I daydreamed about Brendan. I longed to know what it felt like to have one person eclipse everything bad in your life—be a place of pure joy.

“Why can’t I get you out of my head?” I whispered to myself. “I wish I just knew what your deal was.”

I leaned against a lamppost, trying to steady my breath and my thoughts. The light above me flickered, catching my attention. I looked straight up into the light. It burned very brightly for a moment—as if it were on a dimmer switch that was suddenly put on full blast. I heard a crackling noise, and nervously stepped away from the lamppost—just as the light inside burst, shards of glass clinking against the frosted glass case….

PRAISE FOR SPELLBOUND

“Spellbound by Cara Lynn Shultz is my kind of enchanted read. Magic ingredients for teen read perfection: a spunky Buffy-licious witch, a good dose of mayhem, and Brendan! When’s the next one?”

—Nancy Holder, New York Times bestselling author of Crusade and the Wicked series

“With its magic ingredients of witty banter, a BFF-worthy heroine, Hot Boys and a super-spooky mystery, Spellbound held me in its thrall from beginning to end!”

—Rachel Hawkins, author of the Hex Hall series

“Spellbound by Cara Shultz is a rapturous story that adeptly marries the classic fairy tale with the modern experience of the Facebook world. Shultz’s debut novel has the potential to do for witches what Stephenie Meyer did for vampires with her Twilight Saga series.”

—Trent Vanegas, Pink Is the New Blog

Spellbound
Cara Lynn Shultz

www.miraink.co.uk

For Grandma. I love you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

It’s always embarrassing to have someone take you to school. Your dad, your mom, anyone with her hair in rollers.

But for my first day as a junior at my new school—a ridiculously expensive private school on New York’s Upper East Side—I was being walked to school by my baby cousin. A freshman.

It really wasn’t that terrible. Even though we grew up apart, Ashley and I were email buddies. She was a sweetheart, there was no doubt of that, but if my knowledge of the inner workings of my familiar old New Jersey public school, Keansburg High, meant anything, I knew that juniors did not hang out with the lower classes. It was like hanging out with a bunch of vegetarians and wearing a bacon necklace.

Talk about unwelcome.

But it was important to my aunt Christine that I got to school early and she was afraid I’d get lost. My great-aunt had taken me in over the summer, and I’d learned quickly that when she got an idea into her head, you were better off just going along with it. I didn’t want to argue with her—I owed her everything. My life, really. She’d been asking me to live with her ever since my mom died a year and a half ago, leaving me with Henry, my stepfather whose blood-alcohol content hovered somewhere between “wasted” and “how is he even alive?” But after he nearly killed me last June with his particular style of driving (i.e., blasted), I stopped resisting Christine’s offer.

Going from my aunt’s place at Park and Sixty-eighth Street to the school at Park and Eighty-sixth Street is fairly basic: walk eighteen blocks left. But since she had been pretty cool about everything—stepping in, giving me a place to stay and leaving me with a “You’ll talk to me if you need to” instead of hovering over me—I didn’t press it.

Ashley was a bundle of excitement as soon as she stepped inside the door of Christine’s three-bedroom co-op, her pink cheeks flushed, red curls pushed back by a black-ribbon headband. She’s several inches shorter than me—I wouldn’t put her past five feet. And that’s giving a generous allowance to her curls.

“Hi Emma! Yay, first day! Are you excited? Do you like your uniform?” I smiled back. Her joy was infectious. You couldn’t help but like Ashley—the girl never said a mean thing in all of her fourteen years. Then a black thought crept its way in: What if no one did like Ashley, and that was why she was so happy to have an ally? What kind of evil place was Vincent Academy, where someone could dislike a sweet little munchkin like Ashley? Calm down, Emma, you’re going to give yourself a panic attack.

My smile got weaker, and I smoothed out my long-sleeved white Oxford shirt and black, blue and green Scotch plaid skirt that mirrored her outfit.

“You tell me, how do I look?” I asked her.

“You look fine,” she chirped. “But why the long sleeves? It’s soooo hot out. It’s going to be like, seventy billion degrees today! Don’t you have any short slee—”

Ashley looked at the ground and blushed, her red cheeks now matching her flame-colored hair.

“Sorry, I forgot about the scar.”

The blazing scar from the car accident had made wearing short sleeves an impossibility. Thanks, Henry. You’re a champ.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” I reassured her. “Don’t worry about it. Really!” I added when I saw the expression in her eyes.

She had always looked up to me, even though she lived in the city and I lived in the country, so to speak. Being two years older had its advantages.

And now the city mouse was taking the country mouse under its paw.

After Aunt Christine had slipped me a twenty-dollar bill “for emergencies” and sent us on our way, I drew in Ashley conspiratorially and asked, “So what’s the real deal on this school? I know the basic stuff, like how practically everyone goes Ivy League after graduation. But what’s this place really like?”

How I hoped, prayed, that it was like all those shows about rich, fashion-obsessed, drama-crazy New York teens who dressed like they were twenty-five. All the easier to stay in the background. I just wanted to get through the next two years and disappear to college. Preferably somewhere far away. Maybe Siberia.

“They like to say it’s exclusive but that’s just a nice word for it being expensive.” Ashley giggled, toying with her oversize hoop earring. “It’s the most expensive coed school in the city. There’s a few girls-only or boys-only schools that cost more. So we’re like our own little, I don’t know, island, in the middle of it all. Everyone at Vince A more or less stays together.”

“Oh.” I tried to not sound disappointed.

In my head, I began rehearsing what I would say about the reason behind my move. Ashley didn’t understand why I didn’t just say I moved from Keansburg, but then I told her how my high school paper insisted on doing a story on the dangers of drinking and driving, pegged to the incident with Henry. The editor was hoping to use her hard-hitting story as her one-way ticket into the journalism program at Columbia. I figured it doubled as her ticket to Hell. Those who hadn’t heard about Henry through the gossip mill read about it, front and center in the Keansburg Mirror.

Google me. Google Keansburg. Guess what your first hit is?

Alcohol Turns Home Life Tragic and Ride Home Dangerous for Sophomore Emma Connor.

So moving from Philly was the story.

Ashley gave me a cursory rundown of the school and some of the things I’d come to expect from high school. The principal wore horrible suits. The uniforms were itchy in warmer weather. The cafeteria food was comically terrible, but you were allowed out at lunchtime once you were a junior.

We crossed Eighty-fifth Street, racing against the yellow light and slowing our walk as we headed to the entrance.

“Here we are!” Ashley announced, throwing her arms open with a flourish.

I regarded the gray building in front of me. It was an old mansion that had been converted into a high school, and it sure looked the part, with cool stone walls and windows hugged by lavishly scrolled molding. Vincent Academy wasn’t too tall—just five floors, no taller than the stately, old-fashioned brick-and-marble buildings on either side—but to me, it seemed massive and imposing, like it was some bully crushing his way through a crowd of old ladies.

I was suddenly very, very nervous. Maybe the devil I knew was better than the devil I didn’t know? Should I have stayed in Keansburg?

We were early—frozen in an ornate entrance hall where, off to the right, was the office I was supposed to check into as a new student. There were a few kids around—students who looked like they were posing for the Vincent Academy brochure. Girls strewn about here and there, draped over high-backed chairs while they studied from thick textbooks. There were a few boys too, in dark pants, white shirts and mostly undone ties, lounging on a wooden staircase with a scrolled banister, or carrying a basketball and pushing open the double doors in the rear to what looked like a fairly large quad.

Vincent Academy was one of the only coed private schools in Manhattan, a fact, as I looked around, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be happy about or terrified of. As I looked more closely at the girls, I saw that they matched their pristine uniforms with heels and expensive-looking boots. I looked down at my black tights and scuffed Mary Janes through my overgrown bangs—which were cursed with a cowlick—and grimaced. Big diamonds glittered in the ears of a long-haired, fake-tanned blonde, who was scrutinizing a calculus textbook and managing to look glamorous while doing so. In my ears? A row of three tiny imitation-silver hoops that I got at Hot Topic. On sale.

I decided to be happy. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, since they tend to do pesky things like asking about your life and all that. I just wanted to be anonymous. And if this chick was any indication of what my classmates looked like, I was zero competition for any of these girls, who probably spent their morning putting on makeup and arriving at school in chauffeur-driven cars.

Ashley walked with me through the palatial hall to the office, her eyes eager to see a little bit of the hero she used to worship when we were kids. I smiled weakly and made a lame slit across my throat with my index finger. She laughed and I headed inside.

“You must be Miss Connor.” The woman sitting behind the tall wood counter regarded me with iron-gray eyes. They matched her gray hair, pulled into a tight, no-nonsense bun at the nape of her neck. She was even wearing a gray cardigan. I glanced at the nameplate on her desk.

No. Way. Ms. Gray? I blinked and looked again. Mrs. Gary. Close enough! I bet she was wearing gray granny panties, too.

“Yes, um, yes,” I stammered. “I’m Emma Connor.” How did she know who I was? “How did—did you know that?”

She smiled, and a very faint hint of warmth crept into those steely eyes.

“You’re the only student I don’t know, and there’s only one new student due today.” She smiled. “Let me get your schedule for you.”

I groaned internally. I had forgotten how small Vincent Academy was. Keansburg High had 650 students. How could I hide in a school that barely had 200?

“Here you are, dear,” the gray lady said, handing me my schedule. “Your first class today is on the third floor.”

But my locker, well, my locker was in the basement, in a row of old lockers so out of the way, they were always the last to be assigned, falling to latecomers like me and unlucky freshmen.

“Stay there and smile,” the gray lady instructed as I stood in the same spot, scrutinizing my schedule. “Miss Connor,” she snapped, her voice sharp.

“Huh?” I looked up, and she was standing behind some large beige contraption. Suddenly there was a flash. It surprised me—it was too bright, and I saw spots everywhere.

“You can pick up your ID after lunch. In the meantime, please fill these out.” Oh, great, that’s going to be an awesome picture. So sexy.

The gray lady handed me several small yellow forms, telling me to give them to each teacher as I walked into the room. I realized there was no way I was going to avoid the awkward “Hey, kids, we have a new student here” nightmare.

Please, oh, please, don’t make me have to introduce myself. Don’t make me tell them something about myself.

Hi, I’m Emma. I’m basically an orphan and my life sounds like a Lifetime Original Movie. My dad left when I was six. My twin brother died when I was fourteen. My mom got sick soon after that, and died when I was fifteen. I lose everyone I love. And this past June, my stepfather wrapped a car around a telephone pole with us in it. So now, I live with my aunt, I have no friends except for my cousin anymore, thanks to my jerk stepfather, and I still keep a journal with all my hopes and fears in it. Also, my favorite color is purple and I think baby animals are cute.

I finished signing my forms and returned to my cousin, who snatched the schedule from my hands, scrutinizing my teachers.

“Your Monday through Wednesday schedule is almost the same. You have Mr. D for chemistry. He has people call him Mr. D because his name is so long. That’s good. He’s supposed to be fair,” she mused. “Ugh, Mrs. Dell. She suuucks,” Ashley said, drawing it out dramatically. “Sorry about that. But hey, we’ll be in the same class!”

I looked to see which subject she was talking about. Latin. Wait, Latin?

I realized I had been put in freshman Latin.

I never really paid much attention to which classes I’d actually be taking. Christine was on the board at Vincent Academy and pulled some strings to allow me to take the placement exams late—which was why I was starting three weeks after the school year had already begun. I forgot that the Vincent Academy required students to take two years of Latin. All I knew about Latin was E Pluribus Unum.

I looked down at Ashley and tried to be optimistic about it. “Well, at least I have a friend in class!”

She smiled her billion-dollar smile and showed me to my locker, in a narrow hallway next to the chemistry lab and boiler room. I felt like some goblin, tucked away in the basement dungeon. I would not have been surprised if Freddy Krueger stored his books next to me.

“Okay, now I have to go to my locker.” She smiled again, giving me an apologetic look. “It’s on the second floor. I won’t see you until Latin, which is the last class.”

“After lunch,” I replied woodenly. “Oh, crap!” I moaned.

“What?” Ashley looked alarmed.

I realized I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t want to go to lunch alone—and here, each grade took a separate lunch period because the cafeteria was kind of small.

“Nothing,” I said, throwing on my brightest fake smile. “I thought I forgot to bring something.”

“Oh. Okay, well, I’ll see you in Latin. You’ll hate it,” she promised, then added, “but Mrs. Dell has a moustache so it’s kind of funny to watch it move as she says anything that ends in ‘-ibus.’ It truly…flutters in the breeze,” she added dramatically.

I giggled, and gave her a hug.

“Thank you,” I said into her mess of curls, and gave her a bigger squeeze so she knew how much I really did appreciate it.

She bounced back to the stairwell and turned back to face me, looking older than the fourteen years I knew her to be.

“You’ll be fine.” Ashley looked at me solemnly with her giant blue eyes before skipping up the stairs, her overstuffed backpack bouncing up and down on her hip.

