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  I squirm. Concern makes me itchy.

  “Look, I gotta get to class. See you later?”

  Rollins nods. “Later, Vee.”

  When I get back to English, it looks like someone released sleeping gas in the classroom. Almost everyone is draped over their desks, holding their copies of Julius Caesar at odd angles in front of their faces so it’s not completely obvious they’re asleep. Mrs. Winger is still absorbed in her game. She doesn’t look up when I ease into my seat.

  Samantha Phillips, her hair framing her face in straight red sheets, eyeballs me from across the room. Her cheerleading skirt is yanked up to show off her fake-baked thighs. I can’t believe I once wore one of those skirts. I can’t believe I was ever friends with the girl who is now captain of the squad. Sophomore year seems like a lifetime ago.

  She looks at my Oasis T-shirt and sneers. “Nice outfit. What is it, like, 1994?”

  I give her a death glare until she looks away and goes back to inconspicuously tapping the screen of her iPhone.

  My gaze falls on the crisp, clean copy of Astronomy: The Cosmic Perspective, which peeks out from my black school-bag. I had to order it brand-new to avoid the possibility of sliding when I flipped through the pages. People have emotional ties with books more often than you think, and I try to play it safe.

  With Mrs. Winger so enthralled by her computer game, it would be easy to pull my book out and continue the section on black holes I was reading the night before. There probably won’t be any questions about black holes on the Julius Caesar test, though, sadly enough.

  I turn to Icky. “What’d I miss?”

  “Hmmm . . . Well, the conspirators stabbed Caesar. You missed about the only good part in this play.”

  “Aw, crap,” I say, in mock annoyance. I lean over his desk, careful not to touch the book, and scan the part I missed. Yada yada yada, the conspirators surround him, Caesar is history.

  One of the questions on the study guide: What were Caesar’s last words?

  I look back at the book, searching for the answer. Aha! Right after Brutus plunges the knife in, Caesar says, “Et tu, Bruté?—Then fall Caesar.”

  I think of Caesar going to the Capitol, surrounded by men he thought were his friends, only to be stabbed repeatedly in the back. And there’s Brutus, holding the bloody freaking knife. The only thing left for Caesar to do is die, thinking he’s such a shitty person even his best friend wants him dead.

  Sophie’s face pops into my head. What will she think when she finds out her two best friends are plotting against her? On her birthday, no less?

  People suck.

  I shake my head, writing down the answer.

  “Pretty sick stuff, eh?” Icky grins.

  “I’ll say.”

  The bell rings, and everyone jumps to life.

  Lunchtime.

  I sit in my usual place, underneath the bleachers, and wait for Rollins. From my spot, I spy an empty Coke can, half a Snickers bar, and a Trojan wrapper. Fumbling in my backpack for my lunch, I wonder who in their right mind would want to have sex under the bleachers. Maybe they did it on the football field and the wrapper just blew over here—not that that’s much better.

  The brown sugar Pop-Tarts I packed this morning have crumbled to bits, so I eat the big pieces and then tilt my head back and dump the rest of the crumbs into my mouth.

  I expect Rollins to sneak up on me and make a snarky comment about my ladylike table manners, but he doesn’t show. This is the third lunch he’s stood me up for. After a few minutes, I pull out my astronomy book and read about black holes in between swigs of warm Mountain Dew.

  I’m in the middle of a really great paragraph about how nothing—not even light—can escape a black hole once it’s reached the event horizon when something above me clangs. Two people are working their way down the bleachers. I stick my finger in the book to hold my place and tilt my head up, annoyed by the interruption.

  A familiar voice floats down to where I’m sitting. It makes me want to puke.

  Scotch.

  They sit down above me, and I hear another guy’s voice. “Dude, you have to check this out.” His tone is conspiratorial, like he’s got some drugs or a Penthouse magazine.

  Quietly, I stuff my book into my backpack. Maybe I can sneak away without them noticing me.

  “What is this? Where did you get this?” I hear Scotch ask.

  “One of the cheerleaders sent it out this morning. Hey. Didn’t you bang this chick?”

  Scotch snorts. “Yeah, once.”

