“Do you think I’m going to fall for you and your stupid little ‘woe is me’ act? Doubtful. You don’t deserve this solo, and you didn’t deserve Kevin. A real girlfriend wouldn’t be able to pull herself together, let alone do a solo.”

Sawyer wanted to fight back, but she was exhausted and emotionless. Maybe Maggie was right—she didn’t deserve to be Kevin’s girlfriend—didn’t deserve to be at the blunt end of his anger, a small voice inside her head nagged. Sawyer shook it off and shoved Maggie aside with more force than she meant.

“Lay off, Maggie.”

“Get over yourself,” Sawyer heard Chloe growl. “Sawyer doesn’t need to play the chick who can’t get herself together—you do it too well. It’s just too bad you’ve been doing it ever since Kevin dumped you. When was that exactly? Nine, ten months ago now? Little long to be carrying a flame, don’t you think?” Chloe flicked a lock of Maggie’s long hair, then wrinkled her nose. “It’s probably time to drag your obsessively depressed ass into the shower. It’ll make us all feel better.”

Chloe shoved past Maggie and linked arms with Sawyer, steering her down the hall.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Sawyer said, hiking her backpack over one shoulder. “I can handle Maggie.”

Chloe’s blue eyes went wide and baby-doll innocent. “Oh, honey. I didn’t do it for you.” She blinked, a wry smile spreading across her passion-pink lips. “I did it for me.”

“Hola, señoras.” Mr. Hanson was the school’s sole Spanish teacher, but at barely thirty years old, he looked more like a student than a faculty member. He edged his way between Sawyer and Chloe and grinned, while a hallway full of girls drooled. “Perdon, perdon. Ah, Sawyer! Has estudiado para la prueba?” he said, looking expectantly at her.

Sawyer felt the redness bloom in her cheeks and shifted her weight. “Um, si, señor.”

“Bueno!” A wide smile spread across Mr. Hanson’s face, his eyes crinkling with the effort.

“Ohmigod, what did he just say to you?”

Sawyer shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. My stock answers are si, no, or the often used ‘how do you say menstrual cramps in Spanish’?”

Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”

“They never ask you to translate that sombrero thing if they think you’ve got cramps.”

Chloe watched the back of Mr. Hanson’s head as he disappeared into Principal Chappie’s office. “Screw French. I’m transferring into Spanish.”

“You were bound to waste it on some French Canadian anyway.”

“Don’t you love him?”

Sawyer glanced over her shoulder, caught the last of Mr. Hanson’s dark hair as he disappeared into the office. “Don’t you think he’s a little overeager?”

“Please. Half my teachers don’t even know my first name. Hanson’s like, fresh out of teacher school, or whatever, and still hopeful. He still believes in us.” Chloe batted her eyelashes sweetly.

“Whatever.”

“Besides, I heard he gave Libby a ride home the other day.”

Sawyer unzipped her backpack. “And I’m sure she thanked him appropriately.”

Chloe crossed her arms in front of her chest, bored now. “Are we still on for tomorrow night?”

“You mean our convocation?”

“Ooh, convocation. SAT word?”

Sawyer laughed. “My ticket out of suburban hell. Let me call you about tomorrow, though. Dad and wife number two are finding out the sex-slash-species of The Spawn. I’m sure they’ll want to do something educational and emotionally satisfying out of their Blended Families/Blended Lives book.”

“Ah, another evening rubbing placenta on each other and worshipping the moon?”

Sawyer sighed. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come over and watch your parents’ passive aggression as they avoid each other while showing their extreme disappointment in your choices?”

Chloe folded a stick of gum into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Hell no. Wednesday is fried chicken and mac-and-cheese-as-vegetable night at the double wide. That dysfunction is all mine. And they’re not my parents—Lois and Dean are my guardians.”

Sawyer cocked her head, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Not mom and stepdud anymore?”

“Hopefully not. Haven’t seen Dean in over a week. And I’m using the guardian thing so hopefully Lois will finally cave in and admit that I’m adopted.”

Sawyer grinned. “Except that you are the spitting image of your mother.”

“Sawyer Dodd, that is a horrible thing to say.”

“Of course. A thousand apologies. I take it back.”

“Better.” Chloe blew Sawyer an air kiss. “I’ll be waiting by the phone with greasy fingers for your call.”

“I’ll have the ambulance on standby,” Sawyer called over her shoulder.

She grinned, watching her best friend skip down the hall. For the first time in what seemed like forever, things felt normal and light again.

“Excuse me.” Logan Haas smiled shyly at Sawyer and she stepped aside, letting him get into the locker under hers. Logan bore the unlucky high school triumvirate of being slight, short, and nearsighted, but Sawyer liked him.

“Hey, sorry,” she said.

Logan stacked his books, slammed his locker shut, gave Sawyer an awkward salute, and headed down the hall, eyes glued to his shoes. Sawyer spun her combination lock and yanked the door open, her lips forming a little o of surprise when she did so. Amongst her neatly stacked binders and books was a short, fat envelope in a pale mint green. Her name was printed on it in a handwriting font. She took the envelope and looked over both shoulders; no one milled about, red-faced or smiling, indicating that they had slipped the note in her locker.

She tore the envelope open and pulled out a matching mint green folded card, a tiny plain oak leaf embossed on the bottom. When she opened it, a clipped newspaper article slipped out. Sawyer didn’t have to read the headline to know what it said: “Local High School Student Killed In Car Wreck.” She swallowed down a cry and read the note on the card.

It said, simply,

You’re welcome.

TWO

Heat, like a live wire, raced down Sawyer’s spine. The note was signed, “an admirer,” and that word, admirer, clawed at her. Her fingers started to shake, and she flicked the note back into her locker and slammed the door shut, pressing her forehead against the cool metal.