I eyed the emergency fire exit door and considered making a break for it.

“Don’t be stupid, Emma,” I whispered to myself. “Just two more years of high school. It can’t be worse than living with Henry.”

I shoved my notebooks into my locker and slammed the metal door defiantly.

Here we go.

Getting to school a little early was a good plan. My first class was still empty, so I was able to discreetly slip the form the gray lady gave me to my first teacher, Mrs. Urbealis, who greeted me warmly and said, “Sit anywhere.”

She looked sharp and clever. I figured I could ask.

“Anywhere? Come on, where should I really sit?” Back in Keansburg, I always had the third seat in the second row. In every single class. Enough of a breeze if the window was open, and if it was cold out, the first row got the brunt of the chill. Great seat. Sonny, the funniest guy in class, always sat in the front…Cyndi, our class president sat behind him. I stared at the desks, knowing that they had been unofficially assigned since the first week of freshman year.

Mrs. Urbealis broke into a knowing smile.

“Okay, Emma. I would say, take that seat.” She gestured to the last seat in the seventh row. The last seat in the classroom. If this were a chessboard, I’d just be a rook. Appropriate, since I felt like a rookie.

I smiled gratefully and sat down, pulling out my notebook and absentmindedly doodling on the green cover. I usually drew circles or loops…nothing meaningful. I got lost in my doodles, and started daydreaming. Maybe New York wouldn’t be so bad. This is the city that people spend their entire lives trying to get to, right? There were enough distractions…it wouldn’t be like home, where I knew everyone and was still so utterly alone.

I looked down at my green notebook cover and realized I’d just drawn a bunch of eyes. I shuddered at the ominous artwork and flipped the cover open, checking out the other students who had started to file in. They were all a little…glossy. I had wondered where everyone was right before the bell rang, then realized that all the girls must have been polishing their looks in the bathroom. Lips perfectly shiny. Hair brushed and freshly flat-ironed, or arranged in carefully messy curls. I self-consciously reached up to my cowlick, making sure it was behaving and staying in place, relieved to find it in line with the rest of my hair.

Good little soldier, I thought, patting my hair.

The bell rang, and Mrs. Urbealis called the class to attention.

“Okay guys, you know where we left off. Let’s continue with Tammany Hall and the political machine. Please open your books to page 106.”

I ran my hand over my history textbook, then turned the cover back. A large snap rang through the mostly quiet room as I broke the spine on my brand-new book. I could feel the eyes of every student in that room staring at me through my wall of hair, which was doing nothing to protect me.

“Class, we do have a new student. Miss Emma Connor.” She paused.

Please, oh, please, do not make me come up there and tell you a little something about myself.

“Let’s make her feel welcome, shall we? Show her the Vincent Academy way?”

She gave me a warm smile and I felt better, hoping, deep down, that the Vincent Academy way would be a good thing.

It turned out that my next class, math, was in the same room, so I just sat in the same desk, as did the girl in front of me. She turned around with a big smile.

“Hi, I’m Jenn,” she said with a big smile. “Jenn Hynes. How’s your first day?” She seemed friendly enough, the kind of girl I would have hung out with back in Keansburg. All those friends ditched me because they either were afraid of Henry, or were afraid of how it looked to be friends with me, the poster child for tragedy. I stopped getting invited anywhere, since I wasn’t considered fun at parties anymore. When I did bother to show up, I turned into the designated-driving police and was deemed a total buzzkill.

“Oh, it’s okay so far.” I tried to match her bright smile. “So far so good.”

“Where are you from?”

“Philadelphia.” I readied myself to churn out the performance of a lifetime. “My parents—well, my mom, actually—” Why not make it my mom who got the job? Yay, female empowerment! “—got a job transfer. They needed her in Tokyo, and I didn’t want to go, so I moved to live with my aunt Christine.”

Jenn seemed to believe my story, so I continued prattling on.

“Yeah, my family decided to move, but I don’t speak Japanese, and sure, they have schools that are English-speaking, but I—I didn’t really want to go….” I trailed off and realized that she was staring at my necklace.

“Hey, what’s that?” she asked, pointing at the silver charm, which hung on a box-link silver necklace. Round and slightly tarnished, the charm was etched with a medieval-looking crest. It was a little larger than a quarter—a “statement piece,” my aunt had called it once—but I loved it. My hands instinctively went up to the necklace.

“Oh, it’s a charm my brother, Ethan, gave me years ago,” I said, toying with the disc. “He said he thought it would bring me good luck. I just think it looks cool.”

“It is cool,” Jenn agreed. “Different.” She brushed her pin-straight honey-brown hair back, and I noticed the Tiffany necklace glistening at her throat. Of course.

I took that as a cue to compliment her jewelry, which went over really well. Jenn seemed to decide I was acceptable enough, and asked if I wanted to sit with her friends at lunch.

The teacher, Mr. Agneta, called the class to attention, and called on me—a lot. I wasn’t sure where all my aunt’s tuition money was going, but it sure wasn’t into the math program. A lot of this stuff just felt like I had covered it sophomore year. I got every answer right, and felt a little satisfied with myself. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Jenn and I had the next class together—but she disappeared somewhere before I could find out where I was going. I flattened myself against a wall to avoid the crowd of students in the narrow hallway, scrutinizing my schedule and trying to figure out where to go.

“Hey, newbie, need help?” a deep voice to my left asked. I looked up…and up some more…into the blue eyes of an extremely tall blond guy.

“Um, yeah, thanks,” I mumbled. “Do you know where room 201 is?”

“I’m headed there myself. I’ll walk you.” He smoothed out his red tie. “Anything for a beautiful damsel in distress.”

“Uh, thanks?” I tried to keep the confusion out of my voice and failed miserably. Who talks like that? I fell in step beside him as we walked to the staircase.

“I’m Emma, by the way.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Emma,” he purred, a sly smile on his face. Blondo was attractive in that soap-opera way—tall, blond, definitely built—but something about the way he smiled reminded me of those National Geographic documentaries about animals in the African wild. He looked like a lion about to pounce. I felt very caribou-esque all of a sudden.

“And you are…?” I asked as we shuffled down the steps. It almost strained my neck to look up at him.

“Don’t you know who I am?” Blondy McBlonderson snapped, the smile replaced with a smug smirk.

“Should I?” I asked blankly.

“I guess you’re not from around here,” he purred, putting his palm on the small of my back. I quickened my step and he dropped his hand.

“No, I’m from Philadelphia,” I mumbled.

“That explains it. Because if you were from New York, you would make it your business to know who I am. And I would definitely have remembered you.”

The slick smile was back on his face as James Blond spoke directly to my shirt’s third button. Great. My first day and I attract the attention of the biggest manwhore I’ve ever met. I started thanking whatever lucky stars I had that we had reached the English classroom.

“Uh yeah, well, thanks for showing me to class,” I muttered, eager to get away from him. This guy had more lines than loose-leaf.

“Oh, it was all my pleasure,” Legally Bland said, leering at me. I’d always heard the phrase “mentally undressing someone with your eyes” but never had I actually seen it in action. This dude’s eyes could perform a freakin’ CAT scan, they were so thorough.

I spied Jenn and was thankful to see she had saved me a seat next to her, in the last row of the class. I practically ran over to her, and she introduced me to her friends Kristin Thorn, whom I’d recognized as the highlighted, tanned blonde I’d seen earlier, and Francisco Fernandez, a guy with a friendly smile whom I liked immediately.

Kristin looked me up and down as if I were dressed in a chicken suit, and not in the same exact outfit she was wearing.

“So, like, you’re the new girl.” It was an accusation, not a question. She tossed her long hair and glared at me.

“Yes, hi, I’m Emma.” I flashed an awkward smile.

“So, like, why did you decide to leave…where is it you’re from?” She sniffed, tossing her hair again and glaring at me like I had monkeys crawling out of my nostrils. I reached up and smoothed my cowlick, wondering if it was sticking out and flipping her off, based on the look on her face.

“Philadelphia,” Jenn broke in, giving Kristin a wary look.

“So, like, did your family, like, throw you out?” she sneered, punctuating it with another toss of her white-streaked hair and crossing her red-soled shoes. Of course she wore Christian Louboutin heels. My cheeks got hot.

“So, like, do you have some kind of OCD that makes you toss your hair all the time?” I mimicked her, meeting her ice-blue glare. “Are you going to start counting things, and knocking on wood, too? I’m just concerned for you.” I tried to make my voice sound sweet and convincing, like I really did have genuine worry over this glossy princess who had, for some reason, deemed me the enemy. But after my skeezy encounter with Blondo, my patience was wearing thin—and my sarcasm was evident.

I heard a snicker from the black-haired guy who’d just sat down in front of me, and I knew that our conversation had been overheard.

Great. So much for staying anonymous. Is it too late to transfer again?

“No, I’m fine. Don’t you even try to think about me.” She bared a row of perfectly straight, bleached-white teeth that stood out in her fake-tanned face. White and orange, orange and white. This girl looked like a Creamsicle.

Kristin continued her nasty tirade. “I just think your arrival is…off. Why would you transfer out in the middle of September? Why not wait until the end of the semester? You don’t make sense. Why are you here now?”

“Well, you see, my mom got a new job. In Tokyo. So I decided to stay in the States with my aunt Christine. Christine Considine.” I emphasized my aunt’s last name—she had some serious pull at that school and if Blondo can pull the “Don’t you know why I am?” move, why couldn’t I?

A slight look of surprise replaced her scowl, but she kept up with her inquisition.

“So where are you actually from, though?” she asked me, Emma the cockroach. “Philadelphia.” Did she not hear Jenn say it?

“Hmm.” She pursed her shiny lips. “My brother is at boarding school outside of Philadelphia. What school was it?”

“Oh, it wasn’t a boarding school…you wouldn’t know it.” I stalled. Crap. Crappity crap crap! Why hadn’t I decided to pick a fake alma mater? Knowing my luck, it would be her brother’s high school. She would own the high school. It would have a wing named after her family. The Creamsicle Wing.

“Well, come on, Emma.” The way she said my name was as if she was spitting out sour milk. “Was it Delbarton? Pingry? Which one?”

My mind raced, flipping through everything I knew of Philadelphia. What was there? The Liberty Bell? The Phillies? Cream cheese? Oh, yeah, Cream Cheese High School. Brilliant, Emma.

Something from my fifth-grade studies popped into my head.

“Congress Academy,” I heard myself saying, pulling the knowledge of the site of the first Continental Congress out of thin air.

Kristin wrinkled her nose, and the small diamond chip she had pierced on her left nostril sparkled. “I don’t know it.”

“Oh, it’s really small. And exclusive,” I added.

“Where is it?” she pressed.

“Downtown,” I lied, hoping downtown was a good thing. For Keansburg’s proximity to Philadelphia, I hadn’t been since a school field trip in eighth grade.

“Downtown? I’ve never heard of any Congress Academy downtown. I’ll have to ask my brother if he knows it,” she continued. “If it’s any good.” She resumed looking at me with a satisfied look on her face. She might as well have said, “So there!”

“Hey, Kristin, why do you care?”

The smooth voice came from the row in front of us, from the black-haired guy who laughed at my dig earlier.

Throwing his left arm cavalierly over the back of his chair—so his arm was resting slightly on my desk—he turned around and faced Kristin, who turned beet-red and stammered, “I don’t care. I was only—”

“You were only being a nasty little girl, as usual,” he said, coolly. “Anyway, I know the school. We’ve played them.”

He turned and looked at me for a brief second—and my pulse sped. I didn’t expect my response. I’d been around good-looking guys before—but this guy looked like a rock star. Long black lashes framed his green eyes—twinkling green eyes that locked with mine.

“In fact,” he added with a smirk. “At Congress Academy, they’re very good.”

I smiled back. Is he flirting with me?

His gaze dropped lower. For a split second I thought he was being Blondo 2.0 and staring at something else—okay, two something elses—on my chest, when I realized he was looking at my charm necklace. His eyes returned to mine and crinkled up at the corner with his smile. Then the boy with the rock-star eyes quickly turned around, returning to the exact same pose he was in before, which I now noticed was slouched in his chair, legs sprawled out, not caring in the least who might trip over them.

Chapter 2

Class was over, and it was time to go to lunch. I wasn’t sure if my confrontation with Kristin would mean that I had lost my potential lunch partner in Jenn, or if I’d actually be lunch, with Kristin picking at my bones and my flesh.

Relief isn’t the word for it when Francisco immediately said, “Hey, new girl, sit with us at lunch.” He ignored the glare from Kristin and gave me a big smile.

Looking right at her, I replied, “Sure, thanks.”

Three hours in, and there was no chance I would get to be invisible in this school. Anonymity I wanted, but it was clearly not an option, since I wouldn’t be a doormat. I didn’t take Henry’s crap, why would I take it from some Upper East Side princess?

