When he reaches me, I can't help but stare down at the ground awkwardly. When I glance up to meet his eyes, I find him studying me carefully, tensed as though afraid I might run away -- which I very much want to do, if only it weren't for my stupid, stubborn, mutinous feet.

"Hi, Cora," he says softly.

"Hi," I reply, my voice barely a whisper, my stomach still roiling.

"How are you? How's --" He stops and clears his throat. "How's your family?"

"Everyone is fine. We're all fine," I say, my voice pitched in that hard, shaky tone I get when I lie.

"That's good," he replies, gazing at me closely.

"Huh," I grunt.

"What?" he asks.

"Like you care," I mutter darkly.

Damian takes a step back, recoiling as if I've slapped him. His eyes fill with a look of hurt that p.r.i.c.ks me down to my soul. There's so much hurt to go around.

I feel like I'm melting. I wish I were melting. "I'm sorry," I whisper. "It's just..." I shake my head and focus on the ground. "Anyway, how about you?" I ask.

"What about me?" Damian replies, uncertain.

40.

"How are you?"

His shoulders had been hunched, and they relax a bit now. "Oh, okay. You know." He shifts his weight and looks up at me. "So, uh, how do you like art cla.s.s so far?"

My stomach lurches. It feels wrong to share something -- anything -- with Damian, Even something as harmless and unavoidable as art cla.s.s. But his face is open, and somehow I can't muster my rage just now.

"It seems like it'll be okay, right?" I ask.

"Yeah, I think so." Damian gives a small laugh. When he smiles, his eyes go all squinty. His strange gray eyes look almost silver in the twilight. And when he smiles the straight angles and high planes of his cheekbones and jaw seem softer.

He is handsome, if a little unusual-looking, with his crooked nose, broad cheeks, smooth coffee-and-milk complexion, and short curly hair. I never really noticed that before. And he looks older. Older, but lost a little bit, too.

Stupid stomach doing gymnastics.

"Well, we'll see." I stare into his face, while my mind turns circles trying to understand what Damian is doing here, talking to me. Why did he cross the field to speak to me when in all the years he was Nate's best friend, he practically ignored me? And when, now, I see him standing in front of me, I can't help but hate him just for being able to stand here.

We are both silent. I wonder if he knows what I'm thinking. I peer down at my watch; I have to squint to make out the

41.

numbers in the dying light. Quarter to ten. "Look, I should go. My mom is probably waiting for me," I tell Damian. Without waiting for a response, I walk away, silently chastising myself. What am I doing talking to him? He's bad news.

Somehow, though, thinking of him as a monster has now become just a little bit harder.

I suppose I should find Rachel. But the number of students has grown, and as I push through the crowd, everything starts to feel crooked, as if the earth is tilted and I'm in a fun house. I'm dizzy and all the kids I pa.s.s seem to be laughing at me, turning leering faces with twisted grimaces on me. I spin around, vainly looking for Rachel. Then I stop. Get a hold of yourself I take a deep breath and sweep my eyes over the crowd.

There she is, standing off to the side of a narrow circle of bodies near the fire. She is smiling, but I can tell that it is pasted on. Her hair has flattened in the warm, humid air, and she holds her hands clasped in front of her. I can sense her sadness and I feel sad for her. Rachel is on the outside, too.

The Nasties are busily ignoring Rachel, leaning on each other's shoulders and giggling and talking to Josh and three other boys. And clearly, the boys are eating up the attention like starving cubs. Macie, as always, is at the center, a sun for the others to revolve around. Rachel and Elizabeth Tillson hover at the outskirts of the circle, like distant planets, while

42.

Pearl and Kellie, Josh, Matt James, and Evan Miller compose the rest of the Nasty solar system.

I remember when Macie first moved to town; we were in the fourth grade. This odd-looking girl with a big puff of hair and mismatched socks and electric pink sneakers stood hunched at the front of our cla.s.sroom as the teacher introduced her as the new girl. I remember Pearl and Kellie scorning her outrageous outfit and ridiculous hair. One week later, however, Macie had turned the tables on the other two and installed herself as Queen Bee, the barometer by which every measure of cool was measured. And the Nastiest trio was cemented.

I hate watching the Nasties treat Rachel like this now. I hate seeing her just standing there, being purposefully ignored, seeing her watching Josh flirt and be flirted with. I can feel their Nasty intentions spreading out like rotten roots curling beneath the ground; I know they are perfectly aware of Rachel standing beside them. I can feel their cruelty curdling the soil. It makes me so mad.

I walk over to Rachel and tap her on the shoulder. As she spins around, I say, "Hey, I have to go. Are you coming:*"

"What? Is it already ten?" Rachel looks annoyed and glances around at Josh and the Nasties. "Uh, I think I'll hang around here. Is that okay? I can get a ride from someone else." She avoids my gaze, kicking at the straw on the ground.

"Are you sure?" I ask almost pleadingly. Why? I add silently. Why do this to yourself?

43.

"Yesss," Rachel hisses.

"Fine." I turn on my heel and snake my way out of there and head for the parking lot. Sure enough, my mother is there, waiting. As I near the car, I can see that she is anxiously tapping her fingers on the steering wheel.

"Hey, Mom," I say casually as I climb into the pa.s.senger seat.

"Where's Rachel?" she asks.

"She's staying," I tell her, my voice wavering.

"Well, how was it, honey?" my mother asks, quickly putting the car in drive.

