And oh, yeah, who gets into fights all the time, and is in love with a guy who is on probation.

My poor mom.

My dad believed me. The part about what Karen Sue said and all. My mom, like I said before, didn't.

I heard them arguing about it after I was banished to my room, to Think About What I Had Done. I was also supposed to think about how I was going to pay back Karen Sue's medical bill (two hundred and forty nine dollars for a trip to the emergency room. She didn't even have to get stitches). Mrs. Hankey was also threatening to sue me for the mental anguish I'd inflicted on her daughter. Karen Sue's mental anguish, according to her mother, was worth about five thousand dollars. I didn't have five thousand dollars. I only had about a thousand dollars left in my bank account, after my Michigan City outlet store shopping spree.

I was supposed to sit in my room and think about how I was going to raise another four thousand, two hundred and forty-nine dollars.

Instead, I went into Douglas's room to see what he was doing.

"Hey, loser," I started to say as I barged in, as is my tradition where Douglas is concerned. "Guess what happened to me to—"

Only I didn't finish, because Douglas wasn't there.

Yeah, that's right. He wasn't in his room. About eight million comic books were lying around his bed, but no Douglas.

Which was kind of weird. Because Douglas, ever since he got sent home from State College for trying to kill himself, never went anywhere. Seriously. He just sat in his room, reading.

Oh, sure, sometimes Dad forced him to go to one of the restaurants and bus tables or whatever, but except for that and when he was at his shrink's office, Douglas was always in his room.

Always.

Maybe, I decided, he'd run out of comic books and gone downtown to get more. That made sense. Because the few times he had strayed from his room in the past six months, that's where he'd gone.

It was no fun sitting in my room, thinking about what I'd done. For one thing, I didn't think what I'd done was so bad. For another, it was August, so it was still pretty nice out, for late afternoon. I sat in the dormer window and gazed down at the street. My room is on the third floor of our house—in the attic, actually, which is the former servants' quarters. Our house is the oldest one on Lumley Lane, built around the turn of the century. The twentieth century. The city even came and put a plaque on it (the house, I mean), saying it was a historic landmark.

From the third floor dormer windows—my bedroom windows—you could see all up and down Lumley Lane. For once there was no white van parked across the street, monitoring my activities. That's because Special Agents Johnson and Smith were back at the school with Mark Leskowski.

Poor Mark. I had no way of knowing how he must be feeling—I mean, if Rob ever turned up dead, God only knew what I'd do, and we'd never even gone out. Well, for more than like five minutes, anyway. And if I got blamed for having done it—you know, killing him—I'd flip out for true.

Still, it looked as if Mark was everyone's lead suspect. His parents had, as Ruth had predicted, hired Mr. Abramowitz as their son's attorney—not that he'd been officially charged with the murder, but it certainly looked as if he would be.

The way I found this out was, my parents yelled up the stairs to me that they were going next door to consult with Ruth's dad about Karen Sue's case against me. Mr. Abramowitz had apparently just got home from a consult he'd been doing over at Ernie Pyle. What else could he have been consulting about over there? The new mascot uniform?

"There's some leftover ziti in the fridge," my mom hollered up the stairs to me. "Heat it up if you get hungry. Did you hear that, Douglas?"

Which was when I realized my mom didn't know Douglas was gone.

"I'll tell him," I called to her. Which wasn't a lie. I would tell him. When he got home.

You wouldn't think it was a big deal, a twenty-year-old guy going out for a while. But really, for Douglas, it was. A big deal, I mean. Mom was totally spastic about him, thinking he was like this delicate flower that would wilt at the slightest exposure to the elements.

Which was such a joke, really, because Douglas was no flower. He was just, you know, figuring things out. Like the rest of us.

Only he was being a little more cautious than the rest of us.

"And don't you," my mother yelled up the stairs, "even think about going anywhere, Jessica. When your father and I get home, the three of us are going to sit down for a nice long chat."

Well. That certainly didn't sound like Dad had convinced her I'd been telling the truth about what Karen Sue had said. Yet, anyway.

From my dormer window, I watched them leave. They crossed our front lawn, then cut through the hedge that separated our property from the Abramowitzes', even though they were always telling me to take the long way, or the hedge would suffer permanent root damage. Whatever. I got up from the window and went downstairs to see what was up with the ziti.

I had just opened the fridge when someone turned the crank to our doorbell. Because our house is so old, it has this antique doorbell with a handle you have to turn, not a button you push.

"Coming," I called, wondering who it could be. Ruth would never ring the doorbell. She'd just walk right in. And everyone else we knew would call first before coming over.

When I got into the foyer, I saw what definitely appeared to be a masculine shape behind the lace curtain that covered the window in the front door. It looked to be about the right size and shape for Rob.

My heart, ridiculously, skipped a beat, even though I knew perfectly well Rob would never just walk up to my front door and ring the bell. Not since I told him how much it would freak out my mom if she ever found out I liked a guy who a) wasn't college-bound and b) had spent time in the Big House.

Maybe, I thought, for one panic-stricken moment, Rob did see me in the back of Skip's Trans Am, and he was coming over to ask me if I was completely out of my mind, going around, spying on him like that.

But when I flung open the door, I saw that it wasn't Rob at all. My heart didn't stop its crazy gymnastics, though.

Because instead of Rob Wilkins standing on my front porch, it was Mark Leskowski.