We strolled slowly to the cafeteria, Kristin racing down the stairs quickly with Jenn for what I could see was about to become a fully blown-out bitch session about me. Francisco hung back, peppering me with benign questions until Kristin and Jenn were far enough ahead. Then he threw in, “Don’t let Kristin get to you.”

“What’s her deal?” I asked, exasperated. “I didn’t do anything.”

“There doesn’t always have to be a reason,” he stated plainly. “She was in these commercials for super-absorbent diapers when she was a toddler, so she thinks she’s better than everyone. I still think she’s just as full of crap as she was then. Some people are just rotten.”

I burst out laughing, surprised by Francisco’s candor.

“She has quite a history with Anthony—one of those on-and-off things—so I’m sure she’s not thrilled that he was all over you in the doorway of the classroom,” Francisco continued, giving me a sideways glance. “Way to make a splash on your first day, newbie.”

“Was that his name? He seemed annoyed that I didn’t know who he was,” I said, then groaned internally. Great, that’s probably Francisco’s best friend or something.

To my relief, he just started laughing. “Yeah, I bet. His royal high-ass isn’t used to that. So I take it you shot him down?”

“More or less,” I mumbled, and he snorted with laughter. I breathed a sigh of relief—finally, someone that seemed normal.

“So, Francisco, who’s the other guy, the guy who stood up to Kristin?” I had to find out a little more about the green-eyed mystery guy—who clearly knew I was lying about my hometown.

“Oh, just call me Cisco,” he said, and I dropped the question, since we had arrived at the cafeteria, right behind Jenn and Kristin. I heard Kristin hiss, “So what, does he, like, know her already? I bet she transferred to stalk him or something.”

Francisco just rolled his eyes and in a hushed tone, said, “She’s a drama queen. Literally, too—she’s the drama queen, so hope you’re not planning on trying out for the school play,” he added wryly.

“Who needs the school play? It looks like there’s no way to avoid the drama at this place,” I whispered back, and Cisco laughed as I followed him into the small cafeteria that was miles away from the industrial-style one I was used to in Keansburg. Instead of the scratched Formica I once knew, the tables were long, dark wood, looking like they’d be at home in any upscale dining room. Which, I realized, this was, since the school was in an old mansion and all. I suddenly was not very hungry. I grabbed a small prewrapped sandwich—no idea what kind—and an iced tea, and filed behind Cisco in line. I settled in at the table next to him, and gave a smile to Jenn, who was sitting across from me. To my relief, she smiled back.

“So, Emma, do you like Vince A so far?” The question came from a short, sandy-haired guy to my right—Austin, I think his name was. He was slightly freckled and smiling, and seemed nice enough.

“Yeah, it’s cool. I mean, school’s school. Right?”

“Well, do you think you’ll be joining any of the clubs? We’re looking for volunteers for Halloween Movie Night in a few weeks,” he asked pointedly, playing with his tie which, I noticed, was dotted with a small pattern of the school’s insignia.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said, smiling apologetically. “The only thing I really like to do is…run.” Thanks to my aunt’s location, I was close to Central Park, and could just get in there and run…and run. All my thoughts melted away, and I just focused on the pavement as it kissed my feet.

Austin seized on the opportunity. “We don’t really have a track team. It’s more like a club, but you should join anyway. The athletics at this school aren’t one of the biggest priorities—that would be academics, of course—” He would have continued prattling on if something from across the cafeteria hadn’t caught our attention—and the attention of everyone else in the room.

Amid the chatter in the room, two voices got discernibly louder, until one of the voices—belonging to the same black-haired guy that sat in front of me in English—stood up and flung his empty lunch tray across the table with enough force that it slid off and fell. He slammed his chair into the table, almost hitting the blond guy sitting next to him. The booming crack it made caused everyone to turn and stare. He grabbed a gray messenger bag and stomped out as the chair wobbled and fell to the floor with a loud clacking sound. The blond guy was seething as he turned around—and immediately locked eyes with me. It was Anthony, and he caught me staring at the confrontation. I blushed and looked down—not quite sure why I was embarrassed to be caught looking, since everyone else was staring too.

“So yeah, the athletics at this school, well, they’re not that great, but they’re getting better. I’m on the student council, and one of the things I’m trying to do—” Austin continued, unfazed.

“Wait!” I stammered. “What—what the hell was that all about?”

“What?” He looked dumbfounded.

“That!” I waved my left hand toward the source of the commotion.

“Oh, that. The basketball team,” Austin said. “Dumb jocks, you know how they are. They might actually win a championship if some players didn’t get kicked out so much for fighting. Especially that one. Him and his temper.” He gestured toward where my mystery rock-star boy had stormed out. “Who?”

“Brendan. Brendan Salinger.” He pouted as he said the name.

“Oh.” At least I had a name. Hot and a hothead. I returned to picking at my sandwich—chicken salad, gross!—when I realized that our conversation had caught the attention of Kristin, who sneered under her breath, “So Emma’s going after Anthony and Brendan? What a slut.” I just rolled my eyes. I had zero interest in Anthony. But Brendan…he was intriguing.

“So Austin.” I turned, putting on my brightest smile. “What’s his deal? You don’t seem to like him too much.”

“He’s okay. It’s just annoying that Salinger gets away with everything. He never does anything for the school unless he’s forced into it,” Austin huffed, then changed the subject, trying to wrangle me into volunteering for the winter dance. I was still curious about Brendan, but was drawn into the chatter in the lunchroom and did my best to keep up. I didn’t want to lose this lunch seat and have to sit alone or worse—go eat in the library like I had during those last painful weeks at Keansburg High, when I scarfed down peanut butter sandwiches while standing in the dusty stacks in the Applied Science section, where no one ever went. It was less painful than answering questions from curious students masquerading as concerned friends. Is your stepfather going to jail? Did he always drink? Why is your arm bandaged? Are you going to eat the rest of your fries? It was better to put my headphones on and try to block it all out, alone.

After lunch, I picked up my ID, not even bothering to look at it as I raced to chemistry class. I walked in hesitantly, not sure what to do about a lab partner. I scanned the room of the basement lab, located conveniently next to my gremlin locker room, looking for anyone sitting alone. My eyes fell to a girl with pitch-black hair, blond roots and fuchsia tips, sitting alone and reading some printouts that she hid, badly, behind her textbook. She wore black tulle underneath her plaid skirt, which puffed it out like a tutu. I liked her right away.

She looked surprised that I approached her before regarding me with serious, red-eyeliner-rimmed blue-gray eyes. “Your energy works for me,” she said, raising her hand, her black-painted index fingernail extended as if she were trying to stir the air. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled, then noticed the pendants hanging around her neck and realized she was the school’s resident witch. Every school had one.

Her eyes drifted to my necklace.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, smiling. “That’s really cool. May I?” She reached out to touch the pendant, stroking the silver crest with her finger.

“Beautiful,” she declared. “I’ve always loved this design. By the way, I’m Angelique Tedt,” she said, her voice a little thick with dramatic emphasis. I was about to ask her where she’d seen the crest before when we were oh-so-rudely interrupted. “Whatever, Angela,” hissed a voice behind me. I turned around and saw Kristin, sitting at the lab table behind me. If Angelique could tell my fortune, she’d see lots of spitballs in my future.

“It’s nice to meet you…Angelique,” I said to my new lab partner, stressing her name. If she wanted me to call her Potato Chip, I would have.

Angelique smiled, and returned to her printouts, which I saw were spells printed out from some Wiccan website. As long as she didn’t get me into trouble for stealing chemicals from the lab, I didn’t care what she did.

I was counting the seconds to see Ashley in Latin. I had to find out what the story was with Brendan. You just find him interesting, Emma. You are not allowed to be interested in him beyond that.

I was barely in my seat before Ashley unleashed her questions.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, her eyes wide with excitement. “Are the classes hard? Any cute guys? Do you like it so far? Any cute guys?”

“It’s okay,” I said cautiously. “A kind of funny thing happened though.” I replayed how Brendan interjected to save me from Kristin’s nasty inquisition and—darting a furtive glance to make sure that no one was listening—whispered, “He clearly knows I’m full of it with the whole Philly thing.” Her eyes grew so big I thought they’d fall out of her head and roll down the hall.

“No way! And he defended you?” Ashley yelled, whacking me in the arm. I yelped, prompting the entire classroom to stare at me. I wished I could melt into the floor.

“Yes, now keep it down!” I hissed, casting a glance at Mrs. Dell. She didn’t seem to have heard. “Dude! He’s hot. Super hot. He’s got that total loner bad-boy vibe, too—I heard that he doesn’t really hang out with anyone from school. He got suspended from the basketball team already this year for fighting, but he still plays in the pickup games after school, and he’s really good.”

Ashley continued rattling off facts as if she had been studying for A.P. Brendan Class. “He deejays, too. His mom’s on the board with Aunt Christine so he ends up deejaying school dances. I heard his mom makes him do it as punishment any time he gets into trouble. Which I heard is a lot.”

“How do you know so much about him?” I asked, amazed. “You’ve been in this school for three weeks.”

“Well, after he got suspended from the team during the first game of the year, everyone was talking about him,” she confessed. “It was a big deal. Some guy from the other team tripped him and tried to hit him and Brendan just knocked him out with one punch. Besides, he’s so hot!

“Oh, and the best part? Kristin asked him out last year and he flat-out rejected her. He thinks she’s the worst, the absolute worst,” she cracked, laughing. “What I heard is that she asked him out, he laughed in her face and peaced out. Like, gave her the peace sign and walked away.”

“Wow, that’s cold!” The thought of that smug girl, my instant nemesis, getting shot down was pretty priceless. “I wish there was a photo of it.” It would be my screen saver.

“Oh, come with me after school and watch them practice in the quad. There’s a whole group of guys that play basketball. He’s really good. It’s fun to watch.”

Watching cute guys after class? This was an extracurricular activity I could get into.

Finally, the bell rang, and I gave Ashley an eager look. Wow. One day and already I’m dorking out over some guy.

“Um, I don’t mean to offend,” Ashley said, eyeing me studiously, “but you need, like, some lipstick. Or something!” She giggled. “I mean, if Brendan Salinger singled you out on the first day…”

“He didn’t single me out!” I cut in. I was down for looking—that’s it. Window-shopping strictly. And besides, based on the girls I’d seen at this place, my boring self was hardly getting a second glance from someone who looked like him.

“I’m sure I’m just an excuse.” I sighed. “He thinks Kristin sucks—with good reason—and just wanted to give the new girl a hand. That’s fine, whatever. It’s cool.”

She just shook her head and pulled out a small bottle of some random pop star’s signature perfume, spritzing me with the sickly-sweet smell.

“Oh, come on, Ash, that smells like a unicorn fart,” I cried, recoiling at the overpowering, candylike smell. She just dragged me into the bathroom and pulled a pot of lip gloss out of her bag.

After about ten minutes of fussing over me in the bathroom—I borrowed some mascara and that was it—Ashley and I worked our way down to the quad, a large courtyard separating the main building of the school with an annex. They were playing basketball, but it might as well have been murderball. Guys were getting knocked down, players were getting kicked out of the game, then brought back in—and I noticed Kristin was in charge of keeping score.

“Eleven-eight,” Kristin said smugly. She had rolled her uniform skirt up until it was practically a belt and gave a lusty look to one side of the court. I followed her gaze and saw Anthony and Brendan there—and instantly wanted to hit her with my backpack. My mind immediately went to what Cisco said. Some people really are just rotten.

Brendan spun around, dribbling the ball with one hand and brushing his black hair back with his other. He was fast, that’s for sure. He had changed out of his uniform into a white T-shirt and gym shorts. Every time he aimed for the basket, his shirt hiked up, and I have to admit, it was hard not to notice just how very nice what was hiding under his shirt was. His black hair hung low on his forehead again, as he contemplated his next move, deciding to throw the ball to Anthony. Guess they’d made up.

And then he turned his striking green eyes on me.

Ashley was the first to notice. For all her exuberance, she kept her cool pretty impressively. For a minute.

“Oh. My. God. Brendan. Is. Staring. At. You.” She tried her hardest not to move her lips, but failed miserably. Wow, this girl has absolutely no future as a ventriloquist.

“I know,” I replied, trying to look cool as I met his eyes. He continued to stare at me, his gaze unbroken, with those bright emerald eyes peering at me from his messy black hair, until his teammate tossed him the ball. For someone not paying attention, he caught it easily, turning away to make the next basket. Brendan caught the ball as it swooshed through the hoop, holding it under his arm and turning around. He gave me a sly smile, tilting his chin up in a small greeting. I smiled back, taking note of an unfamiliar feeling in my stomach. Holy crap, this must be what butterflies feel like.

I broke his gaze, pretending to root around in my backpack for something.

“Ashley, let’s go,” I whispered.

“No way! Seriously, you should stay and talk to him.” She grinned devilishly and wagged her eyebrows up and down.

I grabbed her arm. “No! Please!” I hissed, feeling panicky. “Let’s go.” Within seconds, we were out of the quad, walking home.

