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your senior year of high school. I understand it might be hard, but we don’t want you to miss out on all the experiences at this point in your life.”
                  Her father gazed intently at a spot on her face just below her eyes. “Your mother’s right, Elise. You only go to high school once; the world just isn’t the same after you graduate. We don’t want you to have regrets.”
                  “Sweetie, have you given any more thought to dating? Are there any boys you like? I mean, did you see anyone today...” Her mother's voice was hesitant, and she trailed off before she finished the thought. Elise held up a finger, putting her mother off while she chewed a mouthful of chicken. She knew what her mother was suggesting: that she might have seen some boy today at school, and realized that he’d gone through some ugly duckling transformation over the summer, turning into someone mature and desirable. What Elise couldn’t quite tell was if her mother actually thought this would be a good thing, or whether she was just parroting what parenting books said she ought to say to a daughter who was nearly eighteen years old and had never had a real boyfriend.
                  She swallowed her food and looked her mother in the eye. “I would have told you if there was anyone. Quite frankly, I don’t have any need of a boyfriend. I’m going to England to study at Oxford, and that’s final. What do I need a boy for? High school relationships never go anywhere, anyway, so what are they but distractions?”
                  “Well, that’s a relief,” Her father said with finality. “Nice to know you’re keeping your head in the game.”
                  “Well, yeah,” Elise said in her best approximation of a “ ditzy teenage girl” tone of voice, and having averted the potential crisis, turned her attention pointedly to her food.
                  After dinner, however, Elise let her emotions and doubts about her troublesome day come loose. Sitting on the polished black bench in front of the upright piano in the dining room, she let her fingers flow across the keys, challenging her honed skill by playing the most difficult pieces she knew. As her fingers flew, picking out both melody and harmony, she let her cares go and for a few minutes, worried more about where her hands fell on the little lacquered pieces of wood than she did about the new boy at school.
                  She couldn’t avoid the subject forever, though, and finally, feeling drained and sated, she closed the lid over the keys and patted it lovingly. No matter how complicated or stressful her life became, she was always able to center herself again by getting lost in her music. So, calm and contained, she ambled upstairs to take a shower and think over the day’s complicated emotions.
                  Without a doubt, the new boy weighed heavily on her mind. Now that she wasn’t around him, she wanted to pretend that he was just an odd boy trying to distinguish himself in a new high school. However, Elise was nothing if not honest with herself, and she recalled all too clearly the effect his tone, his touches, his glances, his very presence had on her. He saw her, it seemed, in a way that none of the other students in her school did. Everyone else was content to ignore her and be ignored. In that blur of faceless anonymity, he stood out in clear definition. That was in itself both terrifying and addictive. Shivering slightly, she turned up the water temperature and tipped her head back, trying to stay relaxed. As the hot water soaked through her thick hair and melted any remaining tension from her muscles, she allowed herself to reflect fully on what she felt when the new boy was around.
                  She was suddenly and acutely annoyed that she had to think of him as “The New Boy.” In Latin class, she had been so preoccupied