  Feeling like I’m going to be sick, I crawl toward the opening beneath the bleachers. Something sharp slices into my knee, and it takes everything in me to stifle my yelp of pain. When I look down, I realize I’ve cut myself on a broken Budweiser bottle. My jeans are torn, and blood oozes through the opening. I bite my lip and move toward the exit.

  After emerging from my hiding spot, I risk one quick backward glance. Scotch and another football player are both staring down at a cell phone, smirking. My heart clenches for the poor girl they’re discussing, whoever she is.

  In the bathroom, I clutch a wad of paper towels to my knee, but the blood doesn’t seem to be slowing. Though I’ve been avoiding the school nurse, it’s clear I’ll have to stop by her office. The beer bottle wasn’t exactly clean, and she’ll have some antiseptic cream to smooth on the wound.

  Mrs. Price is sitting at her desk, rifling through papers, when I arrive. Her gray hair is falling out of a loose bun, and she’s wearing these glasses on a chain that make her look more like a librarian than a school nurse. She’s so engrossed in her work, she doesn’t even notice me come in.

  A boy I’ve never seen before sits in a folding chair in the corner. He looks me up and down, his gaze pausing on the bloody paper towels I’m holding, making me feel suddenly self-conscious. He doesn’t look like the type of guy who goes for chicks with pink hair. In fact, with his perfectly tousled blond hair and green T-shirt stretched tight over his biceps, he looks like the type of guy who dates girls who resemble Victoria’s Secret models. Still, he sits there smiling as if he knows me or something.

  “Uh,” I say.

  Mrs. Price looks up, her eyebrows jumping when she spots the blood. “Vee! Another accident?”

  “No biggie,” I mutter, avoiding eye contact with the guy. “It’s a shallow cut. Just needs to be cleaned.”

  Mrs. Price frowns and pushes back her chair. She glides over to me and stoops down to examine my wound. “Did you get this during another episode, Vee?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my hair over my face so she won’t notice the bump. If she finds out I’ve been passing out, she’ll have to call my father and he’ll have to call my doctors and they’ll ask about the Provigil and the whole thing will be a big pain in my ass.

  Mrs. Price pulls on some latex gloves and tells me to sit down and pull up my pant leg. She wipes my knee with an alcohol pad, dabs on some Neosporin, and then wraps it with a clean bandage. The whole time, I am intensely aware of the hot guy staring at my bare leg.

  Mrs. Price strips off her gloves and tosses them into the trash. She stands and looks at the guy. “All your records seem to be in order, Zane. What class do you have now? Vee here can show you the way. Sylvia, this is Zane Huxley. This is his first day.”

  The guy steps forward and shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you.” He pulls a crinkled paper from his pocket and squints at it. “I’ve got AP psych with Golden.”

  “Oh, good.” Mrs. Price claps her hands. “That’s where you’re going. Right, Vee?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  As we walk to Mr. Golden’s room, I keep my eyes straight ahead, though I can feel Zane’s eyes on me.

  “So, Sylvia. Got any advice for the newb in town? Cool places to hang out? Teachers to avoid?” He reaches out and trails his finger along a poster that says STAR in bubble letters. Safe, Tolerant, Accountable, Respectful—all the things teachers wish students were, but we can’t always be because we’
re human beings and not robots.

  “Not really. Get salad bar on Chef’s Choice days.”

  He laughs. “Well, that’s a given.” He unfolds his schedule. “I’ve got Winger first period. Have you had her?”

  I risk a glance at Zane. His face is open and friendly and interested. To him, I’m a perfectly normal girl. Well, a perfectly normal girl with Pepto-colored hair. But still.

  “Yeah. Actually, I’ve got her first period, too. Just don’t bother her when she’s playing solitaire, and you should be fine. She gets cranky.”

  “Solitaire, eh? What about this guy? Golden? He cool?”

  “Yeah, he’s really cool,” I say. “He’s young, which means he hasn’t burned out yet. And he always tells these weird stories, like the time he helped a woman give birth at the Omaha zoo.”

  “Ew,” Zane says, but he looks fascinated.

  “Yeah. So where are you from?”

