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It’s a polite question people here ask. Not one to be answered honestly. “It was great,” I reply dutifully. “How was yours?”

He leans against the locker beside mine and shrugs. “We went to our place in Park City to ski, but there was, like, no snow. We mostly hiked instead.”

I laugh to myself. My father is carping about the wastefulness of a five-dollar gift exchange when the bulk of his student body is jetting off to a second home.

“I’ll walk you to your next class,” he says, but Ford’s glare is so obvious as we pass that Alex does a double take over his shoulder.

“What’s up with James?” he asks. “Did you dump him or something?”

I gasp and laugh at once. “Ford? Are you kidding me? My father would send me to a convent if I dated Ford, and we’re not even Catholic.”

Alex’s tongue pokes his cheek. “Are you even allowed to date?”

My cheeks heat. He is nice and attractive. He’s someone I’d surely have a crush on, if I didn’t already have an all-consuming crush on the wrong guy. “I—I sort of doubt it,” I stammer. “I’ve only gone to a girls’ school until now. But my church is pretty strict.”

He gives me a little smile. “Maybe you could find out and let me know?”

It doesn’t even warrant asking, but I’m embarrassed to admit it outright. It would sound crazy to him, and maybe it is according to Maslow’s hierarchy: love and belonging are a primary human need, right after safety, but it’s reproduction in the first spot, alongside food, water, and oxygen.

When did Bright Covenant decide they knew more than nature about how we should live? It seems kind of arrogant.

“I’ll...uh...ask,” I tell him.

The rest of the day, and week, is as painfully awkward as English was. In journalism, Ford turns away during class so that we never make eye contact. We continue to discuss Romeo and Juliet in English every morning, Alex continues to walk me to my next class even after I inform him that my father said I couldn’t date, and Ford looks a little more mutinous with each minute that passes.

Over the weekend, my parents present me with a gold envelope. Inside is a letter from the Bright Covenant board, congratulating me on my “acceptance” into the mission program. Faith is very impressed by this, but who over the age of eight would be? Everyone gets accepted.

Increasingly, the mission feels like a terrible job you have to pretend is a privilege. Sort of like being a wife in Bright Covenant.

On Monday, we begin tackling Shakespeare’s poetry. Mrs. Onorato reads love sonnets, and I think not of Alex complimenting my eyes at that party, but of Ford that same night, telling me not to mess with my face. Hardly words of love to shake the heavens, but...they mean more to me than the most excessive compliment from anyone else.

On Tuesday, Mrs. O has each of us come to the front and interpret verses she’s chosen. That knot in my stomach doubles up. I can think through things on my own when I have time and silence, but I can’t think on my feet. If I have to look like an idiot, I’d prefer it be done someplace Ford isn’t going to see it.

Almost everyone who goes up needs help from Mrs. Onorato, but my heart is still hammering in my chest when it’s my turn.

She hands me a sheet of paper, and I stare at the page before I begin to read, panicking a little.

“Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye, that though consum’st thy self in single life?” I finally read. “Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee like a makeless wife.”

“Okay, Grace,” says Mrs. O. “Take a shot. What do you think it means?”

I bite my lip, staring at the words again, and when an answer comes to me, I want to weep in relief. “He’s asking if a guy is staying single so he won’t have to hurt his wife when he dies, I think?” She nods and I continue. “And saying that if he doesn’t have children, the whole world will grieve instead?”

“Exactly! Well done!” she cries, and I flush with her praise. My eyes turn, before I can stop them, to Ford, as if his is the opinion that matters. He is staring at me, with an expression I’ve seen before—when my nipple hardened beneath his hand, when he first saw me at the pool.

“I would never have figured that out,” says Daniel, beside me.

When it’s Ford’s turn, he reads the verse to himself and then perches on the edge of Mrs. O’s desk, shoulders slouched, as if he wishes he could escape notice.

“My love is as a fever, longing still,” he reads. “For that which nurseth the disease, feeding on that which doth preserve the ill.”

“Dude wants to get laid,” shouts JJ. Most of the class laughs, but I don’t, and neither does Ford. His hand is tight as a fist around the paper.

“Perhaps,” says Mrs. O. “But it’s more than that. Ford, can you finish the verse please?”

Ford’s tongue darts out to his upper lip. “‘My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve.” His voice is deep and lovely.

JJ, riding high on the laughter he just got from the room, has an answer. “Dude wants Viagra.”