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years old. No one’s been buried here for over sixty. Zoey said she heard it was originally a Native American burial ground that was dug up by settlers. She could have been full of nonsense, but I don’t feel bad repeating it. Weren’t settlers always digging up sacred stuff? Distant giggling and a moaned, “Oh nooo,” make me focus. I swerve in the opposite direction.
    I swat boughs from the low-hanging willows brushing my face. The candles are everywhere to guide me. I pass my favorite marble statue of a weeping angel and caress its broken wing. There’s a smooth granite bench rooted to the ground across from the statue and a small, enclosed family plot. I lie down on it. The cold seeps from the stone into my back. I shiver. Blackdog State Park is far enough from the city that the stars blaze like tiny lightbulbs illuminating the sky’s blackness. The candles speckling the cemetery have the look of fallen stars nestled in nooks and crannies.
    I close my eyes for a moment, but Jeanie’s bloodied face is there, like an indelible memory I’ve always had and not one that just reared its warty face. I open them and stifle a scream. Two brown eyes hover above me.
    I bolt upright. “Sam!” I shout. “Jeez, you scared the crap out of me.”
    He takes a backward step, flicks his hair off his forehead, and shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “Hey, sorry. I saw you take off and wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says, ending with an uncertain smile.
    I take a deep breath and shrug. “You know . . . it always feels weird to be here . . . on this day.” What’s weird is that Sam—not Zoey, not Taylor, not Michaela, not Cole—cared enough to follow me. “What’s with the vest?” I point to the bright-red atrocity he’s wearing over his T-shirt. If Zoey were here to see this, she’d roll her eyes and say I told you so . Sam Worth used to be one of our best friends. We were inseparable as kids, right up until Zoey decided we wanted to be popular and that Sam was destined to be the King of Loserdom.Although Sam isn’t a Cyclops, he isn’t the kind of guy that most girls date. At least not girls I know.
    Sam looks down and practically turns green. “Oh crap, it’s my uniform,” he says, ripping the vest off his shoulders so quickly I think it might tear. “I’m always forgetting I have it on.” He wads the polyester nightmare up in a ball and tries stuffing it in his jeans pocket. Half of it sticks out.
    The Star Wars T-shirt he’s rocking underneath isn’t much better. I try not to laugh. “Uniform for what?” I ask, scooting over so there’s room for Sam on the bench. Zoey would flip if she saw this, but I’m just off balance enough to flirt with disaster.
    â€œI work at BigBox,” he says, plopping down next to me, springy and eager like a puppy.
    BigBox is one of those giant you-can-buy-everything-under-the-sun stores. “Since when?”
    â€œEvery summer for the last four years,” he says, a hint of a laugh in his voice. “It’s okay, though, there’s no reason you’d know.”
    I blink at him through the darkness. Is he being sarcastic or is he really that nice? I mean, I do the best I can. Zoey erased Sam from her social radar, but when I see him in the halls, I always say hey. No, I’m not twelve years old, sporting a feathered headdress and playing cowboys and Indians in the woods with him anymore. And I probably wouldn’t ever in a million years follow him into a spooky cemetery to make sure he was okay. But I keep Zoey off his back.
    It’s not like I can invite him to eat lunch with us. That’s not how high school works. Even my popularity couldn’t take the hitof me being seen hanging out with science-fiction-loving, secondhand-clothing-wearing, BigBox-working Sam Worth.
    It’s kind of a shame,