"You okay?" he asked. "I said your name three times before you noticed."

"Sorry. I guess I was a little distracted." I put down my backpack and turned the combination to my locker. "Did you need something?"

"Actually, I wanted to give you something." He pulled a package out of a plastic bag. "Donuts." He handed me the box. "They're a little stale, though. I brought them yesterday, but you weren't here.'"

"Thanks ... um ... What are these for?"

"Well, you still owe me a dozen from before Thanksgiving. So I thought if I got you some instead, you'd feel extra indebted to me." Insert "triple threat" smile here.

"Indebted to do what?" I asked coyly.

Pete leaned forward. His voice was low as he spoke. "Is there something really going on between you and that Kalbi guy, or are you just friends?"

Something really going on? Now I was sure people were talking about me.

"Don't worry," I said, "I don't even think we're friends."

"Good." He leaned back on his heels. "So these donuts are supposed to make you feel guilty enough to go to the Christmas dance with me."

"The Christmas dance?" The dance hadn't passed my mind in days. Did people who knew the secrets of the underworld go to dances? "Uh, yes. I would love to go," I said. "On one condition, though."

"What's that?"

"Help me eat these donuts, or I'll never fit into a dress." Pete laughed. I opened the box and he snagged three donuts.

"Can I walk you to class?" he asked as I shut the box in my locker. I smiled. It was such a 1950s-perfect-hoyfriend thing to ask. "Sure," I said, and hugged my books to my chest and pretended I was wearing a poodle skirt and oxford shoes. Pete wrapped his arm around my waist as we walked down the hall. He nodded to more than a few quizzical-looking people as we went.

Pete seemed so confident, so normal, so good. He's just what I need, I thought as I watched him--but I couldn't help noticing there was someone else watching me.

WEDNESDAY OF THE NEXT WEEK, JUST BEFORE LUNCH

I sat next to April in the art room working on a preliminary sketch from an old snapshot for a portfolio piece. It would eventually be a painting of Jude fishing behind Grandpa Kramer's cabin. I loved the way the fight swept in from the side of the photograph and glistened off the top of Jude's bowed head like a halo. But for the moment, I was working with pencils, sketching out the basic fines and defining the negative and positive spaces. There was more shadow in the picture than I had realized, and the graphite of my pencil was worn down to a useless nub, but I was avoiding the pencil sharpener in the back of the room because Daniel's seat was only three feet away from it.

A few minutes before the lunch bell, Mr. Barlow made his way over to Daniel's desk.

"Look at Lynn fume." April nudged me.

Lynn Bishop glared at Daniel as Mr. Barlow stood beside him, watching him paint. She looked like she was trying to burn a hole in Daniel's back with her eyes.

"Looks like Barlow's got a new favorite. Poor Lynn," April said with mock sympathy. "You're totally better than she is anyway. You should have heard Barlow going on about that sketch of your house you turned in last week." She pointed at my drawing and sighed. "I love this one, too. Jude looks so hot in that picture."

"Hmm," I said. I gathered up a couple of spent pencils and made a break for the back of the room while Daniel was occupied.

I put a pencil into the sharpener.

"Stop!" Barlow bellowed.

I jumped and looked behind me but Barlow had been speaking to Daniel. Daniel held his brush mid stroke. He looked up at Barlow.

"Leave it the way it is," Barlow said.

T leaned sideways a bit to get a look at Daniel's painting. It was of himself as a child--a subject Barlow had assigned the rest of us earlier in the year. So far, Daniel had a simple background of red hues and the flesh tones roughed in for his face. His lips were outlined in pale pink. And since Daniel always went about things in the hardest way possible, he'd finished the eyes before anything else. They were dark and deep and confused like I had always remembered them.

"But it isn't finished," Daniel said. "All I've perfected are the eyes."

"I know," Barlow said. "That's what makes it so right. Your eyes--your soul is there, but the rest of you is still so undefined. That's the beauty of childhood. The eyes show everything you've seen so far, but the rest of you is still so open to possibility, to whatever you might become." Daniel held the brush tightly between his long fingers. He glanced at me. We both knew what he had become.

I turned away.

"Trust me," Barlow said. The Masonite board scraped against the table. I assumed he'd picked it up. "This will make a great portfolio piece."

"Yes, sir," Daniel mumbled.

"Are you done or what?" Lynn Bishop stood next to me with a fistful of colored pencils.

"Sorry," I said, and moved out of her way with my still-dull pencil.

"I hear Pete asked you to the Christmas dance." Lynn shoved a pink pencil into the sharpener.

"I guess word gets around."

I heard Daniel's chair sliding back over the ferocious gnawing of the sharpener.

"Yes, it does," she said in her knowing, "I've got a juicy bit of gossip" tone. "Interesting he still asked you."

"What's that supposed to mean? Pete's been friends with my brother for years."

"Hmm." Lynn removed her pencil and inspected the long, pointy pink tip. "I guess that explains it--an act of charity for your brother. Pete must be trying to bring you back to the land of the living."

I was already cranky, and I didn't need crap from the gossip queen of Holy Trinity--kind of an oxymoron if you think about it--but the lunch bell rang, stopping me from telling her what she should do with her pencil.

"Mind your own business," I said, and walked away.

April picked up her backpack as I approached. "Do you think there are Cliffs Notes to Leaves of Grass?"

"I doubt it." I put my pencils in my supply bucket.

April groaned. "Jude is going to quiz me on it after school, and I kind of told him I already read it." She crinkled her nose and put the book in her bag.