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“Hey,” I said back, completely bewildered. How had I known he was there? Why was he there? How was this going to go? Why was this going at all?

“About the other night—”Which other night? Mine—or Lacey’s?“My friends can be real jerks,” he finished.

I asked the first thing that came to my head. “Why’re you friends with them then?”

He paused and looked at me with his currently green-ish eyes that played off the rust color of his polo shirt. “I don’t really have a good answer for that.”

“Yo—Jessica—you got my coat?” And all of a sudden Darius was looming beside both of us, like a lanky scarecrow.

Of course he’d interrupt this. The first time Liam had spoken to me, despite our having been in three consecutive years of English class together in middle school. Darius’s presence proved the utter impossibility of what was happening to me—he was entropy in personified, the universe righting itself. There was no point in fighting.

“Yeah—I’ve got it right here.” I handed him the bag.

“You going to need a ride tomorrow night?”

I ignored Liam, the way he’d ignored me for the entirety of my life so far. “I don’t know—depends on my mom’s mood.”

“Want my number?”

“Sure.”

“What’s yours? I’ll call you.”

“I’m grounded—no phone.”

“Harsh.” He went through his backpack and pulled out a piece of paper, tearing it in two before handing me half. “Got another line?”

“Yeah, the old one.” I wrote it down for him, as he wrote his down for me.

“Let me know in time to get you, if you do,” he said, handing his number over.

“Sure.” I folded the paper up and shoved it in my pocket. He gave Liam a head-jerk of acknowledgment, who mutely returned it—everyone knew Darius—and walked on.

I returned my attention to Liam, who’d watched our whole exchange like we were a TV show. “You know him?”

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging one shoulder. Liam’s left eyebrow rose a little, as if his estimation of me had gone up as well.

Oh do not tell me that I was cooler than I had been prior for knowing Darius.As if I needed more examples that life was unfair.

The warning bell rang overhead and biology was three halls away. “Gotta go—see ya.” I said, shouldering my bag.

“In chemistry,” he said, like he had at some point actually noticed me there before.

“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to play it cool, then pretending to calmly walk down the hall.

CHAPTER 12

Actually being calm was hard.

If I concentrated on everything that was supposed to be there, that I knew I was supposed to see, I could fake being normal-me.

But if I stopped doing that, I didn’t have words for what was happening. Bear with me if none of this makes sense—in the immortal words of Mrs. Jadeberry in the ninth grade, “Just because you’ve passed English, Jessica, doesn’t make you a poet.”

It’s just—I kept having the sensation that my high school was a living thing—and like I was walking in its brain. Or stomach. Or maybe it was a jellyfish and those two things were the same. I could feel the waves of electricity pulsing through the walls as lights and computers and air-conditioning turned off and on, and in between classes I was assaulted by sensations like stinging-beeping-rain from all my classmates, that got worse as they neared and faded as they walked away. The building breathed around me, recharging and discharging, rumbling to life, then slowly falling quiet again—and my classmates were like blood cells, always announcing their presence with their phones that were always on, even when they were in their pockets.

I felt myself detach a little bit, like a loose tooth, barely hanging on—and then Sarah grabbed my arm again, pulling me into biology to sit beside her.

“I heard Liam talked to you,” she whispered.