“Look, Emma…I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been though…” Ashley started on the walk home. Oh, no. Please. Don’t make me talk about this.

“Ashley, look,” I began, a little harsher than I intended, and I instantly felt terrible. The truth was, today would not have been as easy as it had been without her.

“What?” She looked at me with wounded eyes.

“I don’t…feel comfortable. At all. A lot of the time,” I mumbled, picking at my dark nail polish and peeling the paint off nervously. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to start crushing on some guy who I have zero chances with. I don’t even know how I’m going to do on the friend front. Kristin Thorn already hates me for some bananas reason. Don’t you understand? It hasn’t worked out all that well for me—being close to someone.”

Ashley looked at me with more wisdom than I’d ever given her credit for. Suddenly, I felt stupid for denying her the knowledge of her fourteen years.

“Emma,” she said, softly. “I get it. And it’s okay if you want to feel a mess. But if you start to feel normal again, and if something makes you happy, it doesn’t mean that you don’t miss your mom or Ethan. It doesn’t mean the last few years didn’t suck. But remember, this is your chance to just be Emma. Not Emma with the wicked stepfather, Emma with the terrible home life, Emma the whole school is talking about. You’re just Emma. Your mom would want you to be happy. So would your brother.”

“I know, Ashley.” I sighed, wincing as I always did anytime I thought of my mom and brother, Ethan, lost within a year of each other.

“Why on earth my mom decided to marry Henry when she knew she was sick, I’ll never know.” Henry had been asking my mom to marry her forever, and I never understood why a cancer diagnosis made her finally say yes.

“She wanted to make sure someone was around to take care of you,” Ashley said quietly. “I get it. She didn’t want you to be alone.”

I am anyway. I pursed my lips, willing myself to keep a strong front as I shuffled along the concrete sidewalk.

“Emma, I’m serious,” Ashley said, coming to a full stop. “Give yourself a break. If not for you, then for them.”

I sighed. “I know, Ash, in my head. I’ll work on convincing myself, you know, here.” I pointed at my chest.

“In your boobs?” She hooted, giving me a devilish look, and I laughed, relishing the break in the somber mood. “Hey, you never showed me your ID. Lemme see,” she said, pulling at my backpack. Glad for the change of subject, I reached in my backpack and pulled out the small white card.

“Jeez, Emma.” Ashley let out a low whistle. “Seriously, this sucks.”

“That bad?” I grabbed it back. “Let me see.”

Oh, great.

I looked like the “before” picture on one of those makeover shows. I hadn’t been paying attention to the gray lady, so she caught me looking up, startled, my mouth kind of open and slack-jawed. The too-bright flash had given my skin a tone that could only be described as yellow-gray. Zombie girl, at your service. Still, it was a nice picture of my necklace. It caught the light nicely—you could really see the crest on it.

“Sorry about the bad ID, Emma,” Ashley said.

“You’re a bad ID!” I said, laughing.

“Oh, you’re still doing that?” she asked, rolling her eyes at my stupid little joke. Anytime I couldn’t think of something clever to say, I just told the person they were whatever we were talking about. Ethan and I used to spend hours annoying our mom with it.

“It’s dinnertime, kids,” she would call from the kitchen. “Turn off the TV.”

“You’re a TV!” we’d call back in unison. Mom would just chuckle and shake her head, chalking it up to one of our random twin idiosyncrasies.

“Eh, it still makes me laugh.” I shrugged, smiling at the memory.

“Yeah, you’ll be fine,” Ashley said dryly as we reached the front door of my aunt’s building. “See you tomorrow!”

One day down. 168 to go.

Chapter 3

The next two and a half weeks kind of plodded on—although crossing them off in the back of my notebook as if I were serving a prison sentence sure didn’t help the time fly. Jenn, I assumed, was afraid of losing favor with Kristin, since some days she was warm and friendly—and others, she just kept her head down and ignored me. Cisco and I were becoming fast friends, and at least, I always had someone who talked to me at lunch. (Well, Austin did, but he was just trying to get me on the winter dance committee.) Angelique, my chemistry partner, refused to eat in the cafeteria, so on sunny days we’d just grab something to go and walk around the neighborhood.

I could tell that my friendship with her was not going over well with some of my classmates, who were put off by her quirky ways. (Once, she blamed her missing homework on the moon.) Angelique was also on scholarship, so of course the snobs at the school treated her like she lived in a mental hospital, not in an apartment building on Tenth Avenue. I, personally, thought she was a trip. Besides, these were people who had yet to even say three words to me, and Angelique—one of the best students in the class—had generously offered me all her notes to copy. Finally, Angelique admitted to me one day that she did play up her beliefs to get a rise out of everyone.

“They don’t understand anything that doesn’t conform to what they believe, or what they think, so of course I do whatever I can to make them uncomfortable,” she confessed to me over knishes on a bench in Central Park. “I, truly, am a witch. My mom’s a witch, too.

“It’s not like you see in the movies. Sure, there are some bad witches, those with evil intentions—my mom’s met a few,” Angelique whispered conspiratorially, flipping her jet-black hair back. “But not all are bad. And truly, I do see auras, and I really can see and sense people’s energy. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the best feeling to make these look-alike sheep so uncomfortable. I make stuff up sometimes just to annoy them.”

That afternoon, she expertly completed an experiment in acid/base properties, and loudly announced that the chemicals spoke to her, winking at me out of the corner of her eye.

Thanks to Angelique, I caught up on schoolwork pretty quickly. But things weren’t necessarily hard at this new school…just competitive. Still, I threw myself into my studies, telling myself that I was trying to get on the Principal’s List, to make my aunt happy. I hated to admit the truth: I was trying to distract myself from a growing, nagging interest in Brendan. (A regular name on the honor roll? Brendan Alexander Salinger. So much for being a dumb jock.)

He strode into English class on my second day, and all I could think was, “Damn.” He put the hot in “hot mess.” And the mess. His black hair was sticking out like it had exploded, his shirt was untucked and his tie barely knotted. But the disheveled look worked on him, like he had just rolled out of bed and onto the set of a jeans commercial.

Brendan turned his vibrant green eyes on my light brown ones, and I took that as my cue to say, “Hi.” He gave me a curt nod, then flopped down in his desk without so much as a polite “Hey” in response. I felt like I had been slapped. After that, when he came into class (always late, and always going un-scolded by the teacher), I would, invariably, look up at the wrong moment and catch his eye briefly. My eyes would dart back down to my Shakespeare text, reading the same line over and over again, toying with my necklace—a nervous habit that had gotten a lot worse. It was like a whole new level of Hell, one that Dante had forgotten about.

I didn’t know why I was so drawn to him. But fortunately, apart from English class, it was easy to avoid Brendan. I begged off watching the pickup games in the quad after school, telling Ashley that I was thinking about joining the track team after all and needed to get my stamina up by jogging in the park.

“It’s not a team. They don’t compete,” she drawled. “It’s a club. The Running Club. Seriously. They just go to the park and, like, run around.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, incredulous. I pictured the glossy girls at the school, teetering about the park in heels. Okay girls, there’s a Louis Vuitton bag in here somewhere. Go find it! And they’d scatter, fluffy Pomeranians clutched in their arms, as their little club scurried around.

So I was a running club of one, leaving the school through the gym exit so I could avoid Brendan and his friends in the quad. Well, I was avoiding Brendan and Anthony, for different reasons. I was afraid I’d lose control: I’d throw myself on Brendan—or throw up on Anthony.

After two and a half weeks of “Lookin’ good, newbie,” and “When are you gonna give me your number?” Anthony finally cornered me in the doorway of English class.

“What’s a hot piece like you doing hanging out with a freak like Angela?” Anthony’s frosty blue eyes looked me up and down, and he rested his hand on the polished wooden frame of the doorway, blocking me in the hallway.

“Angelique,” I corrected, recoiling at being called a “piece.” “And she’s not a freak.”

“I know who your aunt is, Emily. You need to associate with people on your level,” he purred. “She is on my level,” I snapped. “At least she knows my name.”

“Come on, you’re really not going to pass up a chance at all this, are you?” he asked, running his hand down his muscular chest before brushing my bangs out of my face. I smacked his meaty hand away.

Anthony’s smile quickly turned into a sneer. “You better keep your hands to yourself if you know what’s good for you. Just remember—I’m not the one whose parents dumped me at my aunt’s house so they could go out of town. You should consider yourself lucky that I’m even talking to you.”

Then—to my absolute shock and horror—Anthony winked at me. “Let me know when you’ve come to your senses.”

Before I could even respond, he strode away and flopped into his seat—even his walk was arrogant.

I heard Mr. Emerson coming up the stairs behind me, so I ducked into the English classroom—catching Cisco’s eye and trying to avoid Brendan’s. Great. The one time he actually shows up to class on time, he sees you get into a confrontation with his buddy.

“What was that about?” Cisco asked. I leaned over to tell him, but Mr. Emerson shuffled in, coughing with the tenacious remains of a nasty cold. He attempted to read a few lines of Shakespeare before launching into a fit of hacking and wheezing. I felt bad for Mr. Emerson, but truthfully, it was kind of gross. Finally, he gave up, forcing the class to read aloud instead.

“You.” He pointed at Austin before blowing his nose. “Read. Page seventy-three.” (Although with his cold, it sounded like “Debendy-dwee.”)

Austin beamed—anything for school spirit—and turned the pages to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2, taking his task seriously.

“When forty winters besiege thy brow…” he began, and I darted my eyes around. I locked eyes with Anthony—who licked his lips at me. Oh, puke. I quickly broke eye contact.

“Gross,” I whispered to myself, staring down at my text book. Stare out the window, Emma. Yep, that’s a safe place. I twisted my head away from Anthony to face the eastern window, at the sun that was beaming in, and considered skipping my afternoon classes—I had to get out of that school. Besides, it was great running weather.

I sighed, losing myself in an extensive examination of my split ends. I was so overdue for a trim. My ends looked like tree branches. Why Anthony had any interest in me—I was hardly as polished as my classmates—I had no idea.

When Austin was done, Mr. Emerson asked for a volunteer to read the next sonnet, and Kristin raised her hand. Shocker! Eager to show off, her hand was raised so high that she only had one butt cheek left on her seat. Mr. Emerson flapped his hand in her direction, and she smiled primly.

Kristin stood up—Austin had stayed in his desk—and flipped her hair, overacting and putting a ridiculous amount of emotion behind every word. I sat there, bored, my head propped up by my hand, my eyes rolling so far back in my head I could practically see my own brain.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” She was emphasizing the wrong words. I smirked to myself, listening to her emote. Cisco pretended to shoot himself in the head and I stifled a giggle fit. Then I went back to my split ends. Wow, I really needed a haircut.

“Emma.”

My head snapped to attention. Mr. Emerson was looking at me, and I’d been caught staring at my hair.

“Huh? I mean, what did you say, sir?”

“Please read Sonnet 29. And—” he broke into another coughing fit “—stand up.”

I flipped to the sonnet—oh, great. No matter what it meant to Shakespeare, it was going to take on a whole new meaning for me. Just try not to let your voice crack on the word outcast, Emma.

I took a deep breath and stood, holding my textbook in front of me. I put my fist to my mouth and exaggeratedly cleared my throat, an icebreaker which elicited a few laughs from the room. I started reading, in a clear, strong voice:

“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate…”

I paused, looking up at Mr. Emerson, and saw Brendan shifting in his seat. He turned sideways, folding his arms on the back of his chair and resting his cheek on his crossed arms. He looked up through those long black lashes. I bet if I touched them, they’d be velvet-soft. As his eyes found mine, I glanced back down at the words in my hands, holding the textbook in front of me like armor. I could still feel his eyes on me, but all I allowed myself to see was the black-on-white text I was gripping in my palms as I continued to read. Bravery—or stupidity, I couldn’t tell which—prompted me to meet Brendan’s eyes for the last two lines:

“For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

I smoothed my plaid skirt underneath me as I sat down, and Brendan was still turned around, looking at me. I kept my eyes on the sonnet, daring myself to meet his gaze and say, “What? What the hell do you want?”

Instead, wordlessly, I raised my eyes and, as if they were some kind of heat-seeking missiles, they locked with his. He slowly blinked—really, it was more like he’d closed his eyes for a full three seconds—then opened them again, still keeping my gaze. His face—frozen for the past two and a half weeks in still, unfeeling concrete whenever our eyes met—softened a bit, and I could have sworn I saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile.

Mr. Emerson finished his hacking cough, then called on another student. I broke the stare. Brendan turned away.

That afternoon in Central Park, Blink-182’s “Carousel” was at the top of my playlist as I ran faster, letting the crisp fall air fill my lungs with the familiar scent of grass and dirt and the newly familiar scents of hot dogs and pretzels warming on the carts that lined the pathways in the park.

