Chapter 1

She smiled at me. Those beautiful cat-like dark brown eyes looked right at me while that full mouth turned up, showing just a peek of teeth perfected by braces in the seventh grade. Jennie Kim smiled at me.

I think.

The first thing I did when I saw that dazzling smile pointed in my direction was look behind me. Because there was absolutely no reason for Jennie Kim—cheerleader, yearbook editor, goddess sent from above to torture me with her beauty—to smile at me. While we knew of each other because we’d been in some of the same classes since middle school, and we were now both seniors in high school, we’d never been particularly friendly. A few comments shared during class or an “excuse me” while bumping into each other at a doorway (okay, those bumps might not had been entirely accidental on my part) had been the extent of our interactions for years.

So there was no reason for Jennie Kim to smile at me. Except when I looked behind me there was no one else there. No one to my left or right, either. Just me, standing in the middle of the hallway as I came to the slow realization that Jennie Kim may have just smiled at me.

And now it was two periods later and I was still trying to figure it out. Jennie Kim, whose name I couldn't even break apart in my mind because “Jennie” and “Kim” together made the magnificent person who had overtaken my imagination, was a friendly person.

She’d never been a bully, or hung out with people who were jerks. Her group had always been the overachievers who volunteered at the animal shelter on weekends because they liked animals and needed to beef up their college resumes. So it wasn't entirely out of the question for Jennie Kim to just randomly smile at me. She might have smiled at lots of people throughout her day, bringing sunshine and happiness to all around her.

If it hadn’t been made totally clear yet, I had a bit of a crush on Jennie Kim.

But even if Jennie Kim went around handing out her smiles like candy on Halloween, there was something different about the smile that she shot in my direction. It was pulled up just a little bit more on one side, and the look she gave me was almost shy.

Though I’d seen the word “coy” used lots of times in novels, this was the first time I would’ve used it in real life. She smiled at me coyly from beneath her extra-long lashes.

That kind of stuff happened in romance novels where there were lords and ladies, and dancing at fancy balls, and ladies got their skirts thrown up over their heads in the rose gardens at midnight.

I may have gone through a phase a couple of years ago. Thank you, public library self-checkout, for saving me from embarrassment about my love of historical romance.

So now I’d spent hours, during which I should have been paying attention to chemistry or calculus (I couldn't even remember which classes I zoned out in!), analyzing a less-than-two-second maybe-moment I’d had with Jennie Kim.

Leaving whatever class I had been in, I wandered in the direction of my locker, automatically dodging other students in the hallway. I would figure out what books I needed for my next classes when I got there. Unfortunately, I was waylaid by the last person I wanted to see—Jisoo Kim.

I thought about turning around and running in the other direction, or at least trying to veer around her, but it was too late. We were already standing right in front of each other.

“You’re in my way,” she said, staring me down. Maybe I was sick of being pushed around for years by the person in front of me, or maybe Jennie Kim’s smile had given me a little extra boost of confidence. Either way, I was feeling bold this morning. I refused to give her the satisfaction of backing down. I stared right back at her.

“There’s plenty of space,” I responded. “Feel free to walk around.” Sweat was pooling underneath my T-shirt and my heart was hammeri