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struck by how just minutes before first coming into the room, he’dbeen thinking about that stupid Tragedy Paper, and then it ended up being tied in to the treasure Tim left behind for him. That was freaky, and just way too intriguing. It was like Tim was reading his mind. For another minute he let himself think about that last time he saw Tim, then he tried to will away the image. Duncan always thought he was odd, and, in addition to everything else, he did remember hearing about goings-on with that cute girl Vanessa, things that were never confirmed but were speculated about after what happened. There was something Duncan couldn’t quite remember, about some fooling around, or a crush. No, that wasn’t it—but there were rumors going around that involved a competition or something between the albino kid and Vanessa’s boyfriend, Patrick, who happened to be one of the most popular kids at the school. He was the one who left Tad the bourbon. That was a coincidence, too, that Tad had Patrick’s old room. Still, he told himself, he didn’t want to care, he didn’t need to know. That was then and this was now.
    Duncan stopped the CD, took off his headphones, checked his face and hair in the hazy mirror over his dresser, and opened the door. It was still nuts out there. Duncan felt like he had been inside a soundproof box, he was that engrossed in Tim’s CDs. He had to shake it off. But as he walked down the hall, he kept thinking about Tim and Vanessa in the snow and about how this past spring, on the last day of classes, he and Daisy Pickett had ended up beingthe only two people at the lunch table and how they had sat there for hours because neither of them had a class to go to, talking and laughing, and, by the end of the afternoon, giving each other back rubs while the kitchen staff started getting ready for dinner.
    He thought that was going to be the turning point for him, the moment during his high school years when he finally got everything he wanted, especially after he came so close to losing it all. He had considered, after that amazing afternoon, asking Daisy to take a walk, or to go out to breakfast with him the next morning. Second-semester juniors were allowed to do that sort of thing with permission, and he had always wanted to take advantage of it. But then he started to think too much, wondering why she was being nice to him suddenly. Did she feel sorry for him? Or was it his new position in the class that made her like him? Or, worse, was she just curious, trying to get close to him so he would tell her about it?
    By the time he saw her again that weekend, things had shifted—he couldn’t quite figure out how or why—and then on Tuesday everyone moved out and Daisy went back to Connecticut and he went home to Michigan and that had been that.
    Duncan peeked in Tad’s open door as he went by and was relieved to see he was still there.
    “Hey,” he called.
    “Where have you been, my man?” Tad asked. “I knocked on your door but there was no answer.”
    “You did?” Duncan asked, confused. “I was in there.”
    “I don’t know, bro, you seem a little zoned-out to me,” Tad said, patting him on the back. Duncan had to try to relax. The last thing he wanted was for people to start asking if he was okay.
    “No, man, I’m fine,” Duncan said as casually as he could. “But I
am
hungry. Have you had dinner?”
    “No, I think it’s breakfast for dinner. I hate that. Who wants to eat pancakes at night? I came by before to see if you wanted to order a pizza from Sal’s. I’ve been thinking about their onion and pepper pie all summer,” Tad said, sitting on his neatly made bed with his cell phone in his hand.
    Again, another crazy coincidence: breakfast for dinner. That was the last thing Duncan wanted. He felt like he had just lived it. But he wanted to see Daisy, and he knew the dining hall was his best bet for running into her.
    “If I start ordering pizza the first night, I’m going to