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always darting from one end of the room to the other. He never looks content. Maybe that’s why I decided he and I were going to be friends.
    I get the sense he wants to talk to me, too. When other people stare at him, he hurls a wad of spit at them. But when he catches me watching him, he just nods slightly, or blinks really slowly, like a cat. But he never says a single word. Not to me.
    Whenever he has a major freak-out, Dr. Keller or one of the other people in white take him down the same hall they took me down last week. The one with the room of mirrors.
    I close the journal with a trembling breath. Because I know that even though I’m not the reason she ended up in Oakside, I could have done something to stop it. I could have said something. To my mom. To Aunt Becca. Instead I did the worst thing possible: nothing.
    I ease the journal back between the mattress and the mattress pad.
    “G’night,” I say to no one in particular, but for some reason, it feels good to say it aloud.

5
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    I’ M NOT J UST LATE FOR school today. I’m so late that I’ve actually missed first period, and I’m close to missing second. I considered ditching school altogether, but it’s Friday—Aunt Becca’s day off—and sometimes she does a drive-by to check on my mom. I learned that one the hard way. At least in a few hours I can go home and forget how totally screwed I am in the grades department. Of course, whenever I’m home, I remember how totally screwed I am in the family-and-everything-else department.
    I slept like crap last night. I had a dream about Nell, as usual. The one where I see her in the middle of a clearing, a single, impossibly tall pine tree beside her. She looks over one shoulder, then the other, like she’s being hunted. I wokeup sweating and scrunched in a ball under my bedspread, wondering, as I do every time I have this nightmare, if that same terror is the last emotion Nell felt before she died.
    Then I had a dream about Evan. That was new. In the dream he kissed me, which was so incredible it makes my skin hot just thinking about it. But then he pulled away and looked at me with so much disgust. He said something after that, or at least he tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear him. He was moving his mouth, but instead of words coming out, it was that horrible murmuring.
    “Sophie D.,” says a voice that brings sweat rushing through my pores.
    Evan’s at the end of the nearly empty hall, leaning against a locker by a window. The sun casts a harsh glare over him so I have to squint to make out even the outline of his face.
    “Oh, hey,” I chirp back, trying for a casual tone, as if last night wasn’t the most awkward evening ever. Let’s see. Uncomfortable phone conversation: check. Abandonment in a parked car while I disappear into a loony bin for what must have felt like years: check. Retreat back to his car as fast as he possibly can once we’re within sight of my house: check.
    “What’s up?” I finish. One profound response after the next. God, c ould I be any lamer?
    Evan looks at an imaginary watch on his wrist, then shakes his head slowly, or at least I think he does. Staring into that glare is starting to give me a headache.
    “Forty-five minutes late is what’s up,” he says, a mocking tone of disapproval coating his words. I put my head down to hide the smile I can’t keep from my lips. Does that mean he was waiting for me to get here?
    “Yeah, kinda got a slow start this morning.”
    “Well, you’re going to need to know what you missed in chemistry,” he says, still pretending to scold me.
    “Aren’t you in physics first period?” I ask, genuinely confused.
    “Is that your way of telling me you don’t want to hang out with me tomorrow?” He’s still leaning against the lockers like he doesn’t have a care in the world, but something’s shifted in his tone.
    “Er, no. I mean, yes. I mean, sure,” I stumble through every possible answer.
    “So, does that