“Is it Mississippi?” Carrie asked.

“No… it’s the other one.” Wendy licked her salty fingers, pointing toward the ceiling. “You know, the one up north.”

I thought my heart was going to stop beating.

“Maine?” I managed to choke out, looking across the table and meeting Aimee’s widening eyes. Tyler Vincent lived in Maine—when he wasn’t touring or doing a new movie anyway. Aimee’s eyebrow raise couldn’t have said it any louder than she could have screamed it across the cafeteria—coincidence? I think not!

But that’s all it was. Just a stupid coincidence. I was too cynical to believe in anything as ridiculous as fate. If life had taught me anything so far, it was that I was responsible for making my own fate.

Wendy nodded. “Yep, that one.”

“After all that, you got it!” Carrie made a face, frowning as she watched me eat another one of her fries. “Sara, will you stop eating all of my food?”

“Sorry.” I reluctantly put back one of the fries I’d snatched. “I’m starving, but the lines are too long.”

“You’ve said that every day for a week.” Carrie snapped. “It’s no wonder you’re a twig. You don’t eat anything—except my fries.”

“Sor-ry.” I pushed my chair back. “You’ve been letting me do it every day and never said a word. I didn’t know it bugged you so much. Maybe I should just find another table to sit at.”

I stood up, grabbing my notebook and my purse.

“Take a chill pill, homegirl!” Carrie gripped my arm, tugging. “Sit down. I’m sorry I said anything. Here, have a fry.”

I sat back down, glancing at Aimee. She had a knowing look on her face. Aimee had been my best friend since grade school. She knew the truth—I had no money for the fast food line, and although I was eligible for free lunch, thanks to all those federal subsidies, I was too embarrassed to actually pay with the little red token they doled out to the poor kids every day to pay for it while everyone stood there and stared.

Besides, their lunch tasted like dog food.

“Well maybe Dale Diamond will be a good distraction this year.” Aimee propped her chin on her hand and stared out the window as if she was willing this new magic man to appear. “If we can’t have Tyler Vincent, we can at least have fun with his look-alike.”

“You’ve got to get over this Tyler Vincent obsession, Aimee.” Carrie tossed her empty, crumpled-up Hostess wrapper toward the garbage can. “It’s so high school, you know?”

“Two points,” I said when she sank it.

Carrie grinned at me and I grinned back. Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief. Things were okay again. I put my head down on the table, a headache beginning to throb behind my eyes. New things always gave me headaches—the first week of every school year, the first couple days at a new job—like my brain went into overload from too much unfamiliar stimulation.

“I’m not the one obsessed with him,” Aimee protested indignantly. “You should see Sara’s walls. She invented the first Tyler Vincent wallpaper, pulled straight from the pages of Tiger Beat.”

I flushed, sending her a warning look and she stopped. There were things you just didn’t want everyone to know.

“So what tortures are we going to subject ourselves to for the last hour of the day?” Wendy changed the subject smoothly.

“I have government. I failed it my senior year, and now, of course, I’ve got Mr. Ruth,” Carrie said. We all made retching noises, as if on cue. His reputation had preceded him. During orientation, we sat with some repeaters, and they called him Mr. Ruthless. Carrie had complained about him at the lunch table every single day that week.

“I’ve got him next semester,” Aimee grumbled. More appropriate retching noises.

“So, what have you got again?” Aimee asked me.

“Chemistry.” I sat up, blinking my eyes at the brightness. “And a headache. Does anyone have an aspirin?”

“Are you kidding? It’s easier to get crack here than it is to get aspirin!” Carrie exclaimed.

Aimee laughed.

“It’s true!” Wendy tossed her wrapper at the garbage. She missed. ”Want me to hook you up?”

“No thanks.” I made a face. “Not my thing.”

“You sure? I know a guy at work…” Wendy sat back down, grinning at me, but Carrie looked mad and poked her friend in the ribs.

“We’re done with that remember?”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “Right.”

I stood. “I gotta book. I’ll see you in the parking lot, Aimee?”

“See ya.” Aimee waved as I grabbed my purse and started out of the cafeteria.

CHAPTER TWO

The halls weren’t crowded because the first bell hadn’t sounded yet. The academy was set up just like high school but it was housed in a building that had once actually been an elementary school. They’d switched out all the little desks for big ones, but the bathrooms were still built for small children, the toilets and sinks so low to the ground the students made jokes about “little people.” Just in the first week, I’d discovered that when someone raised their hand and said, “I need to go see the Wizard” it just meant they had to use the bathroom.

In some ways, the academy was turning out to be more like high school than high school had ever been. It was as if the staff figured we’d failed to graduate high school, so they really didn’t believe we were going to reach any semblance of adulthood, and therefore we clearly needed even tighter rules and regulations to follow. It seemed kind of backwards to me, but I wasn’t in charge. I was just trying to make it through to the next thing, which I hoped and prayed wasn’t anywhere near New Jersey.