It’s nothing, she told herself. Someone probably sent flowers—everyone sent flowers. Each hour after Kevin’s death was reported a new bouquet seemed to show up—gaudy, pitiful, with drooping spider mums and cheap, glittered ribbons in the Hawthorne High School colors. Each bouquet reminded Sawyer of Kevin—especially when they died.

She suddenly hated flowers.

“I’m sure that’s what it is,” Sawyer mumbled.

“Tick tock, Ms. Dodd.” Principal Chappie tapped his mammoth wristwatch as he strode by, giving students his principal snarl and tick-tock warning.

Sawyer hiked her backpack onto her shoulder and stepped away from her locker, but that meager line—“You’re welcome”—was like an invisible string pulling her back. She spun her combination lock and reached for the note, her fingers hovering tentatively over it as though it would burn her. Finally, she snatched it up and tucked the note into her bag, heading toward her AP biology class.

Chloe appeared in the hallway halfway to Sawyer’s class and fell in step with her. She leaned in. “You look awful,” she whispered.

Sawyer swallowed heavily and licked her lips. “There was something in my locker.”

“Like a dead mouse?” Chloe shuddered.

“Ahem,” Mr. Rhodes said from inside his classroom. “As soon as Ms. Dodd is through with her conversation, we will begin our class.”

Sawyer looked from Mr. Rhodes to Chloe. “Gotta go.”

Chloe peeled off into her own class as Sawyer beelined through the open door and pulled it shut behind her, whispering apologies as she did.

“Nice of you to join us, Sawyer. Take your seat.”

“Sorry.” She ducked into her desk at the back of the room and pulled out her biology book, working to rein in her mind as it shot off in multiple directions. As the day wore on, Sawyer tried to put the note out of her mind, but each time the bell rang, her heart would start to punch against her ribs. She purposely avoided her locker—which was easy to do, since her speech class didn’t require a book and she was planning to buy her lunch anyway—but she couldn’t avoid it at the end of the day. She sat in her last class, doing her best to avoid the clock. But each time another minute ticked off, a hot coil of dread burned through her. When the bell finally rang, she took her time gathering her things.

Chloe poked her head through the doorway from the hall, glaring at Sawyer.

“Oh my God, Sawyer, the glaciers are melting,” she moaned. “Come on already!”

Sawyer slung her last book into her backpack and hitched it over her shoulder. She followed Chloe into the crowded hallway, and as they approached the junior hall, icy fingers of anxiety—or fear—pricked at Sawyer. She tried to shake it off, to remind herself of her well-constructed flower theory, but the note—and its message—hung heavily in the back of her mind.

“Hey, are you okay?” Chloe asked.

Sawyer shook her head, shrugged.

“Didn’t you say you got something?”

Sawyer sucked in a stomach-quivering breath, her eyes focused on her locker. Would there be another note? She fumbled with the lock and tugged it open, letting out a whoosh of air when she saw that her locker was just as she had left it: her neat stack of books, two tubes of Chapstick, a picture of her and Kevin—and no note.

“Earth to Sawyer?”

“Sorry, Chloe. I’m just—I’m just tired, I guess. I’m not sleeping very well.”

“I thought your doctor gave you some sleeping pills or something.”

Sawyer nodded, swapping the books in her locker for the ones in her backpack. “He did, but if I take one of those I’m dead to the world.”

“Sounds like heaven.”

Sawyer rolled her eyes. “Heaven with the teensiest bit of hallucinatory crazy tossed in.”

Chloe bounced on the balls of her feet. “Oh, IPO-paid hallucinogens? Sign me up!”

“And then I run like molasses the next morning.”

“You dropped something.” Chloe bent down and plucked the mint-green envelope from the linoleum. “What’s this?”

Sawyer swallowed. “It’s nothing.” She snatched the envelope back while Chloe cocked an eyebrow.

“Grabby.”

Sawyer bit her lip, then forced a nonchalant smile. “Call me later?”

“Will do.”

Sawyer felt like she was sleepwalking all through track practice—and Coach Carter told her the same. She was glad when he finally let the team leave after their timed trials.

“You okay, S?” Coach Carter asked as students trickled off the field.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Coach, I was just—” Sawyer bit her bottom lip, suddenly certain that Coach Carter could see right through her, would know that she was lying. “Distracted.”

Coach nodded. “That’s not like you.” He broke into a friendly grin and trotted backward. “You’re going to bring it next time though, right?”

Sawyer smiled back, for once glad that Coach Carter cared about nothing more than her performance on the track.

“Sure,” she mumbled, forcing herself to smile.

Sawyer skipped changing in the locker room and went directly for her car in the school parking lot. She threw her backpack—note safely tucked in the front pocket—on the passenger seat. She drove a brand-new midnight blue Honda Accord with all the extras. Though she was thankful, she wasn’t as wowed by the thing as her friends had been. Where they saw shiny new wheels and imminent freedom, Sawyer saw her parents’ last unified attempt at appeasement—or apology—while her mother moved two thousand miles away to run a corporate office and her father and wife number two moved Sawyer to the outer regions of hell. Her parents had presented the car as a reliable necessity for Sawyer. Her father’s new subdivision and her new, just-like-every-other-house-in-the-tract home were thirty-three miles away from Chloe, Hawthorne High, and every other bit of civilization in Sawyer’s life.

She sunk her key in the ignition, plastic Fighting Hornet keychain dangling, but didn’t start the car. Instead, she bit her lip and listened to her heartbeat speed up, grimacing as hot needles pricked at her spine. She unzipped her pack and pulled out the note, studying the envelope as if some new, revealing clue would suddenly appear. There was nothing. On a sharp breath she plucked the card from its envelope and opened it, reading the handwriting font once again: