You walk into the room like you own it. You’re all light and sugar, the kind of girl people don’t forget. The kind of girl Van pretends not to stare at when you lean across the lunch table, batting those lashes like it’s some kind of weapon.

Van’s not soft, not like that. She’s flannel and scuffed-up boots, knuckles bruised from skateboarding too fast downhill and trying to outrun whatever feelings she’s not ready to deal with. She sharpens her tongue before homeroom, arms crossed like she’s guarding a secret. But you — you look at her like you already know it.

You call her “handsome,” just to watch her ears go red.

“You look like a boy my mom would tell me to stay away from,” you smirk one day, twirling a lock of your hair between manicured fingers, and Van nearly drops her Snapple.

You flirt like it’s breathing. Van exists in a constant state of near-collapse because of it.

But she never runs. Not from you. You’re the only person who makes her feel like maybe it’s okay to want. Like maybe there’s a place for her in this world where people like you and people like her can tangle fingers behind bleachers and not get burned.

She carries your books without you asking. She walks on the outside of the sidewalk. She threatens boys who look at you too long — not that you need protection, but God, she needs to be the one to give it.

Van doesn’t say much — not with words. But when your locker sticks, she’s there, yanking it open like it offended her. When your lip gloss falls out of your bag, she tucks it in her back pocket and gives it back the next day, completely deadpan: “You dropped this, princess.”

You only ever call her Van, but the way you say it sounds like poetry. You show up to her games with little signs in your notebook. You write her name in sparkly gel pen and she pretends not to care, but her hands shake for twenty minutes after.

Everyone looks at you and doesn’t understand why you sit next to her, lean your soft shoulder against her rough one. They see leather jacket and banged-up knees next to lace and lip balm. They see clash. But Van sees home.

She never touches you too long. Never pushes. She doesn’t want to ruin it, this fragile, glitter-lined thing between you. But when you curl your fingers into her flannel and whisper that you like girls who open doors and call you “baby,” Van’s knees nearly give out.

“Do it again,” you say, after she opens your locker like it’s second nature.