"Hey," he said when he saw me. His smile was nervous and shy and wonderful, all at the same time. "Whew. I'm glad it was you. You know. Who answered the door. All of a sudden I was like, 'Whoa, what if her dad answers.' But it's you."

I just stood there and stared. You would have, too, if you'd opened up your front door and found your school's star quarterback standing there, smiling shyly.

"Um," Mark said, when I didn't say anything right away. "Can I, um, talk to you? Just for a few minutes?"

I looked behind me. There was no one in the house, of course. Looking behind me had been pure reflex.

The thing was, even though I'd never had a boy come over to my house to visit me before, I was pretty sure my parents wouldn't like it if I invited him in when they weren't home.

Mark must have realized what I was thinking, since he said, "Oh, I don't have to come in. We could sit out here, if you want."

I shook my head. I was still feeling a little dazed. It is not every day you open up your door and see a guy like Mark Leskowski standing on your porch.

I guess it was on account of this dazed feeling that I opened up my mouth and blurted, "Why aren't you at the memorial service?"

Mark didn't seem offended by my bluntness, however. He looked down at his feet and murmured, "I couldn't. I mean, the one today at school was bad enough. But to go back there, where it happened … I just couldn't."

Oh, God. My heart lurched for him. The guy was clearly hurting.

"The only time since all of this started that I've felt even semi-human was when I was talking to you," Mark said, lifting his gaze to meet mine. "I was hoping we could . . . you know. Talk some more. If you haven't eaten, I was thinking maybe we could go grab something. To eat, I mean. Nothing fancy or anything. Maybe just pizza."

Pizza. Mark Leskowski wanted to take me out for pizza.

I said, "Sure," and closed the front door behind me. "Pizza's fine."

Yeah, I know, okay? I know my mother said not to leave the house. I know I was being punished for trying to deviate Karen Sue Hankey's septum.

But look, Mark needed me, all right? You could see the need right there in his face.

And seriously, who else was he going to turn to? Who else but me had ever been in anything like the kind of trouble he was in? I mean, I knew what it was like to be hunted, like an animal, by the so-called authorities. I knew what it was like to have everyone, everyone in the whole world against you.

And yeah, okay, no one had ever suspected me of committing murder. But hadn't everyone at school been going around blaming me for Amber's death? Wasn't that almost the same thing?

So I went with him. I got into his car—a black BMW. It so totally figured—and we drove downtown, and no, I never once thought, Gee, I hope he doesn't drive out into the woods and try to kill me.

This is because, for one thing, I didn't believe Mark Leskowski was capable of killing anyone, on account of his being so sensitive and all. And for another thing, it was broad daylight. No one tries to kill someone else in broad daylight.

Furthermore, even though I am only five foot tall, I have bested bigger guys than Mark Leskowski. As Douglas is fond of pointing out, I feel no compunction whatsoever against fighting dirty if I have to.

Can I just tell you that the world looks different from the inside of a BMW? Or maybe it is just that it looks different from the inside of Mark Leskowski's BMW. His BMW has tinted windows, so everything looks kind of … better from inside his car.

Except for Mark, of course. He, I was discovering, always looks good.

Especially when, like now, he was worried. His dark eyebrows kind of furrowed together in this adorably vulnerable way . . . kind of like a golden retriever puppy that wasn't sure where it had put its ball.

"It's just that they all think I did it," he said as we started down Lurnley Lane. "And I . . . I just can't believe it. I mean, that they'd think that. I loved Amber."

I murmured something encouraging. All I could think was, Heather Montrose, please be downtown when we get there. Please see me getting out of Mark Leskowski’s BMW. Please see me eating pizza with him. Please.

It was wrong of me—so wrong—to want to be seen in the BMW of a boy whose girlfriend had, just days before, died tragically.

On the other hand, it was wrong of Heather—so wrong—to have been so mean to me about something that was in no way my fault.

"But these Feds . . . ," Mark went on. "Well, you know them. Right? I mean, they seem to know you. They're just so … secretive. It's like they know something. Like they have some kind of proof I did it."

"Oh," I said as we turned onto Second Street. "I'm sure they don't."

"Of course they don't," Mark said. "Because I didn't do it."

"Right," I said. Too bad I didn't have a cell phone. Because then I could make up some excuse about how I had to call Ruth, and then I could tell her I was with Mark. Mark Leskowski. That I was with Mark Leskowski in his BMW.

Why does every sixteen-year-old girl in the entire world have a cell phone but me?

"That's right," Mark said. "They don't. Because if they did, they'd have arrested me already. Right?"

I looked at him. Beautiful. So beautiful. No Rob Wilkins, of course. But a hottie, just the same.

"Right," I said.

"And they'd have told you. Wouldn't they? I mean, wouldn't they have told you? If they had something on me?"

"Of course they wouldn't have told me," I said. "Why would they have told me? What do you think I am, some kind of narc?"

"Of course not," Mark said. "It's just that you seem to be, you know, real friendly with one another...."

I let out a bark of laughter at that.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Mark," I said. "But Special Agents Johnson and Smith and I are not exactly friends. Basically, I have something they want, and that's about it."

Mark glanced at me curiously. We were stopped at an intersection, so it was okay that he was looking at me and not at the road, but I'd noticed that Mark also had a tendency to stare at me when he should have been paying attention to where we were going. This, in addition to his seeming to think that stop signs were mere suggestions, and that it wasn't in the least bit necessary to maintain a distance of at least two car lengths from the vehicle in front of him, led me to believe Mark wasn't the world's best driver.