Lunchtime found me once again scrounging for scraps from the snack machine. I rooted around in my bag for change when I heard footsteps approach. Somehow, I didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

Noah reached around me, brushing my shoulder as he placed a dollar in the machine. I sidestepped out of his way.

“What shall I get?” he asked.

“What do you want?”

He looked at me and tilted his head, and one corner of his mouth lifted into a smile. “That’s a complicated question.”

“Animal crackers, then.”

Noah looked confused, but he pressed E4 anyway and the machine obeyed. He handed me the box. I handed it back to him, but he laced his hands behind his back.

“Keep it,” he said.

“I can buy my own, thanks.”

“I don’t care,” he said.

“What a surprise,” I said. “How’s Mabel, by the way? I meant to ask you about her this morning but you weren’t in class.”

Noah gave me a blank look. “I had a previous engagement. And she’s hanging in. She’s not going anywhere for a while, though. Whoever let her get that way ought to die a slow, painful death.”

Suddenly queasy, I swallowed hard before speaking. “Thank your mom again for taking care of her,” I said, trying to shake it off as I made my way to a picnic table. I sat on its pitted surface and opened the box of crackers. Maybe I just needed to eat. “She was amazing.” I bit the head off an elephant. “Just let me know when I should pick her up?”

“I will.”

Noah loped onto the picnic table and sat beside me, leaning back on his arms but staring straight ahead. I munched next to him in silence.

“Have dinner with me this weekend,” he said out of nowhere.

I almost choked. “Are you asking me out?”

Noah opened his mouth to respond just as a group of older girls burst forth from the stairwell. When they saw him, they arrested their breakneck pace and sashayed suggestively as they walked past us, tossing a chorus of “Hey, Noah”s behind them. Noah seemed to ignore them, but then, the tiniest twitch of a traitorous smile began at the corners of his lips.

That was all the reminder I needed. “Thanks for the invitation, but I’m afraid I must decline.”

“Already have plans?” His voice suggested he was merely waiting to hear my excuse.

I delivered. “Yeah, a date with all of the crap I’ve missed in school,” I said, then tried to recover. “You know, from transferring in late.” I didn’t want to talk about that now. Especially not with him. “The trimester exams are twenty percent of our grade, and I can’t afford to screw them up.”

“I can help you study,” Noah said.

I looked at him. The dark lashes that framed his gray-blue eyes weren’t helping my situation. Neither was the slightly mischievous smile on his lips. I turned away. “I do better studying on my own.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

“You don’t know me well enough to make that assessment.”

“So let’s change that, then,” he said matter-of-factly. He continued to stare straight ahead as a few strands of hair fell forward into his eyes.

He was killing me. “Look, Shaw—”

“We’re starting with the surname nonsense, are we?”

“Hysterical. Ask someone else.”

“I don’t want to ask someone else. And you don’t really want me to either.”

“Wrong.” I hopped off the table and walked away. If I didn’t look at him, I’d be fine.

Noah caught up to me in two long strides. “I didn’t ask you to marry me. I asked you for dinner. What, are you afraid I’ll ruin the image you’re cultivating here?”

“What image,” I said flatly.

“Angsty, solitary, introspective emoteen, staring off into the distance as she sketches withered leaves falling from bare branches and …” Noah’s voice trailed off, but the look of cool amusement on his face didn’t.

“No, that was lovely. Please, continue.”

I rushed ahead until another girls’ bathroom appeared. I pushed the door open, planning to leave Noah outside while I collected myself.

But he followed me in.

Two younger girls were standing at the mirror applying lip gloss.

“Get out,” Noah said to them, his voice laced with boredom. As if they were the ones who didn’t belong in the girl’s bathroom. But they didn’t wait to be told twice. They scooted out so fast that I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so shocked myself.

Noah directed his gaze at me, and something flickered behind his eyes. “What’s your problem?” he asked in a low voice.

