Yes! Yes there is. Over there. A tall kid with dark curly hair sitting in the back corner looking awkward.

Well, awkward tall kid in the back corner, your savior has arrived.

"Hi," she says, smiling a little. "Want to group up?"

... She suspects he's not the only awkward one here.

"...Sure," he says, smiling uncertainly.

"Okay, great." She sits in a nearby empty chair. "I'm Yvette, nice to meet you."

"Steven. Hi."

Smile!

She looks at the clock, and looks at the handout, then says, "I predict that this'll take us about five minutes, and then the rest of the class is going to be small talking within groups."

This seems to be funny to her.

"Yes, that seems plausible."

The handout takes them about five minutes.

"Well, is there a topic you'd like to small talk about,or should I come up with something, or would you rather not talk?"

"I'm not sure..."

Head tilt. "Fair enough. Feel free to tell me to shoo if you'd rather, but if you don't - read any good books, lately?"

"I've been too busy to do as much reading as I'd like. What about you?"

"Summer reading kind of dampened my urge to read other books. So, uh, good job, me, coming up with a topic I can't actually talk much about."

"Congratulations," he says, with a very small smile.

"Thank you very much, I'm quite proud of my achievement. Students everywhere will look back on this day as the day they were outclassed for picking topics badly." Pause. "Unless you want to hear my opinions on The Catcher in the Rye."

"Do you have opinions on the Catcher in the Rye?"

"Yes."

"What are they?"

"I thought that while the main character was very sympathetic and often kind of hilarious, his depression wasn't an excuse for a lot of the things he did. That being said, I think most of it came about from a lack of a proper support network. The school he was in was - uh, itself, and while his narration's untrustworthy at best I don't think he was exaggerating very much, and it seemed to be the latest in a long string of the like, then to top it off, his parents seemed to not really care about what he wanted and saw his life as a checklist to be filled out instead of a life for him to live. And it definitely could be said that he caused it himself with how he pushed people away, but there is a certain level of - acceptance from other people that he seemed to lack. The person with their head screwed on straightest seemed to be his little sister Phoebe, and I adore how she casually turns his romanticism of childhood on its head by easily being more mature than he is."

"Okay, I admit, I haven't actually read the book," he says. "But I've heard things about it, and that sounds about right."

Giggle.

"Thanks. It's not a bad book, actually, but not very good if you want something to cheer you up."

"I'll remember that."

"Assigned reading is really not the place to look for happy books."

"Yeah. Although some English classes are more depressing than others."

"Yeah. It seems - counterproductive to have teenagers that are already dealing with a lot of emotional turmoil read books on only depressing subjects. Smart and happy are not mutually exclusive."

"I agree."