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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 aboutNate. 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.
    Now that the first couple of weeks of school have passed, 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 classrooms, 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.
    “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!”