I sang along, racing faster and listening to the track on repeat. “Go to your happy place,” I told myself, thinking of Cisco and Angelique—legitimate new friends, I considered them. And Jenn was cool enough to me, even though some days, she just didn’t talk to anyone. I daydreamed about Kristin getting an allergic reaction to a tanning session. Maybe she’d actually turn into an orange.

I closed my eyes, thinking of English class, how I’d identified with that sonnet. Feeling like an outcast, a loser but comforted by a great love. I longed to know what it felt like to have one person eclipse everything bad in your life—be a place of pure joy.

I stopped short, pausing for breath, and surveyed my surroundings. I was all the way over by the Bethesda Fountain. It was one of my favorite areas of the park—gorgeous, palatial. And still, all I could see was his face, and those eyes—which didn’t look like they hated me in spite of how he acted.

“Why can’t I get you out of my head?” I whispered, stopping in my tracks. “Brendan, I wish I just knew what your deal was.”

I leaned against a lamppost, trying to steady my breath and my thoughts. The light above me flickered, catching my attention. My back leaning against the post, I looked straight up into the light. It burned very brightly for a moment—as if it were on a dimmer switch that was suddenly put on full blast. I heard a crackling noise, and nervously stepped away from the lamppost—just as the light inside burst, shards of glass clinking against the frosted case. The smell of something bitter hit my nose, and I winced. It was suddenly very dark all around me—reminding me that it was getting too late—and I should go back home.

Chapter 4

“Hey, Emma, let me ask you about something.”

Cisco’s voice was low as he leaned forward the next day at lunchtime. I gave him a big smile. In spite of having just as much money as everyone else at school—his mom was a big-time doctor at Sloan-Kettering—he was above the whole stupid social caste system.

“Sure, what’s up?” I asked, picking my turkey sandwich to pieces. “By the way, you’d think this cafeteria could get a sandwich right. Look at this lettuce. I’d be better off eating my napkin.” I shuddered at the transparent, almost white leaf of romaine and pushed it away. Cisco leaned in closer.

“Come with me to the quad when you’re done eating,” he said. I looked at the sandwich, now strewn about my tray like doughy confetti.

“Uh, I think I’m done.” I laughed, surveying the mess I’d made, and walked with him to the door. I noticed he got very quiet until we were in the quad with no one within earshot.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Cisco asked, keeping his voice low as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black pants. Oh, no. No, no, no. Please don’t tell me he’s asking me on a date.

“Friday? Nothing much,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Probably just going to the movies with my cousin, maybe play some pool after. What’s up?”

“Well.” he leaned in closer and his voice got lower. He sounded nervous. “My boyfriend Gabe’s band is playing at this bar farther up on the East Side, and I wanted to know if you wanted to come with us and hang out. I’m going with my cousin and some friends, and it could be fun.”

“Oh, that’s what you wanted to ask me?” I blurted out, relieved. It’s not that Cisco wasn’t cute—he was plenty cute, with thick chestnut hair and warm cocoa eyes. But, as much as I hated to admit it to myself, I’d lost interest in anyone who wasn’t him.

“You look relieved,” Cisco said, smiling at me.

“Honestly, I thought you were going to ask me out and I’m on, well, on a guy-cation. Like a vacation. But from guys,” I babbled on. “That probably sounds arrogant, but you know, we get along, you asked me all secretively, making me come out here….”

“Sweetie, you’re cute, but you’re so not my type.” He smirked, laughing. I pretended to be offended.

“I just don’t want anyone knowing my business,” Cisco continued, getting serious. “It’s my business and if you’re ever in the guys’ locker room, it’s ‘that’s so gay’ this, and ‘no homo’ that. Not exactly the most welcome coming-out party.”

“It’s never fun to be the one people are staring at,” I said, instantly understanding. I crossed my arms and looked down. “Exactly.”

“Let me check with my aunt and make sure it’s not a problem. I don’t think it will be.”

“Cool.” He smiled, reaching into his blue messenger bag and pulling out a notebook. “Here’s the address and my number. Meet me on the corner of Third Avenue and Ninety-first Street tomorrow night.”

Walking home with Ashley that afternoon, I told her about my plans to hang out with Cisco and his friends. I was so afraid of hurting her feelings—the past two weeks, we’d had standing weekend dates—movies or billiards hall—when she didn’t have plans with some of her classmates. Although she always invited me along, I usually passed. Her friends seemed so much younger than she was, and a little too gossipy for anything I could handle. To her credit, her face fell only a little bit before composing herself.

“No, it’s cool,” she said, smiling at me. “You should get out of the house,” she added, giggling. “And hey, Francisco’s cute.”

“Oh, no,” I stammered. “It’s not like that.”

“Why not?” Ashley pressed. “He’s cute. You can tell, he totally works out. And he seems really nice.”

“No, really. We’re just friends.” Even though I knew Ashley wouldn’t care, I had to respect his privacy. It wasn’t my story to tell.

“Anyway,” I continued. “Do you think that Aunt Christine will mind if I go out?” I wasn’t prepared for Ashley’s response—breaking out in uncontrollable laughter.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, but Ashley just continued laughing. She laughed so hard tears actually started rolling down her face, and she had to lean against a building for support. “What is so funny?”

“Are you kidding me?” she howled, her tears causing her eye shadow to leave iridescent streaks down her cheeks. “She’s going to be happy that you’re going out with someone other than me. Ooh, maybe you’ll actually get to bed after 9:00 p.m. for once. Really, Emma. You’re in the early-bird dinner crowd these days. Are you going to play bingo next? Are there hard candies in the bottom of your backpack?”

“Okay, Ashley, I get it.” I rolled my eyes.

“I mean, I thought you were going to start stealing Splenda from diners….” She continued mocking me until we were at her parents’ place on Sixty-second Street—and until I left around dinnertime.

That night after I was clearing the kitchen table—my aunt had ordered in some Indian food—I broached the subject. “So, Aunt Christine, a guy in my class invited me to hang out tomorrow night….”

“Which guy?” she asked without looking at me, scrutinizing her nighttime cocktail as she swirled it around in its glass. She and my uncle George used to toast each other every night with a dry martini, extra olives. After he died, she continued the tradition, making two martinis every night and drinking just the one.

“Cisco. I mean, Francisco Fernandez.”

“Oh, yes, I know the family,” Christine said, smoothing out her billowy cloud of dark brown curls. “His mother’s lovely. His sister and cousin, I believe, also attended Vincent Academy. That’s fine.” She looked at me blankly. “Am—am I supposed to give you a curfew?”

I stood there and stared dumbly back.

“Um, I don’t know.” I shrugged. And the truth was, I didn’t know. I was so young when my mom died—I wasn’t exactly hitting the clubs in eighth grade. And Henry kept switching from no curfew to wanting me home right after school. I never paid attention to either rule.

We stared at each other blankly. Christine swirled her cocktail again and took a sip.

“How about, oh, let’s just say when someone tells you what time they have to be home, you say, ‘Me, too,’” she said.

“Wow, um, thanks Aunt Christine,” I said, a little amazed.

“Well, you haven’t done anything to make me not trust you, so don’t make me lose that trust.” She went back to sloshing her martini in its Waterford crystal glass. “I’ll leave you some money on the counter. Buy yourself a new shirt or something.”

I ran over and hugged her. “Thanks, Aunt Christine,” I breathed into her neck, which smelled heavily of Estée Lauder’s Beautiful.

The next day, I sat in Latin, staring at the clock tick slowly, slowly, slowly. 2:51. 2:52. 2:53. 2:52?

I rubbed my eyes and looked back at the fuzzy numbers on the clock, squinting. Is time actually going backward? No, no, it’s 2:54. Just six more minutes. Ashley and I were going shopping after school. I was getting a new shirt—actually, a replacement shirt, since I’d left a lot of things in Keansburg. Once I’d decided to finally move in with Christine in late July, I’d moved quickly, and never went back for anything I’d left behind. I was sure that, by now, Henry had sold or trashed my stuff, with mementos from my life finding new homes in plastic garbage bags. Every now and then, I’d look for a shirt or hoodie and realize that I’d left them in the laundry bag, or hanging in the closet.

When the bell finally rang, I ran out of my seat and down the stairs to my locker. I had to be at Third Avenue promptly at 8:00 p.m. Since I didn’t have a cell phone, I had no way of finding out if there were any changes in plans. I used to have a cell phone—a cute purple one at that, loaded to the hilt with my favorite ring tones, too—but I’d left it in Keansburg, in the charger on my nightstand. It was just as well: it had pretty much stopped ringing.

Shopping with Ashley was fun, even though she kept trying to talk me out of buying the plain black, long-sleeved boat-necked shirt I wanted. I figured that, with jeans, would be fine. It was the first time I’d see any of my friends out of uniform—and the first time they’d see me. I had to admit, I was a little nervous. I figured I’d play it safe with my outfit.

“Come on, this would look so pretty with your eyes!” she pleaded, holding up a shirt with a bright green design on the front. “It brings out the hazel, really!” she trilled in her high little voice.

“No thanks, kid. I like black.”

We walked back to my aunt’s house slowly, strolling down Madison Avenue and looking in the windows at all the high-end boutiques. For some reason, I thought about Brendan, and wondered what he did on Friday nights. He probably had a girlfriend. Or girlfriends. Ashley had said he was a deejay on the side. I’d bet he spent his nights spinning in the VIP section of some club so exclusive, there wasn’t even a sign on the door, and model-like girls fell over each other to fawn all over him. I couldn’t blame them if they did.

I hated this. It wasn’t a crush so much; I didn’t daydream about him asking me out, or think about twisting my fingers into his messy hair—not that much. I was just so curious about him. I wanted to know him. What bands he liked. What movies he liked. If his mind ever wandered to me, as mine often did to him—like now, since I’d been thinking about Brendan and ignoring my cousin.

I tuned in to Ashley, who was squealing about something. “He winked at me. Winked!” she shrieked, going on about some upperclassman who shared a free period with her. “And on Facebook, he keeps sending me kisses and stuff. I mean, who does that? It’s so…cute.”

By the time we were getting into the elevator in Aunt Christine’s lobby, I had the full story. Her paramour was Blondo—and Ashley thought Anthony Caruso was the best thing since push-up bras.

“Ash, I don’t mean to make you feel bad, but only yesterday, he hit on—” I paused. No sense in making her feel like she’s in my shadow, right? “He hit on a girl in our class. I think he’s trouble. He got really nasty with her when she turned him down.”

“Oh, he’s just a harmless flirt,” she said dreamily, twirling as she stepped out of the elevator.

“I don’t think so,” I said, warily. “He’s pretty shady.”

Ashley turned and regarded me with serious, almost cold eyes. “I like him, okay? Just let me like him. Jeez, Emma, it’s not the end of the world.”

I knew that tone—that stubborn, “you can’t change my mind” attitude. I had inherited it from my mom, and she had inherited it from her dad—my mom’s brother, Dan. I sighed as I put the key in Aunt Christine’s front door, resigned to be on the lookout for trouble between Ashley and Blondo.

“Ash, I just think you should be care—” I never got to finish my sentence. Ashley squealed, spying something. She pushed past me and ran to the kitchen table.

“Finally!” she yelled, picking up a small object next to the Waterford salt and pepper shakers.

“A cell phone?” I squeaked, running over. I picked up the small yellow note that had been slid underneath the salt shaker.

I figured you should have one. The guy at the store set it up. Just please don’t call China on it. Have fun tonight. Love, Aunt Christine.

“Aw, she’s the best,” I murmured, stroking the shiny case of the phone.

“About time you had a phone!” Ashley exclaimed, grabbing the owner’s manual and flipping through it. “Quick, call me so I have your number. And then you can text me tonight and let me know if anything happens with Cisco!” I started to explain for the thousandth time that it wasn’t a date, but she pushed me toward my bedroom door. “Go, start getting ready!”

Two hours later, I had finished blowing my hair dry, flat-ironing it until it hung long and straight. My bangs, once merely in need of a trim, were now just long layers, hanging halfway down my face. At least it pulled my cowlick straight. I parted my hair on the left and tried to brush my bangs to the side. No wonder Ashley thought it was a date. I was acting like it was. I didn’t know why; I just felt like I had to look nice tonight. I was probably just nervous about being accepted by Cisco’s friends.

“You need less eyeliner,” Ashley critiqued, hovering over me as I sat cross-legged on the floor at the end of my bed, my makeup scattered around me as I peered into the floor-length mirror on the back of my door. “You should do something with bright color, like a bright green or bright pink, and play up your eyes. Really, they’re your best feature.”

“Hardly,” I griped, reaching for some more black eyeliner and applying it heavily before rubbing it in for a smoky look. “Everyone else in this family has blue eyes. Me, I get the brown eyes. The boring brown eyes.”

“No, they’re pretty,” she said, her own crystal clear blue eyes twinkling. She then flung herself on my bed, kicking her legs in the air. “They’re not brown. They’re lighter. They’re not hazel. I don’t know, I’ll come up with a name for it. Mink. Yeah. They’re mink!” She started giggling and I rolled my “mink” eyes.