I looked at him. Gone was the casual indifference. But he wasn’t angry. Or even annoyed. More like … curious. His quiet expression was ruinous.

“I don’t have a problem,” I said confidently. I took a step forward, eyes narrowed at Noah. “I’m problem-free.”

His long frame, accentuated by the spare line of his untucked shirt and slim cut pants looked so out of place against the ugly yellow tile. My breathing accelerated.

“I’m not your type,” I managed to say.

Noah then took a step toward me, and a deviant smile teased the corner of his mouth. Damn. “I don’t have a type.”

“That’s even worse,” I said, and I swear I tried to sound mean when I said it. “You’re as indiscriminate as they say.”

But I wanted him closer.

“I’ve been slandered.” His voice was barely above a whisper. He took another step, so close that I felt the warm aura of his chest. He looked down at me, all sincere and open and with that chaos hair in his eyes and I wanted and didn’t want and I had to say something.

“I doubt it” was the best I could do. His face was inches from mine. I was going to kiss him, and I was going to regret it.

But at that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care.

18

I HEARD HE E-MAILED HER A PICTURE OF HIS—OH. Hi, Noah.” The voice stopped mid-sentence, and I could hear the coy smile in it.

Noah closed his eyes. He stepped away from me and turned to face the intruders. I blinked, trying to bring everything back into focus.

“Ladies,” he said to the openmouthed girls and nodded. Then he walked out.

The girls giggled, stealing sidelong glances at me while they fixed their melting makeup in front of the mirror. I was still slack-jawed and shell-shocked, staring at the door. Only when the bell rang did I finally remember how to walk.

I didn’t see Noah again until Wednesday night.

I spent the day mildly freaked out from lack of sleep, general malaise, and angst over what had happened between us. On Monday, he’d walked out on me like it was nothing. Like Jamie warned me he would. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting.

I had no idea what, if anything, I was going to say to Noah when I saw him. But English came and went, and he didn’t show. I dutifully took notes from Ms. Leib and loitered outside of the class when it ended, scanning the campus for Noah without understanding why.

In Algebra, I tried to focus on the polynomials and parabolas but it was becoming painfully clear that while I could coast in Bio, History, and English, I was struggling in math. Mr. Walsh called on me twice in class and I gave a grievously wrong answer each time. Each homework assignment I’d submitted was returned with angry red pencil marks all over it, punctuated by a disgraceful score at the bottom of the page. Exams were in a few weeks, and I had no hope of catching up.

When class ended, an odd bit of conversation caught my attention, scattering my thoughts.

“I heard she was eaten after he killed her. Some kind of cannibal thing,” a girl said behind me. She punctuated her remark with a crack of her gum. I turned around.

“You’re an idiot, Jennifer,” a guy named Kent, I think, shot back at her. “Eaten by alligators, not the pedophile.”

Before I could hear more, Jamie dropped his binder on my desk. “Hey, Mara.”

“Did you hear that?” I asked him, as Jennifer and Kent left the classroom.

Jamie looked confused at first, but then understanding transformed his face. “Oh. Jordana.”

“What?” The name rang a bell, and I tried to remember why.

“That’s who they were talking about. Jordana Palmer. She was a sophomore at Dade High. I know someone who knows someone who knew her. Kind of. It’s really sad.”

The pieces clicked into place. “I think I heard something about it on the news,” I said quietly. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know the whole story. Just that she was supposed to show up at a friend’s house and then … didn’t. They found her body a few days later, and she was definitely murdered, but I haven’t heard how, yet. Her dad’s a cop, and I think they’re keeping it quiet or something. Hey, you okay?”

That was when I tasted the blood. Apparently I’d chewed on the skin of my bottom lip until it split. I flicked out my tongue to catch the drop.

“No,” I said truthfully, as I made my way outside.

Jamie followed me. “Care to share?”

