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Madison whispered, “He’s acting as weird as you.”
Skye shrugged. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
Somehow she made it through homeroom and history class; for the first day ever, it was dull. Balthazar was obviously phoning it in, and it was a very small consolation to know that he felt rotten, too.
It could have been so different, if he’d just turned to her this morning.
When the bell rang, louder than ever before, Skye hurried out as quickly as she could. Mr. Bollinger’s room felt like the only safe haven at school, even if he did make her polish the triangles again. But as she walked past Ms. Loos’s room, she felt it:
Pain shooting up the arm, circling the chest. Knowing the doctor said to be careful but not really believing death was possible, not until now—
“Oh, no,” she whispered. Never before had she been able to sense the death if there was some kind of barrier between her and the place where that person had died. But her senses were heightened today—all of them.
She started running away from the room, hurtling down the hall much faster than was allowed or safe. Some people swore as they ducked away from her, and she could hear cranky Coach Haladki yelling for her to slow down, but she didn’t. All that mattered was getting farther away from that death—
Then she slammed into someone so hard that she stumbled and her victim fell.
“I’m sorry!” Skye gasped as she bent to grab her books, and only then did she see who it was she’d knocked over. Britnee Fong stared up at her, a little angry but more shocked.
“Are you, like, in trouble?” Britnee didn’t say it like she thought Skye could possibly be in any real trouble. “Because you were going really fast? And I’d hope you wouldn’t knock anybody down on purpose?”
“I said I was sorry,” Skye said curtly. She would’ve apologized more to anyone else on earth, but not this girl. Not the one who stole her boyfriend.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Craig appeared at that moment to help Britnee up. “What is your problem, Skye?”
“My problem? My problem?” If only she had just one problem to deal with. “Forget it, okay?”
“No,” Craig said. “We’ve got to talk. Britnee, tell Ms. Loos I’m—sick or out or something.”
“Um, okay?” Britnee looked as startled as Skye felt when Craig took her by the arm and steered her toward the art room, which was empty during second period.
“Don’t grab me!” Skye threw his hand off.
“Don’t make me say all this in the hall,” Craig retorted.
Skye, who had already had enough of people at Darby Glen staring at her like she was some kind of freak, followed him into the room. Besides, it would feel good to unload on somebody. Anybody. The fact that it was Craig—faithless, cruel—was a bonus.
As soon as she shut the door, he said, “Where do you get off attacking my girlfriend?”
“It was an accident, Craig. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Is that a crime?”
“An accident. Right. You hate Britnee. You laugh every time that bitch Madison Findley jokes about Britnee being ‘fat’ or ‘stupid’ or any other insult she can throw at her.”
Which—was true. And not exactly cool of her to do, even if Madison was only making those jokes to cheer Skye up. “Don’t call Madison a bitch. She’s my friend.”
“If that’s the kind of person you want to hang around with, fine. You’ve changed, Skye. I used to think we could be friends again someday, but there’s nothing in you but hate.”
“If I hate you, don’t I have a reason?” Skye’s voice was getting louder. She tried to keep her voice down, so that the entirety of Mrs. McCauley’s Algebra II class next door wouldn’t hear every word. “You slept with me and then you dumped me.”
“Months after that!”
“How could you do any of that to me after Dakota died?”
Her words were shrill even to her ears. The anger drained out of Craig in an instant. Wearily he leaned against the drafting table, bowing over as if from the weight of it all. “Skye, don’t you get it?” he said. “If Dakota hadn’t—I was going to break up with you at the start of the summer. Face-to-face, like I know I should’ve. But after he died, I couldn’t.”
“What?” She’d never dreamed that was possible. Craig had been there for her every second of that time, and she’d been too lost in her own grief to notice that his thoughts might have been far away, too. “But—why?”
“There wasn’t any reason why. We’d been at different schools for two years. You came home talking about all these people I didn’t know and events I hadn’t been to, and when I talked about being here, it bored you, too, and—we were just growing apart. It happens. I knew I cared about Britnee, but I never asked her out—never even touched her—and finally it got to the point where I had to break up with you or turn into a cheater. I don’t cheat. I was honest with you. So why do I have to be the bad guy?”
