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neighborhood.
    It was remarkable to me how far I had come in less than a year’s time, since I had escaped to Callister. I had gone from having no idea how to do anything without hired help to being completely self-sufficient—well, most days anyway. There were signs of my abnormality, of course—like the time I had tried to make hard-boiled eggs. I found out the hard way that you needed to add water to the pot, and the house reeked of burnt eggshells for a week. I learned through observation and a lot of trial and error.
    Inside, the laundromat was bright, with blue plastic chairs lined against the white walls and tumbleweeds of lint rolling on the checkered floor. I loved the smell of the laundromat—to me it smelled of fresh starts, possibilities, independence.
    I started by going through all my pockets—good thing I did, or I would have washed my new pocket-sized music player—before stuffing two machines with as much clothes as they could take and threw half a roll of quarters in. Then I sat on one of the machines, threw my feet over on the lid of the other machine, and waited. The most important rule of the laundromat: never leave your clothes unattended, not even for a second, even when the place seems to be completely deserted of people. Otherwise, you’ll see some local flavor walking around the next day wearing your tweed pants as a scarf, your underwear as a hat … another lesson I had learned the hard way.
    I wasted my idle time playing with my new toy. It took me a good five minutes to remember how to turn it on, and then another half hour to navigate through the different features to find music. Bob Marley was there, along with every one of his albums that was ever made or remade. Who knew there were so many remakes of “One Love”?
    I scrolled down to the next name on the list: this obscure band called Purple Faced Ragamuffins—I didn’t even know they had recorded an actual album. I had seen them play once in this dingy bar in Soho when I was still totally underage. I had snuck out of school with a girl from my soccer team. She was stalking the drummer.
    The music-thingy must have had over a thousand songs, most of which I recognized—surprising given my limited music knowledge. But, in the end, I settled with what was safe and familiar and finished laundry night with Bob.
    When I got back from the laundromat, a red dot was blinking on my cell phone. Skylar had left me a message from an airport phone—it was rapidly worded, like he had been afraid that I might pick up the line and he would be forced to actually talk to me. I could hear his flight being called in the background—nothing like waiting to the very last minute. He said all the right things: that he wasn’t mad, that he would miss me, that he would call me as soon as he got settled at home. And then the line went dead. I wondered if it was normal that I wasn’t sad.
     

 Chapter Three:
 Haunted
    Day two of my four-month escape from civilization, and another sleepless night. Insomnia was becoming a bad habit.
    My brain was cluttered with things I didn’t need: the fear of boredom, of being alone with my thoughts without distraction, Skylar’s effortless desertion … the boy in the gray sweater. I spent more time thinking about the latter.
    There was no question in my mind that this boy was odd and beautiful—a dangerous combination. Something about his guardedness, something about the way others in the projects had looked at him with fear, made me think that I should probably run the other way next time and concentrate on not thinking about him.
    I had spent the night trying to figure out why I had been the target of his, at weird times, moments of anger. And then there was the final warning—or was it a threat? When the light of morning rose, I still didn’t have an answer to my questions. He was a roller coaster of incomprehensible emotions—and I was borderline obsessed.
    At midnight I had given up trying to sleep,