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times he caught me staring at him, especially when we all sat basking beneath the summer sun beside their Olympic-size swimming pool. His bare chest, tan and muscled, water dripping down as he did pull-ups on the edge of the diving board . . . Of course, I stared then.
    But that wasn’t the only time.
    Or the worst of it.
    No, that was a few months before Dylan went missing. She’d sent me downstairs to steal some wine coolers from her mom’s booze fridge out by the pool. Her mother knew we took them, but didn’t want to see us doing it, so stealth was important.
    On padded feet, I snuck through the gigantic house until I reached the kitchen and sliding glass door thatopened to the backyard. At the other end of the house, an addition had been specially built for her mother’s office. It was mostly just a space to display the pictures from her days as a model, but that night Teena and Smith were inside and they were dancing. They looked so elegant together and . . . sweet.
    I knew Dyl hated her mother, said she was twisted and strange. And Teena never seemed terribly fond of her daughter either. She was always happy to see me, though, when other mothers hadn’t even allowed me in the front door. Told me to call her Teena and sometimes even touched my hair and said things like, “Why do you and Dylan insist on looking ugly when you could be so pretty?” Okay, so maybe that wasn’t so nice, but it was more motherly than anything I’d ever heard from my own mom. And she was beautiful, so beautiful, even though she was years past her time as a model. I couldn’t help but romanticize her, and this scene with Smith fed right into that.
    I imagined her teaching him the steps when he was just a little boy, wincing when he stepped on her feet. And as he got older, slowly showing him how to lead. I watched them finish their dance with a whirling turn, and I would’ve clapped if not for the wine coolers in my hands.
    I kept watching, indulging myself with a wistful sigh, and so I saw the exact moment when things transformed into something terrible.
    Teena took Smith’s face in both hands and kissed him on the mouth. It was not a motherly kiss. Not with her other hand trailing down his chest and seeking more southern territory even as Smith shoved her away.
    A wine cooler slipped from my suddenly sweaty hands and smashed against the cement. I left it, and went running back inside the house.
    I hid in the bathroom, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I decided not to tell Dylan anything, even though I had a feeling, from things she’d said in the past, that she wouldn’t be all that surprised.
    Decision made, I opened the bathroom door and came face-to-face with Smith. He leaned against the wall opposite the door, arms folded over his chest.
    “Hey, Smith,” I said. It was times like that when I was actually thankful for my upbringing in a family of lawbreakers. My face didn’t go red, my voice didn’t squeak, and my hand, raised in a casual wave, didn’t shake. “Were you waiting for the bathroom?”
    “No,” he said. “I was waiting for you.”
    “Oh?” I asked. “Why’s that?”
    He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked toward me, twodeliberate steps and then his hands were on my shoulders, propelling me backward into the bathroom until the bathtub pressed against the backs of my legs and I couldn’t go any farther. Still he leaned against me, so that I had to grab hold of him or fall onto my ass. I clutched at him and was about to say his name, demand he stop, when his mouth found mine.
    He didn’t kiss me the way that a high school boy kisses a girl, hesitant and too moist or too dry and generally making it clear that he isn’t really interested in your lips, except that they give him an excuse to be closer to your boobs. Smith kissed me like he was trying to prove something. He made my mouth a roller coaster ride that did loop-da-loops and caused my stomach to jump and generally scared the hell out of