“Hey.” He smiles at me, and my stomach flips a little.

“Hi.” I dig through my backpack to avoid looking at him. Why does he have to be so gorgeous?

Sofia gathers her stuff. “Marco? Do you have any money for the vending machine?”

He takes a worn leather wallet out of his back pocket and hands her a five. “Don’t buy too much junk.”

“Deal.” Sofia ducks under his arm and bounds down the hall. “Bye, Frankie.”

“Bye.” I wave, but she’s already gone.

Marco lingers by the door for a moment. “I’ll see you around, Angel.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“Does it bother you?” He cracks a half smile, and a dimple presses into his cheek. My eyes drift to his lips—full and wide.

Look somewhere else.

“That’s not the point.” I stuff the chemistry textbook in my backpack. Anything to keep from staring at his mouth. “I have a name.”

“I know.” Marco holds my gaze a second too long, and my cheeks warm.

Does he ever blink?

When he closes the door and disappears down the hall, I switch off the lights and finally let myself exhale. Pretending Marco doesn’t affect me is harder than I expected.

A minute later Marco passes the window. He’s carrying a plastic milk bottle from the vending machine, and he leaves through the emergency exit. Where is he going? There’s nothing behind the building except a bunch of run-down playground equipment that Miss Lorraine won’t let the kids near.

It’s a borderline stalker move, but I follow him.

I crack the door and peek outside. Streetlights illuminate a rotted play structure and the sidewalk at the end of the parking lot, leaving the back of the building, where I’m standing, in darkness.

A flash of brown and white darts through a pale circle of light. Cyclops, the one-eyed cat, slinks toward a yellow slide attached to the play structure.

“Hey, Cyclops. Brought you dinner.” Marco stands near the perimeter of the playground and sets a red plastic ashtray on the ground.

The cat runs toward him. It arches its back and circles Marco. Is he crazy? Any second it will hiss and foam at the mouth.

Marco pours the milk in the ashtray. Cyclops circles again, closer this time, and the cat’s back relaxes. The animal that won’t let anyone come near it sits at Marco’s feet, lapping up the milk.

My cell vibrates. Lex is here. Before I go inside, I take one last look at the broken animal and the guy feeding it.

Cyclops trusts Marco.

I can’t help but wonder if that cat knows something I don’t.

* * *

I hardly sleep at night—another delightful side effect of PTSD. Filling those extra hours isn’t easy. I’ve already reorganized the contents of my drawers and Dad’s cereal cupboard, watched hours of mind-numbing reality shows, and I’m still wide awake. Insomnia isn’t the even worst part.

It’s the not remembering and then remembering—that’s the only way to describe it. I can’t recall certain details from the night Noah died, but when the flashbacks hit out of nowhere, I’m back there again watching him die. I can’t stop the flashbacks or turn them off. I relive the worst ten minutes of my life over and over and over, except for the one part I want to remember.

I reach for a magazine on the nightstand, and my fingers brush a metal coil.

Crap.

My English journal—the one I’m supposed to turn in on Friday. Does Mrs. Hellstrom honestly expect us to tell her about our true selves? What if we don’t know who that person is—or we don’t want to find out?

One of the psychiatrists who treated me suggested I keep a journal. She said writing about a tragic experience helps the mind process it and heal. I don’t believe for a second that writing in a stupid notebook will take away the pain. But something else she said seems possible: A journal might help you remember.

If that’s true, I owe it to Noah to try.

I lean against the wall behind my bed and search through my backpack for a pen. I settle for a pencil with bite marks along the side, turn to the first page, and start writing.

I met Noah when I was eleven and he was twelve.

He had dirty-blond hair the color of buttered toast and eyes the color of a September blue sky. We played truth or dare a hundred times that summer, and I only picked dare once. Noah dared me to ride a bike down the biggest hill in the Heights. When I admitted that I never learned how, Noah let me ride down on his bike with him.

When Noah turned thirteen, he nicknamed me Chicken Legs for a whole year. But at fourteen, he beat up Bobby McIntyre for calling me the same thing.

At fifteen, Noah told me I shouldn’t trust a boy if he said he loved me (because high school boys only wanted one thing).

But the night of his sixteenth birthday, he was the boy who said it.

Noah was beautiful, athletic, funny, and smart.

Everyone said it would never last.

They were right.

Noah died at seventeen, a week before his eighteenth birthday.

My eyes skim the words. They don’t capture the boy I remember, but they bring him closer. They remind me of the Noah I knew, not the one I lost. But nothing I wrote relates to the night he died.

How do I get from what’s on the page to there?

Across from my bed, six silver frames are lined up on top of the flowered dresser. Images of Lex, Abel, and me stare back from behind the glass, along with my favorite photo of Lex and me from the eighth-grade dance. Our braces and overly glossed lips, glittery dresses, and kitten heels we couldn’t walk in make us look like refugees from an outdated music video. Other frames lay scattered around them, facedown. I walk over and touch one.

Even with the frame flipped over, I know exactly which photo is on the other side.

First row, third frame from the left—Noah and me standing next to his Mongoose after our epic ride down the big hill. We jumped the curb at the bottom and crashed in the grass. We are a little banged up in the photo Noah took with his phone, but we’re both smiling.

The memory creates a familiar hollow ache in my chest, and I force the pain deeper, where it belongs. I’m not ready to turn the frame over … not yet.

Maybe never.

I cram the journal in my backpack, even though I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork than show it to Mrs. Hellstrom. I’ve become an expert at avoiding things that could hurt me—which means I will figure out how to stay away from Marco Leone.