surprised that she got it right. Dr. Mann turns to the rest of the class. “As Miss Watts has explained, parallax is the difference in the apparent position of an object viewed from two different angles. The name—‘parallax’—and the fact that we use terms like ‘arcsec’ and ‘parsec’ to determine it—makes the concept sound more complicated than it is.”
    “What the hell is an arcsec?” someone behind me mutters.
    “How is our perspective skewed? That’s the deeper question we must ask,” Dr. Mann declares. “Let’s begin with an illustration. Please select someone at least two rows away from you. Make sure you choose someone you can see clearly from where you sit.”
    I force myself not to look at Josh. Instead, I focus on the girl Dr. Mann called on.
    “Now close one eye,” the old man instructs. “With your hand in a thumbs-up position, move your arm until