Over the Moon Read Free Page A

something in common after all. I glanced
around the room. There were several Native Americans, a handful
of Hispanics, five or six cowboys and cowgirls, and some skaters
and preppies. This class had only a couple of gangster wannabes,
and there seemed to be a serious shortage of goths. I guess vampires
don't like so much intense sunlight. Then I saw an exceptionally tall and strangely attractive boy enter. There was something different
about him, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.

    He sauntered into the classroom and took a seat also near the
back on the other side of the room. He was well over six feet tall
with wavy, golden blond hair and the bluest eyes I had ever seen.
They were the unusual color of Indian turquoise. His skin was a
deep, contrasting tan just like everyone else here except for me. He
had high cheekbones, a straight nose, a square jaw with a cleft in the
center. These features were striking but not really remarkable. Then
his eyes met mine. He smiled, showing me his deep dimples, and his
face was transformed from merely attractive to amazing. I returned
his smile and tried to look away as I felt the heat of the blood that
rushed to turn my face a bright shade of crimson. I was pleasantly
surprised to see someone with that much charisma in this tiny town
in the middle of the southwestern wilderness. What on earth was he
doing here? He didn't seem to belong any more than I did.
    Tiffany saw our exchange and whispered, "That's Andrew Martin. He's kind of hot, but you can forget about him. Save yourself
some grief. He doesn't date."
    "Why?" I couldn't possibly forget him. He had the most contagious and magnetic smile I had ever seen on a boy before.
    "No one knows for sure. Rumors are that he got his heart broken
before he moved here."
    I tried not to stare at him, but my eyes kept wandering back to
his face. Each time I looked at him, he looked back and smiled. A
few times, I caught him watching me. He didn't seem the least bit
embarrassed when I caught him staring. How could any girl break
his heart? I knew I needed to banish his face from my mind immediately. Boys like that brought girls like me only heartache. It was best
to mind my own business and avoid the inherent, unavoidable pain
that came from striving for the unattainable. I should treat him like
the figment of my imagination that he had to be and let him fade
away from my consciousness. That would be the smart thing to do.
I didn't always do the smart thing.

    The rest of the morning crawled by slowly. Spanish class was
uneventful. Tiffany was in my geography class, along with a preppy
boy named Jordan. He had reddish brown hair and suggested we
should stick together as the only redheads in the junior class. His
eyes were a honey-colored brown, and he had freckled, tan skin. I
argued that he didn't qualify as a genuine redhead. He'd probably
never been sunburned in his life. He and Tiffany invited me to sit
with them at lunch. I accepted. Hooray, I wouldn't have to sit alone
at the outcast table! Things were looking up just a little bit.
    "How different is Hurricane from Chicago?" Jordan asked.
    "It's a whole other planet," I replied, shaking my head as I
frowned, thinking of how completely opposite things seemed here
from what I was accustomed to in my former school.
    "I want to go to college in a big city, anywhere that's far away
from here," he asserted.
    "I hear that!" I agreed. I was ready to leave now. Perhaps we
could run away together.
    We got our trays of traditional school cafeteria food, complete
with mystery meat, and he led me to a table that was half full of
students. At least the food looked similar to what I was used to not
enjoying for lunch in my old school in Illinois. He introduced me. I
forgot their names almost immediately, except for a girl with feathery yellow hair that hung down to the middle of her back. Alexis
looked down her pretty, pixie nose at me. She had