“You’re a mink,” I shouted gleefully, and Ashley just threw a pillow at me.

“Whoa, better hurry up,” Ashley said abruptly, sitting up right and checking out the alarm clock on my nightstand. “It’s seven-twenty, and it’s going to take at least thirty-five minutes to walk up there.” I trusted Ashley’s New York sensibilities when it came to time. Since I knew I could walk everywhere, I estimated every destination to be about five minutes from Aunt Christine’s home. I was often wrong. And late. And ended up running everywhere. I finally get my driver’s license, and then move someplace where no one drives. Christine didn’t even have a license.

I reached into one of my cardboard boxes, still packed in the closet, and grabbed my black boots, pulling them on over my jeans.

“So, what do you think?” I asked.

Ashley scrutinized me for a moment. “Take off your necklace,” she ordered. “It interferes with the shirt’s neckline.”

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the charm, hanging awkwardly over the straight boatneck of the shirt. She was right. But I never took off my charm necklace—it was one of the only things I still had from my brother. I pulled out the fabric and dropped the pendant between my skin and the shirt, so all you could see was the thin silver chain.

“Better?” I asked.

“Much. Now hold on.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out a small bottle.

“Hell, no!” I yelled, recoiling as I remembered the sickeningly sweet stuff she sprayed on me last time. “That stuff smells like munchkin sweat.”

“It’s a different fragrance.” She sighed, handing it over. I took a cautious whiff. Okay, this is actually nice. Very light. Beachy, almost.

I handed it back to her after spritzing it lightly around my shirt and hair.

“Now, you smell good,” Ashley said, smugly. “You’re no longer stinky.”

I gave my smirking little cousin a hug and smoothed out the front of my shirt. “All right, I’d better get going.”

Chapter 5

The air was brisk and I pulled my leather jacket more closely around me as I walked up Third Avenue, regretting not wearing a scarf or something warmer. I hadn’t realized how wacky New York weather could be—cold one day, warm the next.

I got to Ninety-first Street and pulled out my new cell phone to check the time. I was eight minutes late. For me, that was early. I looked around and realized that I was standing in front of a sandwich shop.

For a split second, I wondered if it was all a joke on me. That Cisco was watching me from across the street, laughing as the loser girl stood there, waiting for friends to show up who would never come. What a waste of a good flat-ironing job.

“Hey, chica!” A few minutes later, I heard the call from down the block and looked up. Francisco was walking closer, flanked by three friends.

Relief colored my face. “Hey, look, new cell phone!” I waved the phone at him.

“Yeah, welcome to 1998.” He laughed, taking my cell phone and calling his number so I’d have it. “This is my cousin, Samantha,” he said, gesturing to a petite, older-looking girl to his right, “and her boyfriend Omar. They graduated last year. This is my friend Derek, he goes to St. Agnes.”

“Hey, guys,” I said, nodding to them. My breath came out like smoke against the cold.

“We’re just waiting for one more person.” Cisco elbowed me in the side. I cocked my head and stared at him quizzically. “In the meantime,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small card, “you’ll need this.” He pressed the card into my hand and I looked down.

“A learner’s permit?”

“Correction, my sister’s learner’s permit. She got her license when she went to Michigan State. You look enough like her. For the rest of the night, you’re Angie Marie Fernandez. I forgot to ask you if you had fake ID.”

“Okay, I’m Angie Marie. And look, I’m still an Aquarius. That’s nice,” I said, smiling as I looked down at the card. Apart from the same dark hair, we looked absolutely nothing alike. I was mentally telling myself to get over my internal freak-out about going to a bar when I heard Cisco call to someone.

I looked up and saw a figure stroll over slowly from across the street. I really hoped my eyes didn’t look like the Frisbees they felt like.

I was suddenly very happy that I’d spent so much time trying to look my best. At Vincent Academy, Brendan Salinger looked like the hottest guy in school. Outside of Vincent Academy, he looked like the hottest guy in Manhattan. Maybe the state. It didn’t help my pathetic case that he was completely my type. I’d always liked dark hair. Brendan wore a dark T-shirt pulled over a long-sleeved gray one, and had some sort of leather cuff on his wrist. Of course, his hair was still messy. It was legitimately messy too, not that look-what-I-can-do-with-gel look. Total wash-and-go hair. I doubted he even owned any hair products. Brendan carried a black hoodie under his arm, and greeted Cisco with one of those one-handed, back-pump bro-hug things. What was the deal with those things, anyway?

Brendan bent down to kiss Samantha on the cheek and I was instantly jealous. I tried to remind myself that he likely just knew her from school—she graduated last year, after all.

Then, those green eyes were focused on me.

“Hey, Brendan,” Cisco began. “Have you actually met Emma yet?”

His eyes stared into mine. “Not officially.”

“Hey, what’s—uh, what’s up?” I tried to act nonchalant, but my voice cracked midgreeting.

Brendan’s eyes were so serious, staring at me, but a smile played on his lips—those ridiculously soft-looking lips!—before forming a short, curt greeting. “Hey, Emma.”

Cisco rounded us up and we walked down the block to a small dive bar, marked by a sputtering red neon sign reading Idle Hands in the window. The bouncer’s eyes flitted to my face briefly when looking at the expired learner’s permit. He rolled his eyes and waved me inside. No one else seemed to have any trouble either, so we headed into the slightly crowded, dark bar. An old Green Day song pumped out of the jukebox, and the crowd was a mix of underage kids downing pitchers of cheap beer and old men playing cards and drinking scotch. Peanut shells crunched on the floor under the heel of my boots, and I almost slipped on one, catching my balance just before I completely humiliated myself. I stopped to scrape the shell off as everyone else walked past me and filed in, one after another, at the bar along the wall on the left. Cisco was first, greeting a short, cute brunet whom I assumed was Gabe.

“Thanks so much for coming, you guys,” Gabe said with an anxious laugh. “Just remember, we’re really not that good. But hey, we get a cut of whatever the bar makes tonight, so as long as we don’t get booed off the stage we should be okay.

“And you must be Emma.” Gabe smiled, looking at me warmly as I was still trying to scrape the peanut shell off my heel. “I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you.”

“All lies,” I said, grinning. “I paid Cisco off.”

Gabe laughed, and said, “Well, hope you’re not expecting much tonight. We’re really not that good. So yeah, don’t hate me.”

I smiled back at him. After finally getting the shell off my boot, I looked around to hop on a bar stool and realized the only one left was between the wall and Brendan. Gulp.

“So, what do you do in the band?” I asked, stalling.

“Drums,” Gabe said, raising his voice over the music. “The band is just for fun. For now anyway, since we really do suck. Okay, round of shots anyone? I need some liquid courage.”

Everyone in the group agreed enthusiastically. Or should I say, everyone else. I stayed silent. Sure, I was no stranger to drinking. I’d had plenty of warm keg beer and Goldschläger at friends’ parties. But since the accident, I hadn’t done much other than nurse a light beer in a feeble attempt to show that I was still socially acceptable. And I had never been to a freakin’ bar before! Keansburg was way too small for that. Before I could even think, the bartender was lining up shots at the bar. I stood at the empty spot, between Brendan and the wall, and lifted the shot glass. Giving a wary glance to everyone, I made sure they weren’t looking and threw it over my shoulder.

I wiped my mouth and sucked on the lemon the way everyone else had, casting a look behind me to see if I’d hit anything—or anyone. The tequila had landed on the wall beside me—leaving a small swoosh on the pale plaster.

“All right, I gotta set up. See you guys in a bit,” Gabe said, flashing a big grin. “And seriously, we do suck. So don’t leave in the middle of it!”

“Do they really, or is he going to get up there and be the next Blink-182?” I asked, calling across to Cisco after Gabe was out of hearing range.

“Oh, they’re not good. He’s good,” he emphasized proudly. “But the band isn’t all that great.”

“They’re not that bad,” Samantha disagreed, lightly slapping her cousin on the shoulder. Cisco gave her a pointed look, and Samantha conceded. “Okay, they are pretty bad. Gabe is the only bright spot. Some of it might make your ears bleed. Nails-on-a-chalkboard time.”

She formed a claw with her hand and made a screeching sound and I winced, laughing. Brendan motioned for the bartender to come over and he threw down a black credit card.

“I got this round,” he said to the bartender. If Brendan noticed that the bartender’s jaw dropped a little when he got a good look at the card, he ignored it. “Round of tequila shots and whatever everyone else wants,” Brendan said. He then regarded me over his right shoulder.

“So, Emma, what would you like?” Um, how about you, shirtless? The minute Brendan talked to me, my brain felt like it exploded. What did he just ask me? Oh, yeah. Drinks.

“Just a beer, whatever, thanks.” I tried to sound casual as I absentmindedly dragged my necklace back and forth on its chain before tucking it back under my shirt.

“What’s that?” Brendan asked, pointing to the base of his own throat.

“Oh, nothing, just a charm necklace,” I said dismissively, smoothing out the neckline of the shirt. If I answered, then he’d ask about my brother…and my family…and he’d never want to talk to me again. He already knew I was lying about where I was from.

“You know,” he said, his voice low as he leaned in more closely. I could smell Brendan’s shampoo—it was a clean, fresh scent, like grass in the rain. “You don’t have to drink. I don’t care—I mean, no one cares if you don’t.”

Did Brendan see you throw the tequila over your shoulder? He doesn’t sound judgmental.

The bartender arrived with the shots and Brendan took mine, placing it in front of him.

“No sense in wasting good liquor. Or, as is the case here, very cheap tequila.” Brendan kept his eyes on me as he drained my shot, and I began to wonder if a beer wouldn’t be a good idea, just to calm my nerves.

I met his gaze. “I’m good with a beer, thanks.”

He shrugged and ordered my drink, which the bartender promptly brought over. Then Brendan casually leaned back against the bar, stretching his long legs in front of him.

I tried to think of some kind of conversation starter. “So, how do you know Cisco?” I asked, sitting on the bar stool next to Brendan.

“We go to the same school,” Brendan replied, tilting his head toward me. “Maybe you’ve heard of it? Vincent Academy?” His voice was playful and teasing.

“You’re a Vincent Academy!” I blurted out.

Brendan laughed—a big laugh—and shook his head at me, smiling.

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked.

“I, um, have no idea,” I said, embarrassed. I couldn’t believe I pulled that stupid joke in front of Brendan, of all people.

“So, is Gabe’s band your kind of music?” Brendan said, still laughing.

“I don’t even know what kind of music Gabe’s band is. Other than bad, apparently. So I’d have to say no, it’s not my kind of music. I’m weird like that. I only like good things.” What am I babbling on about?

“You really weren’t far off with the Blink-182 reference,” Brendan said, brushing his hand through his hair, causing the black locks to fall haphazardly.

“Maybe I’ll like them,” I said. “I love Blink.”

“Me, too. You ever listen to their old stuff?”

“You mean Dude Ranch, or you mean their really old stuff?”

His eyes twinkled at me. “Oh, you’re a musicologist, are you now?”

“I don’t know about that…I can’t play an instrument to save my life, but Buddha is one of my favorite albums. I always go back to it and get obsessed with a different song.”

“What’s your current favorite?” Brendan asked.

“Well, lately it’s been ‘Carousel,’” I started…then realized I’d given up way too much info. Ten minutes into conversation, and I’m telling him about the song about unrequited love and loneliness that’s jumped to the top of my iPod playlist. Smooth, Emma. Why not pick “Pathetic” while you’re at it?

I took a quick swig of my beer and kept my eyes trained on his, keeping my voice level. “I just really, really like the chorus on that song.”

Brendan opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, then just shut it. “Oh, hey, they’re about to start.”

We turned around, leaning against the bar as Gabe’s singer and guitarist, a lanky guy with badly dyed cherry-red curls enthusiastically screamed into the mike, “Hey, we’re Broken Echo, and are you ready to rock?”

Apart from our little group, no one cheered. Gabe just looked embarrassed—and his face burned as red as the singer’s curls when he burst into an off-tune guitar riff. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be that out of tune, or if it was a mistake, but judging from the crestfallen look on Gabe’s face, I could tell their gig had started off badly.

Gabe, for his part, was actually talented, but unfortunately, the guitarist ruined most of their performance. Grandstanding poses, sticking his tongue out and throwing up the horns every chance he got… His schtick got old before the first song was over.

In the middle of the second song, a butchered version of a My Chemical Romance song, Brendan leaned in next to me, placing his left arm along the bar behind my back, and I felt my breath quicken.

“In chemistry today, Cisco told me that Gabe’s dying to leave the band and start his own, but Kenny—that’s Captain Clownhair over there—he started the band. So Gabe feels loyal, like he can’t leave.” I snickered at the joke about Kenny’s hair, but could feel my cool slipping away as Brendan’s breath tickled me, warm on my ear. So I just nodded in agreement. His arm lingered along my back, and I realized I was holding myself stiffly against the bar, afraid to lean into him.