  A girl in a flippy skirt skips down the hall toward us, her eyes lingering on Zane, but he doesn’t even look her way. His eyes are fixed on me.

  “Actually, I used to live here when I was little. But then my dad died and we moved to Chicago to live with my grandma.”

  Awkward. It’s always so awkward when someone mentions death, especially when you don’t know them very well. Strangers always say they’re soooooo sorry when they hear my mother is gone, but it’s wrong that death is a loss. It’s something you gain. Death is always there, whispering in your ear. It’s in the spaces between your fingers. In your memories. In everything you think and say and feel and wish. It’s always there.

  I know there’s nothing you can say to make death okay. It is what it is.

  “That sucks,” I say.

  He nods silently.

  We’re standing in front of the door to Mr. Golden’s classroom.

  “Well, here we are,” I say feebly.

  “Try to contain your excitement,” he says, smiling as he pushes open the door.

  The room we walk into looks more like a lounge than a classroom. Mr. Golden likes to rescue and reupholster couches and bring them in for us to sit on during class discussions. He’s decorated the walls with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Mixed in with the posters of Freud and diagrams of the human brain are old concert posters for The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. He even has a black light he turns on for special occasions. A large green plant that looks like it could swallow me hulks in the corner.

  “Looks like we have a newcomer,” Mr. Golden booms. “Take a seat wherever. I’m not into seating charts.”

  Zane folds himself into a beanbag chair. He’s so tall, his knees almost hit his chin. The girls who aren’t sneaking looks at him are openly gaping. A little seed of pleasure bursts within me when he looks my way and grins.

  Rollins sits on an orange sofa in the corner, doodling in the margin of his textbook. I plop down next to him and pull out my notebook. Mr. Golden may let us sit wherever we want, but he draws heavily from his lectures when writing his exams. I got a C on the last one, so I figure I’d better actually try to follow what Mr. Golden is saying about classical conditioning.

  “Who’s that?” Rollins asks under his breath, nodding in Zane’s direction. Rollins doesn’t bother to take notes. He’s got some kind of photographic memory; he remembers not only what he sees, but also what he reads, hears, and even smells. Ask him what was for lunch last Tuesday, and he’ll remember just how nasty the burned meatloaf smelled in the hallways.

  “Uh, Zane Huxley,” I whisper back when Mr. Golden pauses to blow his nose. “He’s new. I met him in the nurse’s office. Sliced my knee open pretty good.”

  Rollins’s eyes dart down to my leg. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just kneeled on a beer bottle under the bleachers. No. Big. Deal. Anyway, where were you during lunch?”

  Rollins pauses before answering. I can tell he knows there’s more to the story, but I don’t want to rehash the conversation I overheard under the bleachers. It’s just too depressing.

  He tugs his lip ring. “I was printing off the latest installment of Fear and Loathing in High School. My finest work, if I do say so myself.” Pride creeps into his voice. Rollins makes his own zine, in which he reviews concerts and writes articles about the suckiness that is high school. It’s completely do-it-yourself, literally cut and pasted from Rollins’s journals and drawings.

  “Ooooh, can I have one?”

  “They’re in my locker. I’ll give you one later.”

  Mr. Golden launches back into his lecture. By the end of the period, I’ve covered a whole page with my loopy handwriting.

  When the bell rings, Mr. Golden raises his voice. “Remember to read the section on the different theories of motivation tonight. There might be a quiz Monday, just so you know.”

  I’m stuffing my notebook back into my backpack when Mr. Golden turns to address me.

  “Sylvia, can I speak with you for a moment?”

  Rollins pokes me in the back. “See you later.”

  When we’re alone, Mr. Golden perches on a sofa and crosses his arms over his chest. I hover in the middle of the room, wondering what he could possibly want with me. I’m pulling an overall B in his class, despite the C I received on the last exam. I would be an utterly unremarkable student if it weren’t for my so-called narcolepsy.

  “Sylvia, is everything okay?” he asks, his voice full of concern.

  “Yeah,” I say, racking my brain for any reason for him to think things are not okay. I must be sending out some really not okay vibes today. “Why?”

  “It’s just that I noticed you got a C on the test last week. The work you turned in prior to that test was of much higher quality. I don’t mean to pry, but is there something wrong? Did you not study for the test?”