She looks so tired. I'd bet all of my best drawing pencils that I look the same.

"It was fine," I reply.

Except everything isn't fine. I sit on my bed, staring across the room at the map pinned to the wall. Nothing is fine at all, actually. I am mad. Mad at Rachel for being different from how she's always been and for being obsessed with "everyone who's anyone" and for wanting to be accepted by the Nasties when they won't even open their circle to her. How could she ditch me at the bonfire, leaving me by myself to talk to Damian? How could she make me walk out of that field alone? I'm mad at her for her stupid valley girl voice and her tight miniskirt and her green eye shadow and her dumb crush on Josh. Josh! Whom she's never spoken to, who probably doesn't remember

44.

her name, who probably has never read a book in his whole stupid life.

"Auggghhh!" I cry and pound my fists against the comforter, "I hate her!" And I burst into tears. Fat, hot, angry tears that course down my cheeks in a very satisfying way, while snot leaks from my nose. I sob like this until I can't catch my breath and can only gasp.

I cry like this a lot. It's like someone has hooked up my tear ducts to the county water line. Ever since the funeral.

Funeral.

Damian was at the funeral, in a dark gray suit. His eyes were dark, dull as lead. Dead. But not dead like Nate's. I remember my mother had walked up to Damian after the service and asked him to leave. She had sounded so cold. So furious and hateful. And Damian had looked as though he'd been struck. Stunned, he'd blinked and stared back at her, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, before he turned and left the cemetery.

It's so easy to blame Damian for that night -- for Nate getting so angry over Julie breaking up with him that he jumped in his car, picked up Damian, then flew off into the darkness without his headlights like a demon. It's so easy to think that Damian should have made Nate stop, turn on the headlights, hand over the keys.

I wish I could stop thinking about this, thinking about

45.

Nate. It's constant, and it leaves me feeling dead myself. Or dying. Yet in these moments of silence and loneliness, it's as though I've stuck my toe in the cold, cold ocean. And I get caught, turned upside down in a riptide as my mind skips over to him all of its own volition. Then comes the instant when I lose my breath and feel the freezing water tumbling, battering, covering me, and it's the most painful tug of my heart, an aching hollowness that never stops, as I remember over and over, like the never-ending waves of the ocean, that I won't ever see him again. He's gone.

But Damian ... this is something different. Somehow, at the bonfire, he seemed thoughtful, subdued. He looked so serious, so different from the laughing, easygoing guy I remember, the delinquent bad boy who had been my brother's partner in crime, in detention and suspension.

More than that, though, tonight, in all his earnestness -- well, he looked kind of cute. Really cute, actually. Intense. I get a shiver as I recall his face and those haunting, haunted gray eyes.

This is ridiculous. He is nothing but trouble, and that is all there is to it.

The tears have dried, and I've finally stopped gasping and croaking like an asthmatic bullfrog, so I reach over and turn off the night table light. I try to will myself to sleep before any more absurd notions can creep into my brain.

46.

Now that the first couple of weeks of school have pa.s.sed, the days begin to feel routine, and I find I don't have to double-check the schedule I taped to the inside of my locker anymore. I think I can even almost forget about the funny looks from other kids in the hallways and cla.s.srooms, the hesitant, awkward intonations of my teacher's voices when they address me, when I imagine they see Nate's face instead of my own.

The linoleum and cinder-block gloom of the place is the perfect backdrop to the callous shouts and raucous laughter that seem to perpetually fill the halls, muting everything. It suits my mood very well.

As I jog into homeroom one sunny late September morning, a second ahead of the late bell, I see Rachel bent over her desk, her shoulders shaking and her knees drawn up to her chest. Carolyn Wright, Callie Rountree, and Susan Meredith are sitting at their desks, glancing at her, and laughing softly, covering their mouths as though they don't want her to see they are laughing at her, I don't know if Rachel is laughing or crying. So I race over to her and throw my bag down on the ground, my arm around her shoulder, and a glare at these girls who used to be my friends. B.T.A.

"What's wrong? Rach, are you okay?" I ask.

Rachel looks up and then I can see that she has been laughing. Small drops of moisture leak from the corners of her eyes. She is shaking helplessly. The other girls are laughing out loud, too, now.

47.

"What is it?" I begin to smile in that I don't know what's going on but you all look pretty freaking funny and I'll laugh because you are way. Rachel is trying -- and failing miserably -- to gain control. She just keeps giggling. "Oh my gosh, tell me! What happened?"

"Oh --" Rachel gasps, and hugs her knees tighter.

"Seriously! Tell me!" I can feel my chest getting tight with the giggles, too. "What!"

Rachel just shakes her head and points to her feet, which are tucked up on her chair. I bend down and look at her feet. "So?" I ask, confused.

"Look!" Rachel pushes her chair back and holds her legs straight out. She is wearing dainty ballet flats with bows on the tops of her toes. Ah. She is wearing dainty ballet flats with bows on the toes, and they are two different colors. She has on a navy shoe on the left foot and a black one on the right. In the light, the difference is plain to see.

Callie, Carolyn, Susan, Rachel, and I launch into fresh gales of laughter.

"Oh, you're such a dork! How did you do that?" I ask, trying to s.n.a.t.c.h a breath.

"I-It was dark when I got dressed," Rachel manages to explain. "What am I going to do?" she howls. "I can't walk around like this all day! I'll never live it down!" She lets out a loud guffaw.

"I can't believe you own the same pair of shoes in two colors!" Callie says.