I extended out my arms in front of me and pretended to stretch, resting more of my weight against the bar. Brendan’s arm stayed against my back. I acted like I didn’t notice and focused on the band, peeling the label off my now-empty beer bottle. Summoning some more courage, I leaned back into Brendan some more.

Brendan removed his arm—only to turn around and order something else from the bartender. Wordlessly, he handed me a new beer. Was he paying that much attention to me that he noticed I needed a refill? I mouthed, “Thanks,” and put it to my lips.

After getting his drink, Brendan lounged against the bar and stretched his arm along its very welcome spot along my back. I cast a sideways glance at him, and internally imploded when I saw he was looking at me, too. I smiled, a little shyly, and he leaned in more closely until he fully had his arm around me. Aaand, my guy-cation is officially over.

Two songs later, Brendan started drumming his fingers on my side in time to the music. I felt like my heart was keeping time with the ramming bass line. Every time he’d bend in to ask me something, or laugh at something I said, the bass line in my chest turned into a hardcore song.

The band was winding down their final song—which ended with an earsplitting two-minute solo guitar riff from Kenny. I squirmed uncomfortably on my bar stool, and Brendan covered my ears with his hands, laughing with me the entire time. He only kept his hands there a few seconds, but they felt warm against the side of my face. The pounding bass line in my chest was now speed metal.

When the set was over, we all cheered, enthusiastically yelling Gabe’s name—much to Kenny’s dismay. The jukebox came back on, and Brendan and I turned to face the rest of our crew.

“So, what are we doing now?” Samantha asked over the music, tapping her glossy pale nails on the bar. “Let’s go to the Met. I wouldn’t mind seeing who’s there. Come on, Omar, it’ll be fun,” she pleaded when he made a gagging sound.

“I never went when I actually was a student at Vince A, and I’m not going to start now,” he snorted.

“Let’s go,” Cisco said, looking at the time. “Gabe has to load up their equipment and bring his drums home—I won’t be meeting up with him until later.”

“Um, what’s the Met?” I asked.

“You know, the Met? The Met!” Derek exclaimed, looking at me like I was a confused fourth grader. “The Metropolitan Museum of Art!”

“You guys hang out there?” I looked at my phone. It was 10:30. “Is it even open?”

“We hang out next to it,” Cisco explained, shaking his head at my cluelessness. “There’s a big glass wall, and you can see in, see the Egyptian temples and stuff. It’s cool.”

“Okay…I’m in,” I said, a little bewildered. At Keansburg High, we hung out behind the gym. At Vince A, they hung out behind priceless works of art. Riiight. And I bet the school play is directed by Martin Scorsese.

We started walking toward the museum, and Cisco fell in line with me while Brendan and the others walked on ahead. I heard Brendan asking Samantha about Columbia, which is where she was studying business. I pulled my leather jacket around me and tried not to shiver against the cold.

“So, what’s going on, Miss Connor? Makin’ some new friends?” Cisco asked, shooting me a big grin.

“Nothing’s going on,” I mumbled, embarrassed. “I’m just making friends, like you said. So,” I started, turning my head to him, “Why is this the first time I’m hearing that you two are friends?”

“He’s not my best friend or anything—he keeps to himself, if you haven’t noticed—but we’re cool. We had every class together in freshman year. He’s actually the first person at school who found out I was gay.”

“Really? How’d that happen? I’ve never seen you guys together,” I said, wrapping my arms around my thin jacket as another cold blast of wind shot through me.

“You don’t have chemistry with me—we’re lab partners. But last year, Brendan saw me with Gabe at Warped Tour. I asked him to keep it to himself. He did and told me he didn’t see what the big deal was anyway. Nothing changed.”

“Wow. Decent guy.”

“Yeah, he is. And,” Cisco said, getting a teasing tone in his voice, “he asked me about you. You’re why he’s here tonight. You know, you’re the only girl at school that hasn’t tried to kick it to him at one time or another.”

“He’s here because of me?” I squeaked, then lightly punched Cisco on the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me he was coming? What exactly did he say?”

He just chuckled. “You had no cell phone! Besides, he only just asked about you this afternoon in chem. I told him you were coming tonight, and he should come and find out for himself. I mean, damn, Emma, you stare at the guy enough, I had to do something.”

“Oh, no,” I moaned, covering my face with my hands. “Am I that obvious?” I anxiously peeked at him through my chilly fingers.

“Nah, it’s not too bad. I just sit next to you so I noticed. It’s not like you’re going to cut a piece of his hair off and build an altar to it,” Cisco said, putting his hands together and bowing. “Oh, Brendan, you’re my hero! You’re ever so dreamy!” he whispered in a high-pitched imitation of a girl’s voice. “I wuv you so much! I want to have a trillion bajillion of your babies.”

I whacked him in the arm again.

“So, how’d it go with him?” Cisco continued, elbowing me in the side with a knowing look. “You two sure looked comfy at the end of the bar.”

I tried to figure out how to phrase it. When I didn’t think about what he looked like, lounging at the bar next to me, I felt like I was talking to someone I’d known for years. And then I’d get a look into those twinkling green eyes, and realize how we just didn’t match.

“I feel really…comfortable with him. Which is weird, cause, well, look at him.”

“You do look, all the time,” Cisco teased, then lowered his voice. “Heads up, he’s coming this way.”

“Hey, I’ll meet you guys at the Met. I’m going to stop for a water and some beer,” Brendan said, the wind whipping his hair in a billion different directions.

“Emma, do you want anything?”

“I’ll just take an iced tea, thanks.” I’d had a few beers and the last thing I needed to do to Aunt Christine was show up on her door hammered, after everything that’d happened and all she’d done for me.

Brendan regarded me for a minute standing there with my arms wrapped around my jacket.

“Take this,” he ordered, shrugging out of his black hoodie.

“Won’t you get cold?” I asked, hesitantly taking the black sweatshirt from him with frozen fingers.

“No, I’m good,” Brendan said dismissively. Hell yeah, you are.

I pulled the oversize—well, oversize on me—hoodie around my jacket and instantly felt better. The sleeves hung low, several inches from my balled-up fists.

“I’ll see you guys in a minute,” Brendan said, turning to walk away. With his hands in his pockets, Brendan walked that same slow, deliberate walk to a deli on the corner.

About fifteen minutes later, we made our way across Fifth Avenue and crossed into Central Park. The Met stood there, silent and imposing, and I could hear some noise coming from the right side of the building.

Cisco and I followed Omar, Derek and Samantha, climbing up the rolling green lawn to the right of the massive white building. I recognized the shadowy forms in the distance as some of the people from my class—including Jenn, who staggered over with her arms open. I spotted a two-liter bottle of lemon-lime soda in her hand.

“Emma! You never come out,” she slurred, her low-cut white sweater stained with droplets from whatever she was drinking. Jenn shoved the soda toward me and offered me a drink. The sugary citrus-and-cranberry-vodka smell was heavy and sweet as it wafted up from the bottle.

“Oh, no thanks,” I said, recoiling at the smell. It reminded me of the perfume Ashley loved. “Beer before liquor, you know.”

She looked confused, then stumbled back to the group of people near the trees. I squinted my eyes, trying to make out who was there when I noticed Kristin actually smiling in my direction. I stared, stunned, as she waved to me, beaming a bright smile. I raised my hand up to wave and stopped halfway when I realized she was waving behind me—not actually at me. Kristin hadn’t noticed me standing there, until the person she had targeted in her gaze was right behind me and Cisco. And then her gaze turned ice-cold.

Brendan poked his head between us, throwing his arms around me and Cisco. He had an iced tea in his left hand, and started tapping it against my cheek. The coldness of the glass, coupled with another chilly wind, forced me to shiver again.

“Oh, thanks,” I said, hastily grabbing the drink. “How much do I owe you?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Brendan asked incredulously, dropping his arms and reaching into the white plastic bag at his feet, pulling out a bottle of water.

“Cheers,” he said, tapping his plastic bottle against my still-unopened iced tea. Brendan handed Cisco the bag of beers and Cisco walked away, giving me a thumbs-up as he left. I hoped Brendan didn’t notice.

“No beer for you?” I asked, gesturing to his bottle of water.

“No beer for you, either,” he pointed out, tapping my glass again with the top of his water bottle.

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to—I mean, not get wasted,” I stammered, trying to explain myself. “Um, why aren’t you drinking?”

“It’s not a big deal.” Brendan shrugged. “I didn’t want you to feel weird, like you were the only one not drinking.”

“Oh,” I murmured, in shock and half in love with him for squashing one of my biggest social insecurities with a bottle of Poland Spring. “Um, thanks,” I said shyly. “That’s really nice of you.” I can’t believe he’s curbing partying…for me of all people.

“No problem,” Brendan said, playfully taking the hood on his sweatshirt and flicking it up over my head. “So Emma, are you feeling a little warmer?”

“A lot warmer, thanks.” I laughed as the oversize hood fell over my face, covering my eyes.

“So,” I began, peeking out from underneath the hood, “what’s that Halloween movie thing next week at school all about?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I already knew all about the event at school: Austin had been gabbing in my ear for a week about Vince A showing scary movies for Halloween. I had to find out if Brendan was going. Then it might be worth me going.

But he didn’t get a chance to answer, since our attention was grabbed by a series of high-pitched squeals across the grass. We turned our heads to Kristin, who giggled loudly and deliberately looked over at Brendan as she let Anthony lick tequila salt off her neck.

“The bar’s open!” she called, holding out a shot and patting more salt on her collarbone—and a little lower. Kristin’s invitation was clearly meant for one specific person. The possessive way she stared at Brendan infuriated me.

“Less than fifty feet from priceless art, surrounded by a ton of people and oh, Kristin’s doing a body shot,” I snorted, then feared I sounded way, way too bitchy. To my relief, Brendan just laughed.

“She sucks,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “So Emma, back home, where did you guys hang out?” he asked, suddenly serious as he turned away from Kristin to stare intensely at me. “The Liberty Bell?”

“What do you mean, the Lib… Oh.” My guard was completely down around Brendan. I exhaled nervously, reminded that he knew the truth. “You know, it’s a landmark and all, so that was impossible.”

“So, you hung out at school, right? At that magical high school on the corner of Made-Up Street and Fiction Avenue?” Brendan smirked a knowing smile. More significant than him standing up for me that first day was the fact that he knew my story was faker than pro wrestling.

I tried to think of an excuse, a good story to tell, when he took another gulp of his water and said, “You don’t have to tell me anything right now. But I’d appreciate you telling me eventually.”

“Why does it matter?” I asked, annoyed. He ignores me, and now I owe him my life story?

“Why wouldn’t you want to tell me?” Brendan asked. “Don’t you trust me?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but I had no idea what to say. For someone with major trust issues, I already did trust him. And that just felt unnatural. Fortunately, I didn’t have to answer—Cisco called us over to the sloped glass wall of the Met, where he was standing over a very passed-out Austin.

“I think we need to get him in a cab,” Cisco said, chuckling slightly at the slumbering Austin. Here he was, the student council rep, who had spent every lunch period since we first met trying to convince me to join any club, looking like he was the poster child for our chapter of SADD. Which, ironically, was the club Austin had tried to get me to join at lunch that very afternoon.

“I’ll help you,” Brendan said, lifting up Austin effortlessly. It surprised me, since after the way Austin had talked about Brendan on my first day at school, I was under the impression that they weren’t exactly friends. Brendan and Cisco were about the same height, so they balanced the shorter guy between them easily. Austin woke up, stammering, “What? Ma? Time for school?”

“Yeah, buddy, it’s time for school,” Cisco said, grinning, then added to me, “Emma, we’ll be right back.”

They were gone for merely seconds when Jenn came bounding over again, her bottle almost empty.

“What were you guys… Who left?” She drained the rest of her beverage and looked around, dismayed when she noticed Austin was missing.

“Aw, he left me his drink,” she giggled, waving the now-empty two-liter at me. “So sweet. I’ll give it back to him tomorrow,” she whispered loudly. “We’re going skating at Wollman Rink!” She meant for her voice to be low, her statement confidential, but her drunken confession spilled out all over the lawn.

I put an arm around Jenn to steady her and advised, “You should throw that bottle out, you know. I’m sure he doesn’t need it back. But that’s cool about the skating.” I didn’t expect either one of them to be out of bed before 2:00 p.m.

“Let’s go hang out over by the—oh, no. Wait.” Jenn was gesturing at the cluster of trees where Kristin was holding court, until she realized that Kristin had her usual “Death to Emma” glare trained on me. Closer to us, Anthony and a short guy I recognized from math class were arguing. It looked like the conversation was getting heated.

“I think Anthony’s gonna beat Frank up,” Jenn whispered conspiratorially. “They’ve been fighting all night. Too bad. Frank’s kinda cute.”

I looked around anxiously for Cisco and Brendan, my friends—I could count Brendan as my friend now, right?

