Excerpt from A Step Toward Falling by Cammie McGovern, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It wasn't that I was so in love with Toby. He'd seemed smart and a little more engaged than our typical new recruits to Youth Action Coalition, who usually show up angry about one issue and bored by all the others. At the first meeting Toby came to, he stayed after to say he was impressed by the range of our "actions" and all "the cool things we were up to." He had curly brown hair and slightly crooked teeth that for some reason made him even cuter. LGBT support wasn't his main issue, he told us, not looking at Richard, but he was certainly on board with that. His main issue was the environment. He loved backpacking and wanted the mountains to still be around for his children to enjoy. How could I not get a crush on him? And when he messaged me three times over the next week, how could I not think maybe he liked me back?

If I'm being honest, though, I'd have to admit: it wasn't Toby being there with a cute sophomore that bothered me as much as a long series of Toby-like misjudgments on my part. It felt like I kept making the same mistakes over and over—thinking classroom joking was f lirtation, thinking guys who asked for my phone number to get a homework assignment wanted my phone number more than they wanted the assignment.

I partly blame Richard for this. He loves to pretend that everyone is at least a little bit gay and might have a crush on him. He'll sit beside Wayne Cartwright, our gor- geous quarterback, in the main office waiting for a late pass and claim their arm hairs were reaching out for each other. He knows nothing will happen but he still dwells on these moments. "Arm hairs don't lie. They can't, actually. They don't have individual brains. Just instincts."

For him it's funny. Nobody expects Wayne Cartwright to miraculously come out of the closet and mix arm hairs with Richard, but when I try to dream big and jokingly say, "I think Toby Schulz wants to ask me out, but he's too shy," it's sad the next week to sit behind the evidence of how unshy he is. Richard didn't say anything, which made me feel even more pathetic, if that was possible. Like suddenly I'd become someone people tiptoed around.

This is one of my explanations for what happened that night. Not an excuse or a justification. Just a way for me to understand how I could be such a disappointment to myself. Toward the end of half time, I slipped away from my group to buy a soda at the snack stand and on the way back to my seat, I started to cry.

Ridiculous, embarrassing tears of self-pity. I never cry in public—ever—and I didn't want my friends to see, so I went around the back of the bleachers. I thought if I let myself cry for a minute, I'd get it out of my system and be fine for the second half.

Then I couldn't find my way back. I was near the field house where the players spend half time. It was late; the team had run onto the field to thunderous applause five minutes earlier. We were behind by seven points, which was different for us. We'd gotten so used to winning by comfortable margins that the crowd was anxious and screaming and stamping their feet.

Even with all the commotion, though, I heard a strange noise under the bleachers. It sounded like an animal. A dog maybe, who'd fallen and was stuck in the latticework below the bleachers. That made no sense, of course, but that's what it sounded like. It was dark under the bleachers, and striped with light, which meant my eyes took a minute to adjust. I couldn't see anything at first, so I moved closer. It must be a dog, I thought. I could hear a whimpering sound. Then gradually, in the darkness, two figures took shape. I recognized one. Belinda Montgomery, a girl I'd known years earlier in a children's theater program, was pressed against a fence with a boy standing in front of her. It looked like her hair was caught and her dress was torn. For a second I thought: She's stuck on the fence and he's lifting her off.

Excerpted from the book A Step Towards Falling by Cammie McGovern. Copyright © 2015 by Cammie McGovern. Reprinted with permission of HarperCollins.