Because I am late to class, I’m forced to sit up front. The back row is ideal for spacing out or for texting, but I have no one to text. Today, I could space out on a roller coaster, so the front row is as good a seat as any. I glance around the room as Mr. Pinner passes out a class-rule sheet. Model airplanes hang by strings from the ceiling, timelines stripe the walls, and black-and-white pictures of the Egyptian pyramids adorn a nearby information board. History used to be my favorite class, but in view of my new vendetta against time, I’m just not feeling it.

Mr. Pinner is on Rule No. 3 when he looks up and to the back of the class. “Can I help you? Surely you’re not already violating Rule Numero Uno! Anybody remember that one?”

“Arrive on time,” chimes in a do-gooder from the back.

“Is this world history?” the presumable violator asks. His voice is even, confident, nothing like it should be, given that he’s violated Numero Uno. I hear a few people shuffle in their chairs, probably to get a look at him.

“The one and only,” says Mr. Pinner. “Unless, of course, you mean the one down the hall.” He chuckles at his joke.

“Is this, or is this not, world history?” the student asks again.

A rash of whispers breaks out, and I smile at the timeline I’m looking at. Mr. Pinner clears his throat. “Didn’t you hear me the first time? I said this is world history.”

“I did hear you the first time. You didn’t make yourself clear.”

Even the do-gooder snickers. Mr. Pinner fidgets with the leftover rule sheets in his hand and pushes his glasses up on his nose. The girl behind me whispers, “Gorgeous!” to her neighbor, and since she can’t be talking about Mr. Pinner, I take the bait and turn around.

And my breath catches in my throat. Galen. He is standing in the doorway—no, he’s filling up the doorway—holding nothing but a binder and an irritated expression. And he is already staring at me.

Mr. Pinner says, “Come have a seat up front, young man. And you can sit here for the remainder of the week as well. I don’t tolerate tardiness. What is your name?”

“Galen Forza,” he answers without taking his eyes off me. Then he strides to the desk next to me and seats himself. He dwarfs the chair meant for a normal adolescent male, and as he adjusts to get comfortable, a few feminine whispers erupt from the back. I want to tell them that he looks even better without a shirt on, but I have to admit that a tight T-shirt and worn jeans almost do him justice.

Even so, his presence sends me reeling. Galen has been a key player in my nightmares these past weeks, which have been nothing but a subconscious rehashing of the last day of Chloe’s life. It doesn’t matter if I sleep for forty minutes or two hours; I smack into him, hear Chloe approaching, feel embarrassed all over again. Sometimes she asks him to go to Baytowne with us and he agrees. We all leave together instead of getting in the water.

Sometimes the dream gets mixed up with a different one—the one where I’m drowning in Granny’s backyard pond. The events run together like watercolors; Chloe and I fall in the water, and the school of catfish materialize out of nowhere and push us both to the surface. Dad’s boat is waiting for us, but I taste saltwater instead of fresh.

I would rather have the dream with the real ending, though—it’s horrible to see over and over, but it doesn’t last very long, and when I wake up, I know Chloe is dead. When we take the alternate endings, I wake up thinking she’s alive. And I lose her all over again.

But the tingles never show up in my dreams. I’d forgotten about them, in fact. So when they show up now, I blush. Deeply.

Galen gives me a quizzical look, and for the first time since he sat down, I notice his eyes. They’re blue. Not violet like mine, as they were on the beach. Or were they? I could have sworn Chloe commented on his eyes, but my subconscious might have made that up, the same way it makes up alternate endings. One thing’s for sure: I didn’t make up Galen’s habit of staring. Or the way it makes me blush.

I face forward in my desk, fold my hands on top of it, and train my eyes on Mr. Pinner. He says, “Well, Mr. Forza, don’t forget where you’re sitting because that’s where you’ll be until next week.” He hands Galen a rule sheet.

“Thank you, I won’t,” Galen tells him. A few giggles sprinkle behind us. It is official. Galen has a fan club.

As Mr. Pinner talks about … well, really I have no idea what he’s talking about. All I know is that the tingles give way to something else—fire. Like there’s a stream of molten lava flowing between my desk and Galen’s.

“Ms. McIntosh?” Mr. Pinner says. And if I remember correctly, Ms. McIntosh is me.

“Uh, sorry?” I say.

“The Titanic, Ms. McIntosh,” he says, on the verge of exasperation. “Have any idea when it sank?”

Ohmysweetgoodness, I do. I became obsessed with the Titanic for a good six months after we studied it last year. Last year, before I had a vendetta against history, the passage of time. “April fifteen, 1912.”

Mr. Pinner is instantly pleased. His thin lips open into a smile that makes him look toothless because his gums are so big. “Ah, we have a history buff. Very nice, Ms. McIntosh.”

The bell rings. The bell rings? We’ve spent fifty minutes in this class already?

“Remember, people, study the rule sheet. Snuggle it at night, eat lunch with it, take it to the movies. It’s the only way you’re passing my class,” Mr. Pinner calls over the bustle of students herding out the door.