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the dot on his ear, half smiled. Karl by this time had become Mr. Sue. Theo knew results when he saw them.
    “Sure,” I said. “Whatever, Theo. You can pick up the goods at my locker tomorrow, before the bell.”

5
    I HAD TO THINK. I had to go right back out to my pond and think. Because what is it about the world’s Lilas that testosterone thinks it sees? Long, dark hair and tiny feet: I give her that. Eyelashes long, thin, and tangly as spider legs. A way of saying nothing that has everyone guessing what she thinks. A permanent, genetic smile inscribed upon her face.
    She could never go undercover, the lovely Lila, and because of that she had my sympathy. Boys watched her constantly. Girls watched her, too—growing their hair out long in Lila style, dressingtheir feet in shoes a size too small, wetting their lashes with globs of Vaseline, as if that could ever add to their allure. She was defenseless against her own beauty. She could never show up anywhere and just be. Never be anything but a walking, high-gloss ad for the ultimate epitome of pretty.
    “Lord above,” I said to myself as I sat on the rickety dock at the pond, which was clearer that day, less agitated, more full of sky. The same hawk was up high and the air was acorn ripe and the marble girl was still reading her book, hadn’t turned a single page in all this time. I wondered how it felt, to be sunk for all eternity.
    Lila, Lila, Lila, I thought. And Theo, Theo, Theo. You’d have to be a calculus genius to make that equation work. Did he think his furry monkey was enough to catch her eye? Did he suppose she’d want to touch his spiky hair? Finger his gold ear dot? Whatever made Theo think he had a chance with her? Lacrosse was not basketball, never would be.
    None of my existing metaphors would do. Noneof the goods in my Stash O’ Nature box. None of the poems in my head. Some subjects flat-out stump you, no matter how smart you are, and when that happens, Dad says, take a breather. I closed my eyes. I opened them. A leaf was falling from up high, and it was drifting down. It fell at last upon the pond and was drawn, by some secret force, toward the marble girl with the marble book upon her knees.
    Track the changes, Dad had said, but the thing is: You can’t count all the leaves. You can’t name all the colors. You can feel the autumn coming, though, and in that turning there is mystery. Lila. I practiced Theo’s note in my head. Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting toward you.

6
    T HREE WEEKS AFTER I gave Theo the Lila note, I saw them walking down the hall with their hands laced tight together. She was bending toward him, murmuring something, and he was earnest beyond earnest, leaning just so close and listening. You’d think each stand-up-straight hair on Theo’s head was an antenna. You’d think his mouth was a third eye, the way it was watching all her talking. Even his little blue monkey wasn’t dancing so hard. It was as if the two new lovebirds were all wrapped up in a filmy bubble or stuck inside their own Ziploc bag.
    Whatever, I thought. Whatever. Because, like Dad says, we consultants don’t do what we do for gratitude. We do it because it’s an outlet for our talent, because solving problems is a form of exercise; we’re just sharpening our skills for some future something of importance. Clients are the last people on earth who could ever be counted on for thanks. Dad says they always think, somehow, that if actually pressed, they could do the work themselves—fix the company, heal what’s broken. Write the poem.
    Fifth period was coming on, and fifth period was Honors English, Honors English being the one class I share with Theo. We’d been working on plays all semester long, and today’s play was by a French guy—Edmond Rostand. I’d never heard of him, and I wasn’t in the mood to care, and when Dr. Charmin began her