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What was he saying before I decked him? “Because you’re stalking me in a dark mall in the middle of the night,” I say.
    “Are you Jill MacSweeney?”
    “Maybe.”
    “R.J. Desai.” He reaches under his suit jacket and pulls a card from the chest pocket of his shirt. “Margins Loss Prevention.”
    I step up and whip the card from his hand.
    R.J. DESAI
    LOSS PREVENTION ASSOCIATE
    MARGINS, INC .
     
    “How do I know this is you?”
    From his back pocket he pulls out a wallet and produces a driver’s license. I take it and hold it next to the card. It’s him. Ravi Jagadish Desai, nineteen, with a Washington Park address.
    “You could have had this card made at any copy shop. A real Margins employee would not do a dumb-ass thing like show up with no warning and start grabbing at a girl in the middle of the night.”
    “I wasn’t grabbing at you.”
    “Yes, you were.”
    “I didn’t mean to.”
    “Well, you did. With no warning,” I repeat.
    “If we gave a warning, we’d never stop employee theft.” His voice is unsteady. I think I really scared him.
    “Now you’re accusing me of stealing?” I look at the license again. “Wait, do I know you?”
    He takes his driver’s license out of my hand; I hold on to the card. “At least half our property losses last quarter were from employee theft and carelessness.” He takes a deep breath and expels it in a puff of white into the cold air. “We went to the same high school.”
    “We did?”
    “We were in computer science together.” He touches his jaw cautiously.
    I study him, trying to conjure up the computer lab and the people in it, including myself—the self I was. “With that student teacher? Ms. Schiff?” I begin to shiver in the cold even as a trickle of perspiration makes its way past my ear.
    “Yeah. My senior year. I think you were a sophomore.” He waits while I keep staring.
    Sophomore year. Eons and eons ago. “If you say so.” I turn to head to my car; he follows.
    “Jill, I think I still need to search your bag.”
    I laugh. The bitter one. “I don’t think you do.” I keep walking. My hands are shaking. Even though I know the moment of crisis is over, my body doesn’t—adrenaline pumping, knees weak, and even tears working up. A purely physical reaction to being scared and mad. Not only at him. Maybe I didn’t do the right thing. I never know anymore what the right thing is, let alone if I’m doing it.
    R.J. jogs a little to catch up with me. “I—hang on. I was just trying to do my job….”
    “Fail,” I say over my shoulder. Because it’s a lot easier to be mad at him than at me. “Is that really what they train you to do? Stalk people? Jump out at them in the dark?”
    “No,” he says, next to me now, indignant. “Procedure is to come into the store. You closed early. You—”
    “Don’t try to blame this on me.” I get to my car and fumble with the keys for way longer than I want, thinking that I wish I hadn’t closed early and I could really get into trouble. When I finally get the door open, I throw my messenger bag onto the passenger seat before getting in.
    “Wait.” R.J. holds the corner of my door, keeping me from closing it. With my adrenaline-fueled superpowers and all the other emotions roaring, I yank it shut and start the engine. I hear his muffled pleas. “Wait! I’m sorry. You’re right.” That gets me to look at him. He’s grimacing, holding one hand with the other and now tapping them both against the window as I back up. “Are you going to report this? I can’t lose my job right now, Jill.”
    He says my name as if he really knows me. Ms. Schiff’s, sophomore year. The year I got together with Dylan after we took driver’s ed together. The year I got my piercing without Mom’s or Dad’s permission and suffered through a two-week grounding thinking it was the worst thing in the world that could happen to me. The year Laurel and I sneaked into an eighteen-and-over club on Colfax and