I stopped and bent over, hands on knees, my chest exploding. My legs were rubber. When I looked up, I saw a crumbling rock wall in front of me. I could barely make out the tops of the trees beyond the wall.

I smelled something familiar. Lemon trees. She was here.

I told you not to come.

I know.

We were having a conversation, except we weren’t. But just like in class, I could hear her in my head, as if she was standing next to me whispering in my ear.

I felt myself moving toward her. There was a walled garden, maybe even a secret garden, like something out of a book my mother would have read growing up in Savannah. This place must have been really old. The stone wall was worn away in places and completely broken in others. When I pushed through the curtain of vines that hid the old, rotting wooden archway, I could just barely hear the sound of someone crying. I looked through the trees and the bushes, but I still couldn’t see her.

“Lena?” Nobody answered. My voice sounded strange, as if it wasn’t mine, echoing off the stone walls that surrounded the little grove. I grabbed the bush closest to me and ripped off a branch. Rosemary. Of course. And in the tree above my head, there it was: a strangely perfect, smooth, yellow lemon.

“It’s Ethan.” As the muffled sounds of sobbing grew, I knew I was coming closer.

“Go away, I told you.” She sounded like she had a cold; she had probably been crying since she left school.

“I know. I heard you.” It was true, and I couldn’t explain it. I stepped carefully around the wild rosemary, stumbling through the overgrown roots.

“Really?” She sounded interested, momentarily distracted.

“Really.” It was like the dreams. I could hear her voice, except she was here, crying in an overgrown garden in the middle of nowhere, instead of falling through my arms.

I parted a large tangle of branches. There she was, curled up in the tall grasses, staring up at the blue sky. She had one arm tossed over her head, and another clutching at the grass, as if she thought she would fly away if she let go. Her gray dress lay in a puddle around her. Her face was streaked with tears.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Go away?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” I sat down next to her. The ground was surprisingly hard. I ran my hand underneath me and discovered I was sitting on a smooth slab of flat stone, hidden by the muddy overgrowth.

Just as I lay back, she sat up. I sat up, and she flopped back down. Awkward. That was my every move, when it came to her.

Now we were both lying down, staring up at the blue sky. It was turning gray, the color of the Gatlin sky during hurricane season.

“They all hate me.”

“Not all of them. Not me. Not Link, my best friend.”

Silence.

“You don’t even know me. Give it time; you’ll probably hate me, too.”

“I almost ran you down, remember? I have to be nice to you, so you don’t have me arrested.”

It was a lame joke. But there it was, the smallest smile I have possibly ever seen in my life. “It’s right up at the top of my list. I’ll report you to that fat guy who sits in front of the supermarket all day.” She looked back up at the sky. I watched her.

“Give them a chance. They’re not all bad. I mean, they are, right now. They’re just jealous. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“They are.” I looked at her, through the tall grass. “I am.”

She shook her head. “Then you’re crazy. There’s nothing to be jealous of, unless you’re really into eating lunch alone.”

“You’ve lived all over.”

She looked blank. “So? You’ve probably gotten to go to the same school and live in the same house your whole life.”

“I have, that’s the problem.”

“Trust me, it’s not a problem. I know about problems.”

“You’ve gone places, seen things. I’d kill to do that.”

“Yeah, all by myself. You have a best friend. I have a dog.”

“But you’re not scared of anyone. You act the way you want and say whatever you want. Everyone else around here is scared to be themselves.”

Lena picked at the black polish on her index finger. “Sometimes I wish I could act like everyone else, but I can’t change who I am. I’ve tried. But I never wear the right clothes or say the right thing, and something always goes wrong. I just wish I could be myself and still have friends who noticed whether I’m in school or not.”

“Believe me, they notice. At least, they did today.” She almost laughed—almost. “I mean, in a good way.” I looked away.

I notice.

What?

Whether you’re in school or not.

“Then I guess you are crazy.” But when she said the words, it sounded like she was smiling.

Looking at her, it didn’t seem to matter anymore if I had a lunch table to sit at or not. I couldn’t explain it, but she was, this was, bigger than that. I couldn’t sit by and watch them try to take her down. Not her.

“You know, it’s always like this.” She was talking to the sky. A cloud floated into the darkening gray-blue.

“Cloudy?”

“At school, for me.” She held up her hand and waved it. The cloud seemed to swirl in the direction her hand was moving. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

“It’s not like I really care if they like me. I just don’t want them to automatically hate me.” Now the cloud was a circle.