The whole of the next day, Harry was simply buzzing around school. He felt different, somehow - more confident, as though his big night had given him some new kind of authority or verification of life.
He felt energized through class, and even though he found his mind wandering during the quiet moments, back to thoughts of lying with Samantha Williams, he actually found on the whole that his mind was sharper than it had ever been.
He suspected it was something to do with the sudden complete absence of silly, niggling insecurities he had always carried along throughout school - concerns about what people thought of him, what girls thought of him, what the future heralded.
During morning break, he was given a funny look by Greg, Amy's boyfriend, which made him wonder how much Samantha's former boyfriend Jeb knew about her fooling around with him.
Still, right now he had no concerns at all about what anyone else might think of him. The only important thing was what one Samantha Williams thought of him.
The only confusing thing was why the target of his affections was no longer in class.
"Hello, Earth to Harry!"
Biology class. Harry jumped at the sound of Amy Jones' voice right next to him. He turned to find her sitting next to him. What? Mr Olsen was already into his preamble about cells and mitochondria and things like that. Why was Amy sitting next to him?
"What are you doing?" he asked her, and looking around saw that Finch was now sitting on the other side of the room, in the seat Amy normally sat in during this class.
Greg, Amy's beau, was sitting behind Finch, and appeared to be blowing little balls of paper into the back of his head through a blowpipe made from a ballpoint pen. Finch looked over at Harry and raised an eyebrow, the same question no doubt on his mind - why had Amy taken his usual seat?
"Didn't you hear me?" she whispered now.
"No," he replied with a whisper of his own, trying not to let the close proximity of the pretty blonde, or her excessive perfume, give him an erection in the middle of class.
"I want to know how you turn Samantha into a pile of goo all the time."
Now it was his turn to give Amy the same kind of baffled expression that Finch was sending his way.
"What?"
Amy sighed, paused a moment as Mr Olsen's eyes flashed in their direction, and then said: "Look, I can accept she has to spend a fair amount of her spare time with you now, but when I do get her to myself for five minutes, she can't stop talking about you."
Harry just smiled. What could he say? Life was great.
"It's very boring."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
Mr Olsen was now directing the class to begin setting up their microscopes to look at the slides of cells he was about to pass out.
Amy hissed with irritation. She leaned in to whisper to her temporary lab partner, even though they probably could have talked normally now, since everybody was busily getting on with the practical.
"I want to know what you do when you're with her," she said.
Harry frowned. "I don't know if she'd want me to tell you. It's private."
"She tells me everything." Amy took a slide from Mr Olsen as he passed by, and now started setting it in place in the microscope.
"Everything?"
Her lips curled up in a dark grin. "I know you made her come like a freight train last night."
"What?!" Harry nearly choked.
"Oh don't worry, I won't tell anyone else," Amy said, though with the tone that suggested she now had a secret over him, which she could use to her advantage. "Not even to Jeb, who wants to beat you to a pulp, by the way."
"Jeb? Why me? I never forced her to - "
"Oh, you'll be okay. I doubt he'll do anything, it'll just look like ridiculous sour grapes if he does."
Amy peered into the microscope, and Harry said: "So if you know so much about me and Samantha, what do you want me to tell you?"
Amy huffed, as though he was being an idiot for not being able to read her mind. She said: "I know what you do with Samantha, I just want to know how you do it."
"How?"
"God," she rolled her eyelids. "Come on, you give her an orgasm practically by touching her. I can spend a whole weekend with Greg, and he can't even raise my pulse."
Harry shrugged. "You said I'm a dork," he said.
"So what, you're not going to tell me because I hurt your feelings?"
"No. What I mean is, I've never been with a girl until I kissed Samantha on that stage."
"And?"
"Well, people like me - dorks like me - tend to use the Internet as a substitution. You know, since girls don't bother with us."
"Eww. That's just gross."
"No," he said. "What I mean is, since we can't do it for real, we tend to read about it a lot instead. Sex, I mean."
He saw a glimmer of light spark inside Amy's big green eyes. She said: "So... what you're saying is, because girls aren't interested in you, you dorks are all experts on how to please girls?"
Harry chuckled, and took over the microscope to peer down into the eyepiece at the boring little building-block-of-life. "I'm not saying we're experts," he said, "but I should imagine we're more knowledgeable than those Neanderthals you girls all seem to be drawn toward."