“What time do you need to be home, Jenn?” I asked, looking again at my phone. Even though I didn’t have a real curfew, I didn’t want to push my luck.

She shrugged, then ran down the green, yelling, “Cisco!” Jenn jumped on him, knocking him down. At the same time, Anthony shouted something I couldn’t quite make out at the other guy—Frank Carney—and my feet started twitching to run in the other direction. Henry was quick with his hands when he was drinking, and his alcohol-fueled rages had taught me at least one thing—I had an uncanny ability to know when things were about to get physical. Even though it had healed, my scar began to throb.

I jogged over to Cisco and helped him off the ground.

“Hey, you’re meeting Gabe soon, right?” I asked, darting my eyes to where Anthony and Frank were getting more agitated. Anthony menacingly shouted something in Frank’s face. Kristin and her posse had moved away from the guys, but she pulled out her cell phone and started recording them, snickering as she clearly enjoyed watching someone else’s misery.

“Yeah, I’m meeting him downtown. What’s up?”

“I just— I want to get out of here before that—” I gestured to the fight “—becomes something else.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Anthony’s always starting trouble,” Cisco said.

I knew it. There is no way Ashley is allowed near him.

“Where’s Brendan?” I twisted my head around, searching for him.

Cisco smiled. “We couldn’t get a cab. He sent me back here to make sure you were okay.”

I blushed a little, almost forgetting where I was. That was sweet. Really sweet. First he stops drinking, now this…he’s probably just a nice guy. Then a shout broke through my thoughts.

With his lips curled back over his teeth, Anthony snarled several choice swear words at Frank before pushing him into a tree. Frank crumbled on the ground, then pulled himself back to his feet, charging at Anthony to shove him in his chest. Anthony barely budged—Blondo towered over the smaller guy. Anthony threw the first punch, hitting Frank forcefully in the stomach. Frank doubled over, gasping as he clutched his midsection. Anthony took advantage of Frank’s vulnerability, kicking him again in the stomach with his heavy boot and knocking him down on the grass. Once the smaller guy was down, Anthony—stumbling a little in his drunken state—hurled himself on top of Frank, throwing a hard punch in his face. It connected with a sickening thud. I wasn’t sure what to do—call someone? Why wasn’t anyone stopping this? Fortunately, someone did, as a third figure ran past me and jumped in.

I realized it was Brendan, breaking up the fight. In one quick movement, he pulled Anthony off Frank.

“Stop it! What the hell is wrong with you?” Brendan spit out, steadying Anthony by holding a fistful of his collar. Frank sat upright, wiping away the thick smear of blood coming from his nose. His eye already looked red.

“Stay out of it,” Anthony growled, trying to stand upright. He couldn’t quite coordinate all his limbs in his drunken state and fell on his rear.

Brendan leaned forward and helped Frank up, leaving Anthony on the ground. “Get up, dummy,” he said to Anthony, sounding annoyed. He turned to Frank. “You good?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Frank brushed some leaves off his brown jacket, glaring at Anthony. “We’ll continue this later.”

“Oh, shut up, no you won’t,” Brendan snapped, sounding more and more like a ticked-off kindergarten teacher. “Enough of this crap. Stop being such friggin’ babies.”

Frank stalked away, while Anthony scowled at his back. Brendan leaned in and said some hushed things to Anthony, his hands gesturing wildly—it looked like he was reading him the riot act. Loudly, Anthony told Brendan where he could stick his head and walked—or should I say, stumbled—toward a concerned-looking Kristin.

The whole scene made me very, very uneasy. This was the real Anthony, I figured—not the charming sweetheart that my cousin thought he was. I turned to Cisco and said, “I’m out of here. Tell everyone I said bye, okay?”

“Tell everyone? Or tell him?” Cisco replied, with smart-alecky emphasis on the “him.” Before I could answer, Cisco said, “Actually, tell him yourself.” I looked up and saw Brendan walking over, a little faster than I was used to seeing him move.

“Hey, guys—Anthony and Frank had a fight at practice and clearly are taking things home with them. Anthony said something about Frank’s mother. Anthony’s an idiot. He’s not going to start anything else tonight, though,” he explained, looking back and forth between both of us. Brendan then stopped and turned those emerald eyes back on me.

“You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeeeah.” I drew it out slowly. “I’m— I’ve got to get home. Curfew, you know,” I lied, hastily draining the rest of my iced tea, then shuddering from the cold drink.

Brendan just nodded. “I’ll walk you to a cab,” he said quietly. He stayed silent, walking toward Fifth Avenue with his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets until we were back in front of the museum, looking down the street for an available taxi.

“That was nice of you to get Austin a cab,” I said a little formally, leaning against a lamppost. I wasn’t sure what to say to him all of a sudden.

“Least I could do. He’s your friend, right?” Brendan said matter-of-factly. “I guess.”

“He sits right next to you at lunch every day,” Brendan pointed out. Wait, did he get Austin a cab for me? Does he think I’m dating Austin?

Before I could clear up my relationship with Austin, Brendan spoke. “Did Anthony scare you?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.

“No,” I fibbed, then looked down. “Well, I wouldn’t say scared….” I mumbled, hiding my embarrassment by picking at some chipped paint on the lamppost.

“I wouldn’t let him hurt you,” Brendan said, his voice almost a whisper. I was taken aback by how seriously he said it. I tore my eyes away from the flaking paint to face Brendan, and was surprised at how close he was to me. His face was mere inches from mine. I took a deep breath, getting lost in those eyes as the lamppost above me flickered on and off. I could see the light dancing in the flecks of gold in his eyes, as he stayed close to me. The light fizzled out with a thin hiss, but I could still see the intensity in his eyes in the shadows. Brendan rested his palm on the iron street lamp behind me. He leaned in more closely, and I let my fingers brush against his side, skimming along his dark shirt. I felt that familiar fluttering in my stomach again, hoping, praying that he was going to kiss me. Brendan was so close I could smell his shampoo again, which overpowered the sulfuric smell from the burned-out light above.

But Brendan stopped short—pulling back and flagging the lone available cab cruising down Fifth. I straightened up awkwardly. If I wasn’t already red from the cold, I would have blushed a thousand shades of crimson.

“Thanks,” I mumbled weakly. “And yeah—thanks for this,” I said, pulling the hoodie off.

“Keep it, it’s cold out,” Brendan said, his tone businesslike as he opened the taxi door for me. He gave me another smile, then, slamming the door shut once I was inside, he turned on his heel.

Chapter 6

I woke up late on Saturday morning, feeling oddly exhausted for having slept so long. I’d had the most vivid, disturbing dreams. They didn’t make any sense—at first, all I saw were images of me. I was wearing my charm necklace—but I was wearing different outfits. They were costumes, almost—it looked like I was flipping through some kind of scrapbook that spanned centuries.

The scrapbook stopped short at one photo; in it, I was dressed in a heavy-looking gown, tending to beautiful roses that climbed up the stone face of a picturesque cottage.

The photo came alive and suddenly I was in the scene, feeling the weight of the heavy gold dress. I removed dead petals from a perfect red rose, which had just started to wilt, when I sliced open my finger on a razor-sharp thorn. I felt it rip through my flesh, shredding my skin. I pulled away my finger, gripping it tightly to stop the bleeding. But it wouldn’t stop. Blood poured down my hand, pooling in the grass as I felt something warm on my chest. I looked down, and blood seeped across the front of my bodice, soaking the front of the gold dress with deep crimson.

I pawed at my chest but couldn’t find the wound, my fingers frantic as I searched my bloody skin for an injury.

A familiar voice called me from behind. I whipped around, and my brother Ethan was standing among the roses. Even though I was dressed in this heavy medieval-looking gown, my twin looked the way I remembered him, in jeans, ratty Converse sneakers and a Ramones T-shirt.

“Emma, it’s starting,” Ethan said, his voice sad. “Stay away from him.”

I bolted upright in bed as if I had been shocked by a Taser. It felt like Ethan was right next to me, his voice as real as the ambulance siren I heard wailing in the street four floors below me.

I hadn’t dreamed about Ethan in some time. I tried to shake the weird dream off, but it was too unsettling. I chalked it up to my subconscious going haywire. I’d avoided telling Brendan about him last night, after all. That had to be the cause of the weird dream. Right?

I stretched out in the bed and rubbed my eyes, looking over at my pile of clothing on the floor—my boots strewn about, my jeans crumpled up with my socks still in the legs. The previous night came flooding back to me when my eyes flickered over to the white-painted desk chair, where I’d carefully laid Brendan’s hoodie. I covered my face and giggled, then frowned when I looked at my grimy hands.

Ugh, I’d forgotten to wash my face when I came in last night! I’d walked to my room in a daze—thanks to Brendan’s near-kiss—and started writing in my diary. I jumped out of bed and padded into the bathroom, trying to remove the now-smeared dark mascara that had taken up residence all over my face. I stopped and looked at my reflection—cowlick sticking up straight, hair knotted, raccoon eyes—and giggled again. I looked like a goth model. I sucked in my cheeks and attempted a serious, model-like pose.

“What’s up, Zoolander?” I said aloud, splashing water on my face. I was in too good of a mood this morning.

My attempts to wash my face just ended up in streaking mascara all over the place, so I hopped into the shower, turned on the pink plastic shower radio and sang along to a Paramore song, scrubbing my face.

Slipping into my worn plaid bathrobe, I pulled my wet hair back with a large clip, and opened the door to find a giddy Ashley standing there. I was not expecting to see anything but the short hallway back to my room—so I screamed.

She screamed back.

“What the— You can’t just do that to people!” I huffed, leaning against the door frame.

“Sorry! I forgot that you had a cell phone now and I could just call you! I was afraid Christine would give me the third degree about you and Cisco if I called the apartment.”

“Ashley, for the last time, me and Cisco are not—”

“Whatever,” she interrupted, “I had to tell you the good news in person anyway.” She was a little waterfall, overflowing with good cheer. Ashley practically skipped back to my room, her high red ponytail bouncing on the top of her head like a genie. I saw my aunt, savoring her morning coffee in the kitchen. “Hold on a second,” I told Ashley.

“Aunt Christine, thank you so much for the cell phone,” I said, giving her a big hug. She hugged me back, a little more tightly than she usually did, then returned to her usual stiff demeanor.

“Well, I couldn’t have you be the only one running around town without one,” she sniffed.

“I love it. Thanks.”

“Well, you’re welcome. Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” I said, beaming.

“Good. I’m glad. Now go see what your cousin wants. That child is persistent when she wants something!” Aunt Christine laughed.

I trotted in to see Ashley, my slippers making a soft “swish, swish” sound on the floor.

“Okay, so I totally want to hear about your night, but first—oh, my God.” She giggled. “Remember how we were talking about Anthony?”

Before I could scream in protest, Ashley continued, “Well, he messaged me on Facebook again and asked for my number!”

I noticed she was tightly clutching her cell phone in her hand. Waiting to answer the second he called, no doubt.

Anthony? I braced myself to cut her daydreams off at the knees.

“Ash, I have to tell you something.” I sat down on the bed and looked at her. Well, I looked at her sneaker-clad feet. All along, she’d been so excited for me, and so supportive of me, and here I was, about to crush her new crush.

I quickly—and as kindly as I could—relayed what I observed the night before. Her jaw dropped so far, I thought it might fall in her lap.

“He’s not a good guy,” I said gently. “I don’t think you should talk to him anymore.”

“Maybe it’s a different Anthony,” Ashley mumbled.

“It’s a small school,” I reasoned. “How many guys in the junior class are blond basketball players named Anthony?”

“Maybe Frank started it,” she suggested hopefully, biting her lip.

“Not from where I was standing,” I said softly. “Regardless, it seemed like Anthony’s a little quick with his hands. I think he might be trying to play you, Ash. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I don’t agree.” Ashley raised her chin defiantly. “Are you sure you’re not just overreacting, because of…well, you know. What you went through?”

I considered the Henry effect for a second. Sure, Anthony was arrogant and ready to punch a guy out at a moment’s notice, but did I really want to put him in the same category as a raging drunk who had no problem backhanding me when I mouthed off?

“I can see where you think I’m overreacting,” I conceded warily. “But just understand that I also have some experience in this area. I think you should be extremely careful around him,” I warned.

“Okay, whatever,” she said, sticking out her bottom lip in a pout. I felt awful. To her, he was so hot, one of the best athletes at the school and definitely one of the “cool” guys at Vince A, whatever that meant. And he had singled her out, a freshman, for attention. And I had to come and rip her little wonderland to shreds.

“Well, tell me about your night.” Ashley sighed, resigned. She flopped into my desk chair and longingly stroked my sticker-covered laptop—a present from Aunt Christine. She probably wanted to open it and log on to Facebook, I realized.

“Did you get to make a love connection with Cisco?” she asked petulantly.

“We’re just friends, Ashley,” I began. “But, that hoodie you’re leaning against—” I paused dramatically “—it’s Brendan Salinger’s.”

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