It was weird. This whole time I had been assuming that Kimberlee was supposed to learn something from me, but maybe I was supposed to learn something from her.

But where did that leave Kimberlee?

On Thursday morning I walked into school and Kimberlee was lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway again. I was gripped by a twisting sense of déjà vu and had to stop myself from yelling out when a girl in platform heels walked straight toward her. Kimberlee didn’t move an inch, but I cringed as that black shoe sank through her face.

“Bitch,” Kimberlee said quietly.

The girl looked quizzically down at her foot for a moment, then tossed her hair over her shoulder and kept walking.

I was trying to decide if I should go say something when I felt Sera’s warm hand slip into mine.

“Hey.” She smiled at me with those green eyes that made me want to find an empty classroom . . . now.

Decision made—I walked past Kimberlee without even looking down. I didn’t feel eyes on my back; apparently she was ignoring me, too. Waiting for a new destiny, maybe—though who knows what someone else would help her with. There was nothing left in the cave; no unfinished business left to get her out of limbo.

Still, it was weird not to talk to her, or even acknowledge her. We were two people whose lives had revolved around each other, now drifting apart. I think maybe I even missed her. When she wasn’t being crude, mean, sarcastic, or cruel, she was kind of fun to have around.

Friday morning I made up my mind to talk to her. I had everything—I had Sera, my parents, even some friends back home that I still texted sometimes. Kimberlee had no one but me. And like it or not, I still felt obliged to try to help her. If nothing else, to get her finally and completely out of my life.

I parked Halle in her usual spot and tried not to drag my feet as I approached the school. I’d made the decision; I couldn’t wimp out now. I even called Sera the night before and told her I’d probably be late and to just meet me at lunch. No turning back now.

I walked into the main foyer and my eyes immediately went to Kimberlee’s portrait on the wall. She looked innocent in that picture—happy. I knew better. I wondered if Kimberlee had ever been innocent, and I knew it had been years since she’d been happy.

I steeled myself and walked past the portrait and into the south hall.

But she wasn’t there.

I stared at the space on the floor she had occupied yesterday—the place she’d lain when I first saw her. I blinked a few times and wondered if fate had changed its mind. Had I screwed up so badly I wasn’t allowed to help anymore? Maybe it was Kimberlee who had screwed up. Okay, fine. Probably it was Kimberlee who screwed up.

For a moment I dared to hope she’d been allowed to move on after all, but the idea fled almost as soon as I thought of it. If anything, Kimberlee was more conflicted than when we’d first met.

Maybe I just couldn’t see her anymore. I walked over to her spot and tried to stand there casually. “Kimberlee,” I whispered. “Are you there?”

A backpack bumped my shoulder. “Sorry, man,” a sophomore said. “My fault.” He hurried on when he saw the look on my face. But my eyes weren’t on him; they were fixed on the line his feet had just followed. Straight across where Kimberlee should have been lying. He didn’t stop and look down the way everyone did when they made contact with Kimberlee—staring around as the chills went through them. He didn’t look at his feet at all.

She wasn’t there.

Where was she? She had nowhere else to go.

Did she?

Maybe she’d found someone else who could see her. Maybe there was another new kid. The thought made me strangely, irrationally jealous.

I went home alone after school. Sera’s parents were having company for afternoon tea—whatever the hell that was—and dinner that night, and Sera’s parents had decided that her presence was required. So I was left out in the cold. I came home to an empty garage, and a note on the kitchen door told me Mom and Dad had taken off for one of their spontaneous romantic weekends.

They think it improves their marriage—I try to think about it as little as possible.

I was vaguely hungry, but I didn’t even stop for a Coke as I headed up to my room. Everything seemed wrong. I should be happy Kimberlee was gone—whether by choice or not. But even though I’d all but given up on her, I hated that she’d given up on me.

I reached for the TV, intending to play something mindless, but after looking through my games for a full five minutes and finding nothing that appealed to me, I turned to my bookshelf instead. When I was little and we lived in Phoenix we didn’t have cable or video games or anything like that. Hell, we were so poor we rarely had anything beyond necessities. So I got into comics. I could go to the comic-book store and, as long as I bought one comic when I left, the owner would let me read the rest of them for hours. Spider-Man, Superman, Sandman—guess I was all about the S-Men—and then when I was done, I would choose my favorite and take it home. I didn’t have any complete series, just random issues. But it made for good comfort reading.

I pulled out one of my favorite issues of Spider-Man and had gotten about ten pages in when my cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket, and was about to hit Talk before I realized I was answering the wrong phone.

The ringing was coming from my bedside table drawer. The phone Khail had given me. The one that had only rung maybe three times in the whole time I’d owned it. It rang twice more while I tried to figure out what to do.