  If I wanted to, I could probably play the narcolepsy card and say I wasn’t able to concentrate on my studies. I’ve been having such a rough time, I tried my best, really I did . . . but that would be a lie. And there’s something about Mr. Golden that makes me want to be honest with him.

  “Sorry, Mr. Golden. Guess I just forgot to study. I’ll try harder.”

  He leans forward and lowers his voice. “Listen, Sylvia, if you ever need some extra help, I’d be happy to oblige. Why don’t you come in after school some night?”

  I look down and shuffle my feet, trying to think of a polite way to say I don’t really need his help—the problem was that I didn’t open my psychology book for like a month.

  “Oh, um. Thanks, Mr. Golden. I’m usually pretty busy after school, though. I’m sure I’ll do better on the next test if I just study a little more.”

  Mr. Golden straightens up. “Well, just keep it in mind. I’m here for you, after all.”

  I smile and nod before turning to leave. He follows me to the door and closes it behind me with a firm click.

  After school, Rollins stands waiting at my locker, holding a stack of xeroxed booklets. “So what did Goldy want?”

  “Oh,” I say, waving my hand. “He just wanted to know why I’m such a slacker. I told him I’m naturally lazy. Can I have one?” I gesture to the zines.

  He pulls out a copy wrapped in plastic. “I know what a germaphobe you are,” he says teasingly. That’s Rollins’s explanation for why I don’t like to touch things other people have handled—I’m totally OCD.

  I unwrap the zine and examine it. On the cover, it says, Fear and Loathing in High School No. 7. There’s a hand-drawn picture of a grotesque dog making its way down a hall lined with lockers, bags of weed and capsules hanging from its drooling jaws—a reference to Jimmy Pine’s arrest, I’m guessing.

  “Nice artwork,” I say, admiring the cover.

  He does all the drawing and writing in Sharpie, then goes to Copyworld to make dozens of copies. Every couple of months he comes out with a new issue. He sells them for a dollar apiece at the record store where he works, Eternally Vinyl, but more often than not he hands them out for free. Sometimes he rides the bus
and sneaks them into people’s bags or pockets.

  Looking over the table of contents, I see there’s an article about how the administration had no right to search Jimmy Pine’s locker without a search warrant; a concert review for a local band, Who Killed My Sea Monkeys; and an article about the hypocrisy of the kids in Wise Choices, the student group against substance abuse.

  I turn to page five and scan the article entitled “Dumb Choices: City High’s Goody-Goodies Exposed.” Rollins cut out Samantha Phillips’s yearbook picture from last year and drew a beer can in one hand and a joint in the other. Samantha, along with being head cheerleader, is also the president of Wise Choices. I’m sure it’s only for her college applications—or to throw her parents off her boozehound trail. She’s been drinking wine coolers since middle school.

  “We on for tonight?” Rollins stuffs the remaining zines into his backpack and zips it up, looking at me expectantly.

  “Damn straight,” I say, trying to hide the surprise in my voice. It’s been our tradition to watch horror movies and order pizza on Friday nights, but he hasn’t made it the last two weeks. “It’s Friday Night Fright, isn’t it?”

  I’m trying to decide what I’m in the mood for—The Ring or The Exorcist—when I remember that Mattie’s invited Amber over tonight. Shit. I’m so not in the mood to babysit a couple of cheerleaders.

  “Hey, Amber Prescott is spending the night at my place tonight. Can we go to your house instead?” I mentally cross my fingers, already knowing what his answer will be, but hoping I’m wrong.

  Panic rolls over Rollins’s face, then disappears, so quickly I’m not even sure I saw it. “Uh, my mom’s . . . painting the living room. The place is a mess. Drop cloths everywhere. Sorry.”

  Since I’ve known him, Rollins has never asked me over to his house. Every time I suggest a visit, he makes up some excuse about his mom redoing the bathroom or putting in new cabinets or something. By now, his house must be a freaking palace, with all the remodeling they’ve done. I’m pretty sure his mom is really an alkie or a hoarder or something.

  I shrug. “That’s okay. We’ll just banish Mattie to her room.”