Momentum

Baseball.

I track Christen down in the library before first period the next day. She's sitting at a table in the back with a book in her hands, her eyes sluggishly moving from left to right as she trudges through the text.

"Hey," I say as I approach her. "Uh, sorry to interrupt your reading session."

"Oh," she says, sitting up and closing her book. "Hey. Don't worry about it; I could use a distraction right about now."

"I'm the distraction?"

She nods. "The best."

I sit down next to her and grab the book she was reading. "Wuthering Heights?"

"Yeah. I have to write a paper about it for English."

"What's it about?"

She exhales. "Rich people. Incessant pining. Vengeance."

"Sounds interesting."

"It's the worst thing I've ever read." She chuckles and shakes her head. "I definitely prefer Mr. Darcy over Heathcliff."

"Heathcliff does have a pretty cool name, though."

She rolls her eyes affectionately. "Did you come here just to discuss literature with me?"

"Oh, um, no." I shake my head, close my eyes briefly as I try to remember my reason for coming here. "We have to reschedule the test run of our project. Since we're meeting up with Kelly tonight to prepare for tomorrow."

"Oh, shoot." She rubs at her forehead. "I completely forgot about that. With everything going on with Alex . . . "

"I know. Things have been hectic lately," I say. "I guess the test run will just have to wait another week."

"Well, next week for sure. Or else we won't have time to fix any bugs before the competition."

"There won't be any bugs," I say, confident. "We've gone over the calculations a hundred times; everything will go according to plan."

"Don't jinx anything. Last thing we want is to accidentally burn your house down."

I laugh, causing the librarian to peek her head out of a nearby aisle and shush me.

"Sorry," I whisper, but the old woman only shakes her head and disappears into the aisle again to finish shelving books.

Christen leans over and says quietly, "Yeah, shut up, Tobin."

I lean over to punch her arm, too softly to actually cause any pain, and she responds by smacking me on the shoulder with her book.

"Ow!" I say, sitting up straight and rubbing at my shoulder. "That hurt."

The librarian steps out of the aisle once again with fire in her eyes, and I stand up and grab my backpack before she can scold me.

"Don't worry, I'm going, I'm going." I hold my hands up and begin to back away from the table.

"Bye, Tobin," says Christen, winking at me, which is just about the most attractive thing I've ever seen.