by Lindsay Horvath

Created on: December 19, 2008

Through the corner of my eye, I watched Edward's dark head; listened to his clear voice. I wondered when he was going to look up from the poem we were reading and notice that I was watching him. I didn't have any illusions that I looked seductive or beautiful or anything, really, but I knew that he saw me differently. I knew.

Poetry was a boring class, and the touchy-feely way that Mr. Alexander tried to teach it made me want to gag. For example, we were all sitting on the floor around the room, as opposed to sitting at desks like normal students. Some of the more artsy-fartsy kids were sprawled on their stomachs, fervently engrossed in Edward's voice for totally different reasons than I was. They were hearing Tennyson; I was hearing love. Or something close to it.

Edward finished reading, and Mr. Alexander started talking in his boring, old-man voice about the poem. I doodled in my notebook, keeping my gaze on Edward. I wasn't worried about being called on or asked a specific question-Mr. Alexander didn't believe in forcing us to participate, and he really didn't have a lack of participants. The grungy kids sprang to life, full of babble, and Edward fell back. He leaned against the wall, scribbled something in his notebook, and glanced across the room.

I was rewarded. He caught my eye and my smile burst forth, unstoppable. I surely looked like a grinning fool ready for the asylum, but Edward was grinning too, in a smoldering, bad-boy kind of way. He slowly turned his notebook around and I could see that he had scrawled a rough heart with an arrow through it. Next to me, my friend Megan groaned under her breath and rolled her eyes at me. She didn't like Edward...I believe "lame" was her favorite word for him.

Whatever. She didn't know what it was like to hole up in his bedroom after school while R.E.M. blasted on the CD player for hours. Or what it felt like to walk along a log down by the river and know that he was watching me, wanting me, falling for me. Or what quick surprise kisses in the middle of a dying field felt like. Megan had always had the admiration of every boy she'd ever wanted. She didn't know what it felt like to wait...forever, it seemed.

After school, I stood by Edward's locker, just as he'd asked me to. I was nervous, but that was silly. I couldn't shake the feeling that it was all going to be over before I knew it, and my one shot at love would be dashed down the drain like a lost wedding ring. Yes, at seventeen I felt this was really, truly

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