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began to smile. "I'll catch up with you later, okay?" I said to
Patrice, already darting away from her. She shrugged as she looked for other
friends to walk with. "Lucas?" I called.

He still didn't seem to hear me. I didn't want to yell after him, so I jogged a
couple of steps to catch up. He was headed in the opposite direction from
me—not in Mom's class, apparently—but I was willing to run the risk of being
late. More loudly, I said, "Lucas!"

He turned his head only enough to glimpse me, then glanced around at the
students nearby as though he was worried we would be overheard. "Hey,
there."

Where was my protector from the forest? The guy standing in front of me now
didn't act like he wanted to take care of me; he acted like he didn't know me.
But he didn't know me, did he? We'd talked once in the woods—when he'd tried to
save my life, and I'd repaid him by telling him to shut up. Just because I thought
that was the start of something didn't mean he did.

In fact, it looked like he definitely didn't. For one second, he turned his
head, then gave me a quick wave and a nod—the way you would any random
acquaintance. After that, Lucas just kept on walking, until he vanished into
the crowd.

There it was—the brush-off. I wondered how I could possibly understand guys
even less than I'd thought.

The girls' restroom on that floor was nearby, so I was able to duck into a
stall and collect myself instead of bursting into tears. What had I done wrong?
Despite how strange our first meeting had been, Lucas and I had ended up having
a conversation that was as intimate as any I'd had with my best friends. I didn't
know a lot about guys, maybe, but I'd been sure that the connection between us
was real. I had been wrong. I was alone at Evernight again, and it felt even
worse than before.

Finally, once I was steady, I hurried to Mom's classroom, barely avoiding being
tardy. She shot me a look, and I shrugged as I sank into a desk in the back
row. Mom quickly snapped out of mother mode into teacher mode.

"So, who here can tell me about the American Revolution?" Mom clasped
her hands together, looking expectantly around the room. I slumped down in my
seat, even though I knew she wouldn't call on me first. I just wanted to be
sure she understood how I felt about it. A guy sitting next to me raised his
hand, rescuing the rest of us. Mom smiled a little. "And you are
Mr.—"

"More. Balthazar More."

The first thing to understand about him is that he looked like a guy who could
actually carry off the name "Balthazar" without being mocked for all
time. On him, it looked good. He seemed confident about anything my mother
might throw at him but not in an annoying way like most of the guys in the
room. Just confident.

"Well, Mr. More, if you were going to sum up the causes of the American
Revolution for me, how would you put it?"

"The tax burdens imposed by the English Parliament were the last
straw." He spoke easily, almost lazily. Balthazar was big and
broad-shouldered, so much so that he barely fit into the old-fashioned wooden
desk. His posture turned difficulty into grace, as though he'd rather lounge
like that than sit up straight any day. "Of course, people were concerned
about religious and political freedoms as well."

Mom raised an eyebrow. "So, God and politics are powerful, but as always,
money rules the world." Soft laughter echoed around the room. "Fifty
years ago, no American high school teacher would have mentioned the taxes. A
hundred years ago, and the entire conversation might've been about religion. A
hundred and fifty years ago, and the answer would have depended on where you
lived. In the North, they'd have taught you about political freedom. In the
South, they'd have taught you about economic freedom—which, of course, was
impossible without slavery." Patrice made a rude sound. "Of course,
in Great Britain, there were those who would have described the United States
of America as a bizarre intellectual