At Café Hex, Samantha Henderson can imagine being the person she really wants to be. It’s her place to daydream about going to art school and getting away from her politician father. It’s her place to imagine opening herself up to a new kind of connection, away from her family and the drama of high school. Enter X—the boy she refuses to name. He’s older, edgy, bohemian . . . in short, everything she thinks she needs. Her family and friends try to warn her that there may be more to him than she sees, but still she stays with X, even as his chaos threatens to consume them both. Told in waves of poetry—whispering, crashing—Dating Down is a portrait of exhilaration and pain and the kind of desire that drives a girl to risk everything.