As he attempted to identify the various aspects of the cell Mr Olsen had flagged up on the whiteboard, he felt Amy jab him in the side with her elbow.
"Okay, Mister," she said. "So tell me how well you're in with the rest of the dorks around here."
"The rest of the dorks?"
"Well, you must know if there's some other guy that might be... you know... like you..."
Harry tore himself from the microscope and stared at Amy, his mouth open in surprise. "Wait, wait..." he said. "Let me get this straight. You, Amy Jones, want me, Harry Albright, to set you up with a dork?"
"You don't have to act all weird about it," the blonde scowled.
Harry shook his head. "And you suppose I just happen to have some kind of secret army of dorks I can just call upon at any moment..."
"No, but you might know a few that are in the same pervert league as you are."
"I'm a pervert, and yet you want someone like me," Harry chuckled. He found he enjoyed winding Amy up. It was a classic reversal of the school's power hierarchy.
He wasn't a sadist, however. He said: "Look, honestly Amy, I don't think I'd be much help. The only person I know well enough to confirm a similar obsession with sex is Finch, and he's... well... probably not your type."
Both of them now looked over across the room at Finch who, dork or no dork, was currently engaged in a hopelessly one-sided wrestling match with Amy's current disappointment - no doubt provoked by the constant barrage of paper pellets against the back of his neck.
Harry's friend really wasn't boyfriend material with his disheveled clothes, his mass of tangled black curls and those beer-bottle glasses. Probably wouldn't be until the middle of college, when he'd meet a quiet, unassuming wannabe librarian with an inferiority complex.
"He's completely obsessed?" Amy asked, not taking her eyes off him.
"Champion of the pervert league."
The blonde girl just continued staring, gently rubbing a finger against her chin.
"Interesting," she said, "Very interesting."
Then Mr Olsen began circulating around the class to collect sketches of the cells they were supposed to be examining through the microscopes, and suddenly Harry and Amy were scrambling to create the sketches they were supposed to have already done.
*
Harry largely forgot about his conversation with Amy most of the rest of the day - otherwise he might have mentioned something to Finch.
As classes broke for the middle of the day, he caught sight of Jeb, Samantha's previous boyfriend, at the end of the hallway. The guy obviously saw Harry, but the hallway was just too crowded for the football player to get to him, with hoards of other students hitting the lockers on their way to lunch.
Nevertheless, Harry fled the other way, not wanting any kind of confrontation. In a way he felt sorry for Jeb, knowing all too well what the guy had lost.
He had to wait all day to catch up with Samantha, feeling that nervous energy steadily building inside him as the fateful hour arrived, and he could drag Finch across to the school auditorium for another evening's dress rehearsals.
After a hellish afternoon of more wondering where she was, hoping she was okay, she hadn't been taken sick, he arrived with Finch in the male green room behind the stage feeling so anxious he was a little nauseous himself.
Would she even be here tonight? He knew this evening Mr Howard was planning on rehearsing mainly Romeo's scenes with the Montagues, none with Juliet.
As they worked with Mrs Gibbon, who was doing all the costumes along with the teaching assistant Ms Swift, Finch's cackling about his ridiculous fat suit and half-bald wig at least helped keep Harry's attention diverted.
Harry's own costume was a little on the embarrassing side, comprising a pair of green tights, a medieval tunic that didn't come down nearly far enough, and the most ludicrous contraption ever to fasten over his crotch. Mrs Gibbon swore it was very authentic for the period.
He felt all eyes on his manhood as he finally shuffled out on stage, and had to do his best to struggle on, twice being asked to take it again by Mr Howard after stumbling in his speeches.
At the end, he tried to persuade Mrs Gibbon to take pity on him, and perhaps lengthen his tunic or something, but to no avail.
The humiliation of his costume had achieved one thing, however - it had taken his mind off the issue of whether Samantha might be there or not. All the time out on stage, he couldn't see a thing in the audience below, the bright stage lights highlighting everything on stage meant that everything beyond the edge was just darkness.
But, after failing to persuade Mrs Gibbon to do anything to conceal his ridiculous codpiece, he returned to the dressing room to find the most beautiful girl in the world waiting for him.
Her arms were folded and her pretty face was full of joy to see him. His heart swelled.
