Chapter 10

I DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING

Lucky!” Flatso whispers when she sees my note. (She’s no longer British in bio, by the way.)

“It’s because I nearly flunked my lab,” I tell her.

“Great idea!”

“What? No! I didn’t do it on purpose!”

Flatso thinks this over, like she suspects I might be trying to get some one-on-one time with our cute teacher. Which I am not. “Hmm,” she says.

Actually, I’m pretty embarrassed by my lab. I’m usually a great science student, but missing ten days a while back really put me behind. I don’t want Winnie—Mr. Quinn… What am I supposed to call him? Anyway, I don’t want him to think I’m an idiot.

“I’m not an idiot,” I tell him after class.

“What? I didn’t think you were.” Winnie looks confused as students file out of the room. “The mistake you made is pretty common.” He starts writing on my lab to show me what I did wrong, and all I can think is:

“You just missed a step,” he tells me.

I snap out of my little reverie and realize I missed his entire explanation. He turns my paper—now full of his red marks—back around and smiles at me, and when I look into his eyes, I see that they’re this really beautiful greeny-blue around the iris and sort of amber at the center. I’m so busy looking at his eyes, that when I reach for my paper, I accidentally touch his fingers. A jolt of electricity shoots through me, and I feel myself start to blush.

“Um, thanks,” I mumble, and hurry out of the room so fast that I knock my shoulder against the doorframe and stumble into the hallway. Attractive!

“Hey!” Brainzilla grabs my arm and helps me stay upright. “You okay?”

I nod and mutter something, and then she thrusts a copy of PlainSpeaking—which is our student newspaper, of which she is the editor, of course—into my face. “Check it out! Hot off the press! Now look at the front page!”

“Winston Quinn is sixteen?” I ask.

“He’s seventeen now,” Brainzilla says. “Cool, right?”

Cool? Maybe. Maybe just weird. So I have this Downy-fresh crush on a cute teacher who’s… my age? Does that make it better? Or worse? And how could I forget that Flatso is totally in love with him already?

I’m not sure. All I know is that now I’m having all kinds of Wrong Thoughts, and I don’t know how to stop them.

Or even if I want to.