I made my way down the hall, past rows of freshly painted lockers, the lingering fumes doing nothing for my headache. I went past the boys’ bathrooms, stopping at the drinking fountain, hoping my stolen fries and a little bit of water would get me through until I got home and could raid the fridge. I was always hungry during my last hour.

I ducked into the girls’ bathroom, passing two giggling girls I didn’t recognize, digging for my schedule. There it was—covered with purple eye shadow crumbled into pieces at the bottom of my purse. I wiped my hand on my pants, looking to see where my last hour class was—chemistry, room 514. We’d been doing this for a week and I was still wandering, aimless, not sure which room was where.

I checked my hair in the mirror—nothing exciting, no pink bangs or purple streaks like Carrie and Wendy, no highlights or spiral auburn perm, like Aimee. I couldn’t afford it. Just me, tiny and blonde and blue-eyed and boring. I looked twelve, not eighteen, even in my somewhat fashionable black, suede fringed boots—Salvation Army, two bucks—and my black leggings and oversized pink sweater.

I used one of the tiny toilets and bent down to wash my hands at a little sink before finding my way to 514, down at the very end of the hall. Part of me still couldn’t believe I had to do this. I should have graduated already. I was a year older than everyone else to begin with, because my mother had insisted on keeping me back from kindergarten for a year, judging me “socially unready.” More like my mother didn’t want her only baby venturing into the world before she was ready. But that was before she married the stepbeast.

And it was his fault I had to miss most of my senior year.

The room smelled faintly of Lysol and ammonia. It was better than the formaldehyde we’d used in biology, but not much. I hated math, but science was my nemesis. The only classes I’d ever done really well in were art classes but the academy didn’t offer any extracurriculars. They were all business. I was stuck, just like everyone else, with some version of English, math, science or history all day long.

So I brought my notebook and I drew. All week long I’d doodled or drawn pictures instead of taking notes or paying attention in class, in spite of all my best intentions. I knew I should be focusing on the tasks at hand, but it was like my hands had a mind of their own, like they were out to sabotage me. Or maybe they just knew better than I did what I should really be doing. I took a pencil out of my purse and started working on a sketch I’d been drawing of Tyler Vincent before lunch.

I could draw him from memory because I’d memorized every feature. Some part of me knew it was stupid and childish to hold onto my dreams of meeting Tyler Vincent. When I was a freshman in high school, I’d seen my first Tyler Vincent video on MTV and that had been it. I was hooked. While it had happened that fast, the submersion of my life into all things Tyler Vincent had taken years, collecting albums and posters and articles, going to concerts, seeing all his movies, catching up on everything I’d missed in the years he’d been playing before I found him.

In some strange way, it was as if my discovery had solidified my own existence. Tyler Vincent made me feel like I’d come alive for the first time at the tender age of fourteen, dreaming about meeting a sexy, famous rock star, falling in love and living happily ever after. But as I grew older, my fantasies had matured too. I didn’t want to be a groupie. I didn’t want to be just another girl in a rock star’s stable.

I didn’t just want to meet him. I wanted to change him. I wanted him to change me. I wanted to be essential in his life. All my fantasies centered on that now. Maybe he needed a graphic artist, someone to do all his promotional material? The thought of working with Tyler Vincent’s image all day long and someone paying me for it was like my dream job. Heck, I did that now, for free. At least half my artwork was Tyler Vincent related.

Like a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis, waiting for the perfect moment, I was waiting for the day I could burst forth and fly away and find my home.

To him.

I was crazy. Obsessed. I knew it. I just couldn’t change it.

The bell rang, shrilling loudly. Ten more minutes and the room would flood with students.

Aimee kept telling me I was crazy but she was just as crazy about Tyler Vincent as I was. Well, maybe not quite. She hadn’t spent years wallpapering her walls like I had, or named her cats Tyler and Vincent—for the short time my stepfather allowed me to have them—like I had, or entered the last contest to win a trip to L.A. to meet him three-thousand and sixty-seven times, all by postcard, like I had. Although she’d helped me fill out a lot of the cards and she would have been my “1 guest,” but of course we didn’t win. Still, she camped out with me every year to get tickets and went just as crazy at his concerts and when she joined Columbia House, every single cassette she picked was by Tyler Vincent.

She liked him too.

She just didn’t love him.

Not like I did.

Lockers slammed. Shouts and the dull roar of people moving along the hallways echoed softly in the empty room. Students began coming in but I didn’t look up, keeping my face buried in my notebook, trying to daydream and draw my headache away with visions of Tyler Vincent. Those bright, flashing, hazel eyes, that perfect, mischievous smile, those long limbs striding across the stage like he owned it, and when he opened his mouth, the rough, honeyed voice of a god that could stir your soul one minute or sing you to sleep the next.