I’m so surprised by the question it takes me a second to answer. “Mr. Daimler is not a perv.”

“Trust me, he is.”

“Jealous?”

“Hardly.”

“I don’t flirt with him, anyway.”

Kent rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

I shrug my shoulders. “Why so interested?”

Kent goes red and drops his eyes to the floor. “No reason,” he mumbles.

My stomach dips a little bit, and I realize a part of me was hoping his answer would be different—more personal. Of course, if Kent did confess his undying love for me right there, in the hallway, it would be disastrous. Despite his weirdness I have no desire to publicly humiliate him—he’s nice and we were childhood friends and all that—but I could never, ever, ever date him, not in a million lifetimes. Not in my lifetime, anyway: the one I want back, where yesterdays are followed by todays and then tomorrows. The bowler hat alone makes it impossible.

“Listen.” Kent shoots me a look out of the corner of his eye. “My parents are going away this weekend, and I’m having some people over tonight….”

“Uh-huh.” Up ahead I see Rob loping toward the cafeteria. At any second he’ll spot me. I can’t handle seeing him right now. My stomach clenches and I leap in front of Kent, turning my back to the cafeteria. “Um…where’s your house again?”

Kent looks at me strangely. I did basically just set myself up like a human barricade. “Off Route Nine. You don’t remember?” I don’t respond and he looks away, shrugging. “I guess you wouldn’t, really. You were only there a few times. We moved just before middle school. From Terrace Place. You remember my old house on Terrace Place, right?” The smile is back. It’s true: his eyes are exactly the color of grass. “You used to hang out in the kitchen and steal all the good cookies. And I chased you around these huge maple trees in the front yard. Remember?”

As soon as he mentions the maple trees a memory rises up, expanding, like something breaking the surface of water and rippling outward. We were sitting in this little space in between two enormous roots that curved out of the ground like animal spines. I remember that he split two maple-wing seeds and stuck one on his nose and one on mine, telling me that this way everyone would know we were in love. I was probably only five or six.

“I—I…” The last thing I need is for him to remind me of the good old days, when I was all knees and nose and glasses, and he was the only boy who would come near me. “Maybe. Trees kinda all look the same to me, you know?”

He laughs even though I wasn’t trying to be funny. “So you think you’ll come tonight? To my party?”

This brings me back to reality. The party. I shake my head and start backing away. “No. I don’t think so.”

His smile falters a little. “It’ll be fun. Big. Senior memories. Best time of our lives and all that crap.”

“Right,” I say sarcastically. “High school heaven.”

I turn around and start walking away from him. The cafeteria is packed, and as I approach the double doors—one of which is propped open with an old tennis shoe—the noise of the students greets me with a roar.

“You’ll come,” he calls after me. “I know you will.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I call back, and I almost add, It’s better this way.

THE RULES OF SURVIVAL

“What do you mean you can’t go out?”

Ally’s looking at me like I just said I wanted to go to prom with Ben Farsky (or Fart-sky, as we’ve been calling him since fourth grade).

I sigh. “I just don’t feel like it, okay?” I switch tactics and try again. “We go out every weekend. I just—I don’t know. I want to stay in, like we used to.”

“We used to stay in because we couldn’t get into any senior parties,” Ally says.

“Speak for yourself,” Lindsay says.

This is harder than I thought it would be.

I flash on my mom asking if I’d had a fight with Rob and before I can think too much about it I blurt out, “It’s Rob, okay? We…we’re having issues.”

I flip open my phone, checking for texts for the millionth time. When I first came into the cafeteria Rob was standing behind the registers, loading his fries with ketchup and barbecue sauce (his favorite). I couldn’t bring myself to go up to him, so instead I hurried to our table in the senior section and sent him a text: We have 2 talk.

He texted back right away. Bout?

2nite, I wrote back, and since then my phone’s been silent. Across the cafeteria, Rob is leaning against the vending machines talking to Adam Marshall. He has his hat twisted sideways on his head. He thinks it makes him look older.

I used to love collecting all these little facts about him, storing them together and holding them close inside of me, like if I gathered up all the details and remembered them—the fact that he likes barbecue sauce but not mustard, that his favorite team is the Yankees even though he prefers basketball to baseball, that once when he was little he broke his leg trying to jump over a car—I would totally understand him. I used to think that’s what love was: knowing someone so well he was like a part of you.

But more and more I’m feeling like I don’t know Rob.

Ally’s jaw actually drops. “But you’re supposed to—you know.”

She kind of looks like a mounted fish with her mouth open like that, so I turn away, fighting the urge to laugh. “We were supposed to, but…” I’ve never been a good liar and my brain goes totally blank.