I didn’t. But when I met Jamie’s eyes, it was like I didn’t have a choice. The weight of all the weirdness—the asylum, Rachel, Noah—all of it just bubbled up, trying to claw its way out of my throat.

“I was in an accident before we moved here. My best friend died.” I practically vomited the words. I closed my eyes and exhaled, appalled by my overshare. What was wrong with me?

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said, lowering his eyes.

I’d made him feel awkward. Fabulous. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I don’t know why I just said that.”

Jamie shifted uncomfortably. “It’s cool,” he said. Then he smiled. “So when do you want to study Algebra?”

A random segue, and a ridiculous one. There was no way Jamie would benefit from having me as a study partner; not when he nailed each and every question Mr. Walsh lobbed at him.

“You are aware that my math skills are even more lacking than my social skills?”

“Impossible.” Jamie’s mouth spread into a mocking grin.

“Thanks. Seriously, you must have better things to do with your life than waste it on the hopeless?”

“I’ve already learned Parseltongue. What else is there?”

“Elvish.”

“You’re like, a gen-u-wine nerd. Love it. Meet me at the picnic tables during lunch. Bring your brain, and something for it to do,” he said as he walked away. “Oh, your flap’s open, by the way,” he called over his shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

Jamie pointed at my messenger bag with a grin, then strolled to his next class. I closed my bag.

When I met him at the appointed time, math textbook in hand, he was all smiles, ready and waiting to bear witness to my idiocy. He took out his graph paper and textbook but my mind glazed over as soon as I glanced at the numbers on the glossy page. I had to will myself to focus on what Jamie was saying as he wrote out the equation and explained it patiently. But after only minutes, as if a switch had been flipped in my brain, the numbers began to make sense. We worked through problem after problem until all of the week’s homework was finished. Half an hour for what would normally have taken me two and netted me an F for my efforts, and my work was perfect.

I gave a low whistle. “Damn. You’re good.”

“It’s all you, Mara.”

I shook my head. He nodded his.

“All right,” I acquiesced. “Either way, thanks.”

He bent into an exaggerated bow before we headed to Spanish. We made meaningless small talk on the way, steering clear of dead people as a topic of conversation. When we reached the classroom, Morales lumbered up from her desk to the blackboard and wrote down a series of verbs for us to conjugate. Characteristically, she called on me first. I answered wrong. She threw a piece of chalk at me, scattering my good mood from my lunchtime study session into a million pieces.

When class ended, Jamie offered to help me with Spanish, too. I accepted.

At the end of the day, I stuffed my now unnecessary textbook in my locker. I needed to spend some quality time with my sketchbook not drawing Noah, not drawing anyone. I shifted my books to one side of the locker and searched through a week’s worth of refuse, but didn’t see it. I leafed through my messenger bag, but it wasn’t there, either. Irritated, I dropped my bag so I could focus, and it slid against the bottom row of lockers, dislodging some pink fliers taped to the metal before it hit the concrete. Still nothing. I started pulling out my books one at a time as raw, arctic fear coiled in my stomach. Faster and faster, I tore through my things and let them fall to the ground until I was staring at my empty locker.

My sketchbook was gone.

Tears threatened my eyes, but a bunch of students walked into the locker niche and I refused to cry in public. Sluggishly, I put my books back into my locker and removed the flier that was now stuck to the front of my Algebra textbook. A costume party on South Beach hosted by one of Croyden’s elite, in honor of the teacher workday tomorrow. I didn’t bother reading the rest of the details before letting it fall to the ground again. Not my scene.

None of this was my scene. Not Florida and its hordes of tan blonds and mosquitoes. Not Croyden and its painfully generic student body. I’d made a friend in Jamie, but I missed Rachel. And she was gone.

Screw it. I ripped a flier off of another locker and shoved it in my messenger bag. I needed a party. I jogged to the back gate to meet Daniel. He looked uncharacteristically cool in the Croyden uniform, and happy until he saw me—then his face transformed into a mask of brotherly concern.