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at me with a smile behind his eyes and walks toward his friends at the table. I trail behind him, tapping a quick message to Dad into my cuff.
    The cheerleader is beautiful, the sort of beautiful that knows it can stop anyone in their tracks. She’s tall, with strawberry-blonde hair so brassy-bright it almost glows. Her skin is touched with gold and dotted with a thousand freckles.
    She looks like the freaking sun itself blew kisses at her. She is the kind of girl that guys like Elias want to be with, always are with. She is a prize.
    Elias beckons to her, his fingers bending in at the end of an outstretched arm, and she bounces over, her orange ponytail swinging level with Elias’s shoulder, her perfect, glossed lips beaming. A funny burning feeling creeps up through my chest, and I try desperately to make my mouth smile, though I know it turns down anyway.
    I hate her.
    “Len, this is…uh…”
    “Merrin,” I say, acknowledging his cleverness with a humoring smile.
    He grins back at me, triumphant.“ Merrin is new, and she’s gonna tag along to study.”
    “Hi, Merrin.” She leans forward and shakes my hand, smiling warmly. Why is this girl being so nice to me? At Superior High, she would have raised her eyebrows and sniffed.
    Theoretically, I don’t care, so I force the full-on smile I rehearsed on my first day and stick my hand out, play the fake voice I rehearsed in my head. “Nice to meet you.”
    “And this is Daniel,” Elias says and walks over to clap his friend on the back.
    Daniel, nearly as tall as Elias, sits at the concrete table with pebbled legs and looks up from his textbook, jerking his chin up in greeting again. His hair is jet black, and his skin is the color of cinnamon mixed with coffee. His eyes are black, too, but they flash fiercely when they look at me.
    “Hey, Merrin. Welcome to Nelson.”

SIX
    O n the drive over to Elias’s house, I take a lot of deep breaths through my nose. I feel like there’s no space in my lungs, or maybe there’s no breathable air in the car. I try blasting something metal with a heavy drum line through my speakers, but that only makes my thoughts skitter around in my head, banging on my brain and making my limbs jittery.
    I roll the window down and try to steady my arm on the door. The sun beats down on it, warming my chilled skin with its light. A whisper of humidity lingers in the air, a fleeting remnant of summer. It weighs everything down.
    Exactly what I need right now.
    My breathing slows, and I can think again. Elias’s house for studying. Two other kids there. Pizza. Totally normal. Nothing to worry about.
    I believe these self-reassurances while I drive through the suburb where everyone in Superior lives, where the houses all crowd together like an army lying in wait. When we cross through the suburb with the newest, largest houses, on the outskirts of town, my mind goes wild again. Where does this guy live?
    I follow the caravan — Elias in his car, and Leni and Daniel riding together — over some rolling hills until we’re surrounded by cornfields. The sun makes them look golden too, and for a minute, I really love Nebraska. Even though I still think I would love it more if I could fly over and out of it.
    I wish I had given Dad Elias’s address when I talked to him or even known one myself. No one really lives out this way, and there are no malls or groceries or anything out here, so I’ve actually never driven down this road out of Superior. Which is pathetic.
    Anyway, Dad’s text sounded so freaking happy that I was doing anything with anyone after school, I didn’t want to kill his buzz. He didn’t even ask Elias’s name, which means he failed the overprotective parent test when I probably most needed him to pass it.
    Elias’s bright blue sports car and Leni’s rattling station wagon turn into a long gravel driveway, which, when I check my odometer, is actually just a mile or so from our school. A sprawling ranch stretches out at