“But?” Lindsay prompts.

I reach into my bag and pull out the note he sent me, which is now crumpled and has a piece of gum, half unwrapped, sticking to it. I push it across the table. “But this.”

Lindsay wrinkles her nose and flips open the card with the very tips of her fingernails. Ally and Elody lean over and they both read. They’re all silent for a second afterward.

Finally Lindsay closes the card and pushes it back to me. “It’s not that bad,” she says.

“It’s not that good, either.” I was only trying to fake an excuse to keep us away from the party tonight, but as soon as I start talking about Rob, I get really worked up. “Luv ya? What kind of crap is that? We’ve been going out since October.”

“He’s probably just waiting to say it,” Elody says. She pushes the bangs out of her eyes. “Steve doesn’t say it to me.”

“That’s different. You don’t expect him to say it.”

Elody looks away quickly, and it occurs to me that maybe, despite everything, she does.

There’s an awkward pause, and Lindsay jumps in. “I don’t see what the trauma is. You know Rob likes you. It’s not like it would be a one-night stand or anything.”

“He likes me, but…” I’m about to confess that I’m not sure that we’re good together, but at the last second I can’t. They would think I was insane. I don’t even understand it myself, really. It’s like the idea of him is better than the him of him. “Look. I’m not going to have sex with him just so he’ll say that he loves me, you know?”

I don’t even mean for the words to come out, and for a second I’m so startled by them, I can’t say anything else. That isn’t why I was planning to have sex with Rob—to hear the words, I mean. I just wanted to get it over with. I think. Actually, I’m not sure why it seemed so important.

“Speak of the devil,” Ally mutters.

Then I smell lemon balm and Rob’s planting a wet kiss on my cheek.

“Hi, ladies.” He reaches over to take a fry from Elody, and she moves her tray just out of reach. He laughs. “Hey, Slammer. Did you get my note?”

“I got it.” I look down at the table. I feel like if I meet his eyes I’ll forget everything, forget the note and how he left me alone and how when he kisses me he keeps his eyes open.

At the same time, I don’t really want anything to change.

“So? What’d I miss?” Rob leans forward and puts his hands on the table—a little too hard, I think. Lindsay’s Diet Coke jumps.

“The party at Kent’s and how Sam doesn’t want to go,” Ally blurts out. Elody elbows her in the side and Ally yelps.

Rob swivels his head and looks at me. His face is completely expressionless. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“No—well, kind of.” I wasn’t expecting him to mention the text, and it flusters me that I can’t tell what he’s thinking. His eyes look extra dark, almost cloudy. I try to smile at him, but I feel like my cheeks are all stuffed with cotton. I can’t help but picture him swaying on his feet and holding up his hand and saying, “Five minutes.”

“Well?” He straightens up and shrugs. “What, then?”

Lindsay, Ally, and Elody are all staring at me. I can feel their eyes like they’re emitting heat. “I can’t talk about it here. I mean, not now.” I tip my head in their direction.

Rob laughs: a short, harsh sound. And now I can tell he’s mad and just hiding it.

“Of course not.” He backs away, both hands raised like he’s warding something off. “How ’bout this? You let me know when you’re ready to talk. I’ll wait to hear from you. I would never want to, you know, pressure you.” He elongates some of the words, and I can hear the sarcasm in his voice—just barely, but it’s there.

It’s obvious—to me, at least—that he’s talking about way more than our having a talk, but before I can respond he gives a flourish with his hand, a kind of bow, and then turns around and walks away.

“Jeez.” Ally pushes around the turkey sandwich on her plate. “What was that about?”

“You’re not really fighting, are you, Sam?” Elody asks, eyes wide.

Before I have to answer Lindsay makes a kind of hissing noise and juts her chin up, gesturing behind me. “Psychopath alert. Lock up the knives and babies.”

Juliet Sykes has just walked into the cafeteria. I’ve been so focused on today—on fixing it, on the idea that I can fix it—I’ve totally forgotten about Juliet. But now I whip around, more curious about her than I’ve ever been. I watch her drifting through the cafeteria. Her hair is down and concealing her face: fuzzy, soft hair, so white it reminds me of snow. That’s what she looks like, actually—like a snowflake being buffeted around in the wind, twisting and turning on currents of air. She doesn’t even glance up in our direction, and I wonder if even now she’s planning it, planning to follow us tonight and embarrass us in front of everybody. It doesn’t seem like she would have it in her.

I’m so focused on watching her that it takes me a second to realize Ally and Elody have just finished a round of Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est and are now laughing hysterically. Lindsay’s holding up her fingers, crossed, like she’s warding off a curse, and she keeps repeating, “Oh, Lord, keep the darkness away.”