My gaze darted around the jock's table in a desperate search for a conversation starter. Trays, food wrappers, cracked plastic cups, paper plates and a car magazine. Cruz leaned on it with his elbows, absorbed into the contents of the page, restored classic cars.

One of the guys, Aiden, punched him on the shoulder. "All I'm saying is that you have to act before all the good ones are taken and you have to go to the prom alone. Do you even hear me?"

Cruz rubbed his shoulder absentmindedly. "Yes, I hear you. And I'm perfectly okay going alone."

"Can't say I blame you. When the hottest girl in our school is your twin sister, might as well give up. I mean, just look at these girls... Lol!" Aiden scoffed and pointed around the cafeteria to illustrate his point. Unfortunately, I hovered by their table like a helium balloon at a birthday party, making me a perfect target. "Look at this!"

His buddies did. My heart sank, as I captured undivided attention of the uber-popular guys, including my crush. This was clearly the case of beware-of-what-you-wish-for.

"What do you want, Green?" Aiden snapped. "Dylan doesn't work here no more. He got too fancy."

If my hands clenched any harder, I'd squeeze my stupid coffee out of the cup like toothpaste out of a tube. "Ah..."

"That's what I thought. Move on."

Three Dylan-clones hooted with laughter, but Cruz didn't laugh along.

He swiveled his head from one to another till they choked on their horrible snorts. Then he turned to me, and my heart flipped in my chest. Up close, the impact of his marvelous, sad, warmest-brown-in-town eyes magnified a thousand-fold. I'd do anything to see them sparkling with joy.

"Did you want to ask something, Zoe, or did my idiot friends just startle you?" he asked softly.

The guys scoffed, but none of them talked back. This was weird, because everyone was mean to everyone else in our school, so barbs flew all day long.

Without Esha's support, I should have shook my head, hung it low and moved on, but something clicked in my brain.

The magazine! Cruz's car! His car was amazing, a pure labor of love. What I drove wasn't in the same league, but it was cute and quirky. "I just caught you guys chatting about the cars, and it sort of struck me. You probably know more about the old cars..."

He winced, and I rushed to correct myself. "...and about the antique ones, because of course your car is a true antique treasure. You know all about the restoration, and custom fitting, and stuff like that... anyway, you know more than anyone else in town about all that."

At this point I had to stop and take a breath in. It ruined my flow of consciousness, but Cruz's bronzed face remained attentive. His glance didn't wander away, like it always did when I ran into him in the hallway.

"So, I was thinking, just now, right? Because I heard you, guys, chatting..." I licked my lips. Just keep going, it's going well. "Maybe you can take a look at my car—because I have this old car—and tell me if there's a way to customize it to make it...cooler?"

Ouff, thankfully I got it all out in one shot, because my head was swimming.

Aiden harrumphed. "Zoe, baby, you and cool is an oxymoron."

Okay, great. I'd just made a fool of myself. Maybe Esha was right, and I shouldn't look at the boys for another year or a hundred.

"Better an oxymoron than a regular moron," Cruz said.

"Chill, dude. I forgot you were into fixer-uppers."

Cruz dismissed the bait with a tiny shake of his head and kept looking at me. If he didn't say another word to me, if he didn't ask me out, this was already the longest he had looked at me. He saw me, and it spread warmth through my chest.

"You drive that pink Mini? The one parked down Third Street, right?" Cruz asked.

My jaw hung. "Dusty rosé, yes. I mean, I..." I had no idea how to finish this sentence, so I just bobbed my head as vigorously as I could, without losing it like my heart.

I wouldn't call it a flash, but maybe there was a glimmer of joy in Cruz's eyes. "Okay, so you have a custom paint job on it already. Thing is, Zoe, I dunno if it needs more than that. See, your Mini is quirky. You can't do quirky and cool at the same time. It would be..."

Cruz snapped his fingers, looking for a metaphor, but I understood: I blew it.

The smirk on Aiden's face confirmed it.

"Okay. Fair enough. I'll...I'll just get going," I said.

Cruz's full lips puckered a little, like it was he who goofed up. "No! Don't go. Quirky is great. Quirky suits you...what I mean, I don't know you, but I think it does. Don't mess with it...with your car, that is. Does it make sense?"

If someone hit me on the head with a sack of rice, it would have less of a stupefying effect on me than Cruz asking me a question. And he was waiting on an answer.

I deployed all my mental faculties to produce a response. "Aha." Brilliant.

"Zoe! Zoe!" Esha yelled across the cafeteria. Her voice pitched three octaves higher than her natural range. My stomach plunged, as I realized Esha didn't ditch me. She must have been hyperventilating all this time, and now she had finally defeated her stage fright. "Zoe, you forgot your bag!!!"

Right from the script, but jeez-louise, couldn't she see I was already talking to Cruz, and no longer needed our plan?

"I think your friend is calling you," Aiden said. "Shouldn't you, I dunno? Scoot?" Translation: leave Cruz alone. He and Esha should form a club dedicated to keeping Cruz and me from hooking up.

I whirled to face Esha, hoping to signal, abort mission! somehow. But she was now in the performance, swinging my 'forgotten' bag in the air like a wrecking ball. My hands flew to my throat, because a hamster could see this was staged. But getting busted was small potatoes compared to what happened next.

The lid on my plastic coffee cup snapped, and the untouched beverage splashed out. As if shot in slow motion, the long brown jet of liquid splashed Cruz's chest.

ONC: 2000-words mark

I had no idea I was standing so close to him. Our plan was to drop the coffee on the floor, by his feet, like a conversation starter. Nothing more, I swear.

An ugly stain spread on Cruz's checkered shirt, consuming white, gray and pale blue. Mortified, I tore my scarf off. "I'm so sorry! Let me fix it!"

Mom brought this scarf back from their honeymoon. It had images of the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame and Sacré-Cœur and smelled like dreams after twenty years. I wore it for luck, and now I dabbed Cruz's shirt with it, hoping to salvage this complete disaster. The only luck here was that the coffee was tepid, not scalding-hot.

"It's okay...okay." Cruz pushed my hand away. Not rudely, but persistently. He sounded out of breath, which was odd for a guy who chased a ball at top speed daily. "Please, don't touch me, Zoe."

"I'll just soak it up." My head was spinning. "Then we can maybe get some baking soda, or vinegar, or..."

Cruz kicked his long legs to move his chair farther back, out of my reach, but he slumped mid-move. Color drained from his cheeks. His handsome features morphed into a grotesque of suffering. He whispered something that could have been too late.

Through the soggy fabric and Mom's scarf, I felt his skin go as cold as ice. No, not as cold as ice. Colder. So cold, that a pale blue glow emanated from the afflicted place. Scarf fell out of my hand.

"Cruz, you're glowing. Why are you glowing blue?" I lifted my gaze to check if anyone else saw Cruz's mysterious allergic reaction to coffee.

Aiden and Co were laughing their guts out. The jerk even lifted his phone, but he trained it on me. Who cared if their friend was glowing blue for reasons unknown, if there was a hope of making another viral video of dumb Zoe?

This was Hell on Earth.