There was something about her voice that told me she was giving up on more than just Jackson. “Are you breaking up with me?” I was holding my breath.

“Please don’t make this harder. It’s not what I want, either.”

Then don’t do it.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. It was like time had stopped again, the way it had at Thanksgiving dinner. Only this time, it wasn’t magic. It was the opposite of magic.

“I just think things will be easier this way. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.” She looked up at me, her big green eyes sparkling with tears. Then she turned and fled down a hallway that was so quiet you could’ve heard a pencil drop.

Merry Christmas, Lena.

But there was nothing to hear. She was gone, and that wasn’t something I would have been ready for, not in fifty-three days, not in fifty-three years, not in fifty-three centuries.

Fifty-three minutes later, I sat alone, staring out the window, which was a statement right there, considering how crowded the lunchroom was. Gatlin was gray; the clouds had drifted in. I wouldn’t call it a storm, exactly; it hadn’t snowed in years. If we were lucky, we got a flurry or two, maybe once a year. But it hadn’t snowed a single day since I was twelve.

I wished it would snow. I wished I could hit rewind and be back in the hallway with Lena. I wished I could tell her I didn’t care if everyone in this town hated me, because it didn’t matter. I was lost before I found her in my dreams, and she found me that day in the rain. I knew it seemed like I was always the one trying to save Lena, but the truth was she had saved me, and I wasn’t ready for her to stop now.

“Hey, man.” Link slid onto the bench across from me at the empty table. “Where’s Lena? I wanted to thank her.”

“For what?”

Link pulled a piece of folded notebook paper out of his pocket. “She wrote me a song. Pretty cool, huh?” I couldn’t even look at it. She was talking to Link, just not to me.

Link grabbed a slice of my untouched pizza. “Listen, I got a favor to ask you.”

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Ridley and I are goin’ up to New York over break. If anyone asks, I’m at church camp in Savannah, far as you know.”

“There’s no church camp in Savannah.”

“Yeah, but my mom doesn’t know that. I told her I signed up because they have some kind of Baptist rock band.”

“And she believed that?”

“She’s been actin’ a little weird lately, but what do I care. She said I could go.”

“It doesn’t matter what your mom said, you can’t go. There are things you don’t know about Ridley. She’s… dangerous. Stuff could happen to you.”

His eyes lit up. I had never seen Link like this. Then again, I hadn’t seen him too much lately. I’d been spending all my time with Lena, or thinking about Lena, the Book, her birthday. The stuff my world revolved around now, or did, until an hour ago.

“That’s what I’m hopin’. Besides, I got it bad for that girl. She really does somethin’ to me, ya know?” He took the last slice of pizza off my tray.

For a second I considered telling Link everything, just like the old days—about Lena and her family, Ridley, Genevieve, and Ethan Carter Wate. Link had known everything in the beginning, but I didn’t know if he would believe the rest, or if he could. Some things were just asking too much, even from your best friend. Right now I couldn’t risk losing Link, too, but I had to do something. I couldn’t let him go to New York, or anywhere else, with Ridley. “Listen man, you’ve gotta trust me. Don’t get mixed up with her. She’s just using you. You’re gonna get hurt.”

He crushed a Coke can in his hand. “Oh, I get it. If the hottest girl in town is hangin’ out with me, she must be usin’ me? I guess you think you’re the only one who can pull a hot chick. When did you get so full of yourself?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Link got up. “I think we both know what you’re sayin’. Forget I asked.”

It was too late. Ridley had already gotten to him. Nothing I said was going to change his mind. And I couldn’t lose my girlfriend and my best friend in the same day. “Listen, I didn’t mean it like that. I won’t say anything, not like your mom is speaking to me anyway.”

“It’s cool. It’s gotta be hard to have a best friend who’s good lookin’ and as talented as me.” Link took the cookie off my tray and broke it in half. It might as well have been the dirty Twinkie off the floor of the bus. It was over. It would take a lot more than a girl, even a Siren, to come between us.

Emily was eyeing him. “You’d better go before Emily rats you out to your mom. Then you won’t be going to any church camp, real or imaginary.”

“I’m not worried about her.” But he was. He didn’t want to be stuck in the house with his mom the whole winter break. And he didn’t want to be frozen out by the team, by everyone at Jackson, even if he was too stupid or too loyal to realize it.

On Monday, I helped Amma bring the boxes of holiday decorations down from the attic. The dust made my eyes water; at least, that’s what I told myself. I found a whole little town, lit by little white lights, that my Mom used to lay out every year under the Christmas tree, on a piece of cotton we pretended was snow. The houses were her grandmother’s, and she had loved them so much that I had loved them, even though they were made of flimsy cardboard, glue, and glitter, and half the time they fell over when I tried to stand them up. “Old things are better than new things, because they’ve got stories in them, Ethan.” She would hold up an old tin car and say, “Imagine my great-grandmother playing with this same car, arranging this same town under her tree, just like we are now.”