Stepping into the terminal, I couldn't help but sigh.

The ride from Washington to New York had been a rough one, and the only good thing about it was being next to Sam.

Now, Sam stood beside me on the curb, trying to hail a cab to get us to Pinehurst Academy, looking very dapper in his brown leather jacket, a blue and red hooded sweatshirt and freshly ironed black jeans.

It was just starting to drizzle when a taxi finally pulled over and a middle-aged black man got out and stuffed our luggage into the trunk. Sam went around to the right side, and I ultimately ended up in between Sam and Brian again.

"Where to?" the man asked, twisting his head around to look at us. "Um, Pinehurst Academy. It's---" "Yeah, I know where it is." The driver grumbled, stepping on the gas.

Staring out the window, I watched as the Manhattan traffic began to thicken, until finally we halted on some godforsaken street, wedged in between another taxi and a rusted out Cadillac.

I pulled up my sleeve to look at my wristwatch. We were already five minutes late, and I hoped they hadn't started the meet already. I leaned forward.

"Excuse me sir. We're really late."

"We're almost there." He muttered, taking a long drag on his cigar. I coughed from the fumes, until I heard Brian say, "We're only two blocks away." I watched him trace the route on the map with his finger.

"Let's walk." Sam said, opening the door and sliding out. I was eager to get out, the cigar smoke choking me. Popping the trunk open was easy enough, and Brian handed me my leather bag, and Sam's bag as well.

As I maneuvered my way to the other side of the cab, I noticed Sam staring skyward. Following his gaze, beyond the tops of the skyscrapers were birds. Hundreds of thousands of birds, screaming and shrieking through the cloudy gray New York sky.

That's odd, I thought, stepping up onto the sidewalk, almost being knocked to the ground by a woman with a cell phone glued to her ear and a briefcase in her tanned and manicured finger-nailed hand.

"Excuse me." I muttered sarcastically, placing my bag on the pavement. Sa and Brian joined me moments later after arguing with the cab driver that wanted to charge $47.88. But there were more important matter to deal with.

We were fifteen minutes late for the meet.

"In 1532, Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizzaro defeated this Incan Emperor at the Peruvian Highland of Kihamarka. What is his name?" The judge read off a small index card.

The Assistant judge set the timer for one minute, as Brian leaned in. "Montezuma?" he asked hopefully. "No, no. Montezuma was in Mexico. It's like Anta... something." I concluded, glancing around at the other teams.

One of the teams had finished already as the seconds ticked away. Sam, who had contributed very little, and had been very quiet spoke. "Attawapa?" "That's it!" I whispered, franticly scribbling the name on a blank slip of paper.

A thin, bespectacled man took the paper, and nodded curtly to the judge. "That's five points for Woodmont and five points for Pinehurst Academy."

I grinned, positively glowing. My eyes wandered across the gym, and stopped on a boy my age, staring at me. He nodded, smiling. I flushed, and looked down at the new paper the Assistant judge had placed in front of me.

"Next question." The judge said. "In what year did Louis Catores ascend to the throne of France?"

Spotting Brian and Sam through the throng of students, I made my way across the dance floor, a glass of Ginger Ale clutched in my hand.

"Hey!"

Sam and Brian both looked up, and I could see their eyes looking me up and down. "Hey. You look beautiful." Sam said, I could tell he was being honest.

At first I thought borrowing this black velvet dress from my mother's closet was a bad idea, but that one compliment Sam Hall gave me made it all worth it.

"Thanks." I hoped he couldn't tell I was blushing. I changed the subject. "This place is incredible. Do you believe that this is their cafeteria?"

"You played a great first round." A voice said from behind.

Spinning around, I came face to face with the boy that had nodded at me in the gym. He was very handsome. Dark brown hair, strong cheekbones, muscular build, and big brown eyes that you could lose yourself in.

But he just wasn't my type, I thought, staring into his eyes. I did manage to sneak a quick glance at Sam, hoping I'd catch a reaction. But sadly nothing, just his usual smile, and his blue eyes that I wanted to get lost in.

"So did you." I tried to be conversational, when all I wanted to do was dance with Sam, his warm, strong arms wrapped around me, and to have this boy leave.

Either way, he was nice.

"These are my teammates: Sam and Brian." I motioned to each of them. "I'm Laura." I extended my hand, and he took it in a graceful gesture, shaking it politely. "J.D." he said.

"You're school is amazing." I gushed, gazing up at the cathedral ceiling, and the elegant carvings in the walls.

"Would you... would you like a tour?" J.D. asked.

Again, I looked at Sam. Our eyes locked together for the briefest moment, I felt as if we were the only two people left on Earth. Breaking the moment, I looked away.

"Sure."

I turned back to Sam. "Could you hold this for a sec?" I asked holding out my drink. For a moment, I thought he might say no, but then that familiar smile was back, and he said, "Yeah, sure."

With J.D. leading the way, we threaded our way through the crowd, toward the entrance of the cafeteria. I glanced over my shoulder and our eyes met once again; and I wished that Sam would suddenly have the strong desire to come after me, to keep me for himself.

But I looked away again, nodding politely at J.D., who had said something apparently witty, as he laughed at his own cleverness. I laughed with him, unsure of what he'd said.

I decided that now was not the time to attempt to sort out my feelings for Sam as I followed J.D. out of the crowded cafeteria and into the hallway. I had wanted to see something in his eyes when J.D. had offered to give me the tour, something that said that he didn't want me to go off with him, something that said that my feelings were returned. But there had been nothing, just the same old blue-eyed Sam Hall stare that I had fallen in love with the second I had seen him.

J.D. said something to me about the room we had entered and I felt guilty that I hadn't really heard what he had said. It wasn't J.D.'s fault that I was unattractive to Sam; the least I could do was pay attention to him. Instead of asking him to repeat what he had said, I just nodded my head and let my eyes sweep across the room we had entered.

This room was undoubtedly the common room, with numerous couches pressed against the walls and in the middle of the room, which were currently being lounged on students whose days hadn't been interrupted by the Decathlon meet.

J.D. waved to a group of guys sitting on one of the couches and they raised their hands to return the greeting; one of them smiled at J.D. and winked, looking over at me. Suddenly, I felt vulnerable and exposed in the dress that I had borrowed from my mother's closet. Sam had never made me feel like that and I had the urge to go back into the cafeteria and forget all about the tour. But what would that accomplish? Nothing at all and so I turned to look at J.D. "Who are they?" I questioned, hoping that ignoring J.D's apparent friends would take some of the color out of my cheeks.

"Nobody." J.D. told me, taking me by the arm and pulling me out of the common room. I slipped my arm out of his grasp and looked away when he looked at me questioningly.

Before J.D. could say anything, I repeated, "Your school is amazing." I felt like an idiot, but I wasn't in the mood to explain why I had pulled away from him. I wasn't in the mood to explain that I was a lovesick teenage girl, pinning away for the boy that didn't see me as anything but a teammate.

"Yeah." J.D. agreed, off-handedly, somewhat bored. He saw the same hallways and the same ceiling beams everyday, so it was interesting to see how someone else responded to the architecture. "This is Winston Hall." He explained, though I think he doubted whether I cared. "It's the math hallway."

My eyes roamed across the sweeping oak ceiling beams and the painted portraits of people that I didn't recognize. Founders of the school, no doubt. "This place makes my school look like a real dump." I remarked.

"It can't be that bad." J.D. said as he led me through the math hallway and into another corridor that was empty. "I'm sure it has a lot of history." Some little part of me wondered if he was a jock, or would be a jock if he went to a regular public school. He was the kind of boy that struck me as a ladies man.

I rolled my eyes. "History, right. Only in the classrooms." I told him, noticing that J.D. had stepped a little closer to me. So, I stepped closer to the wall. "So, which hall is this?" I questioned in an attempt to distract him from whatever thoughts were going through his head.

"Uh..." I could tell J.D. didn't really care where we were anymore. "This is where they teach calculus." He said, leaning closer to me.

Thinking about calculus reminded me of Sam and I was once again reminded of what an idiot I was. Was I going to spend the rest of my life thinking about Sam whenever someone mentioned calculus, or school, or...anything. Taking my thoughts away from Sam was the fact that J.D. was edging closer toward me and the fact that I had promptly backed myself against the wall trying to edge away from him.

"I like calculus." I told J.D. quickly, anything to keep him from doing what I thought he was about to. "That's my best class and-"

Before I could finish my meaningless sentence, J.D. had closed the distance between us and was kissing me before I even realized what was happening. With a muffled cry of surprise, I attempted to pull away from him but there was still that damn wall keeping me in place. That, and J.D.'s arms, which had wrapped themselves around my shoulders.

Finally, I managed to push J.D. off of me, trying to figure out if I should be outraged or shocked. I was a little bit of both, but, in the end, embarrassment won over and I felt my cheeks flush; the first thing I thought of was Sam, even though it wasn't as though I had any commitment to him. But if he had happened to arrive at that moment and see them kissing...well, my being kissed, then I would never even have the chance to try and explain how I felt about him.

"What are you doing?" I questioned, anger creeping into my words. I looked at J.D. with confusion on my face, keeping myself against the wall in an attempt to keep as much distance between us as possible. "What-?" I didn't know what to say.

J.D. looked at me with surprise, as though he hadn't been the one doing the kissing. "But I..." He was at loss for words I could see, and I knew that being rejected by a girl was probably a rare occurrence for him. "I just thought..." Once again, he was at loss for words, or thought. Maybe he thought I'd welcome him with open arms, and I expect that he wasn't attended being pushed. He probably thought I was one of those girls who could barely lift her textbooks. He probably thought I was a cutesy damsel in distress, but I was not. I could take care of myself.

I just shook my head, unable to form a sentence that wasn't crueler then anything I had ever said in my life. So, instead of snapping at J.D., who I wanted to believe had meant well, I just kept shaking my head.

"You like Sam, don't you?"

The words hit me like a punch to the gut.

I felt my cheeks flush once more, just as they always did whenever any one mentioned Sam around me. Shortly after I had transferred to Woodmont High from Boston, I had been sitting in Lit class with a group of girls who had decided that discussing boys was more efficient then doing their group project. One of the girls had mentioned Sam and my cheeks had instantly turned tomato red, giving the rest of my group members something to laugh and talk about for the next fifteen minutes.

J.D. smiled slightly when my cheeks reddened and I know he knew that a verbal answer wasn't necessary to confirm his suspicions. "I'm sorry, Laura." He apologized somewhat sincerely. He wasn't completely sincere because he didn't take back having kissed me. "If I had known then I wouldn't have done that."

I waved my hand somewhat dismissively. "It's all right." I mumbled, though I wasn't quite sure it was. I had always imagined that my first kiss would be with someone that I really liked; but it wasn't as though anyone needed to know that had been my first kiss.

"No, I feel like an ass." J.D. mumbled. "Let me make it up to you."

I shook her head, starting back toward the cafeteria with J.D. in tow. "Don't worry about it." I assured him, wishing that the entire moment were over. I just wanted to be back with Sam and Brian and Decathlon related subjects. At least that was something I knew how to handle.

"Then at least let me offer you some advice." J.D. pressed, walking beside me down the hallway. I looked over at him; more intrigued then anything about what that advice might be. "Tell Sam how you feel. Trust me, guys are pretty dense when it comes to that stuff."

I sighed and forced the redness from my cheeks. "Yeah." I mumbled noncommittally. I knew that I could never tell Sam how I felt about him and unless he suddenly expressed some unknown desire to be with me, my feelings would remain private.

I decided right then that that was the curse of being smart. Because the smart girls, never got the guys.