It’s kind of sweet, even if it’s the last thing I want.

And it is—the last thing I want. When I see Damian, all I can think about is how I’m never going to see Ty. When Damian tells me about a movie he saw last weekend, I think, Ty will never see that movie. He’ll never play that new video game that Damian loves. He’ll never pass his sophomore year. And Damian will.

And it will not seem fair.

“Oh, the horror,” Damian says to me now.

“What?”

His smile is timid as he hands me back my book. “Heart of Darkness,” he says.

“What?” I ask again.

“You’re reading Heart of Darkness. There’s this famous line at the end. ‘Oh, the horror.’”

I feel stupid, which is not a normal state of being for me. “Oh, right. Yes. The horror.”

“I liked that book,” he says.

I’m about a quarter of the way through HoD, an assignment for AP English, but so far it’s exactly the kind of book I hate, where the story seems simple enough, interesting, but then I get to class and the teacher starts going on and on about the hidden meanings, the metaphors, the significance of the color yellow. All this meaning that the author was trying to say to the reader, like a message written in a secret language.

Not my cup of tea.

I don’t know what to say to Damian. He looks expectant, like he and I are about to have a thought-provoking literary discussion of Joseph Conrad.

“I—uh, I haven’t finished reading it yet,” I say.

His smile drops. “Oh. Spoiler alert. Sorry.”

I’m so tired of the word sorry.

“Hey, do you know Ashley Davenport?” I blurt out, because I’ve just remembered what I am doing in sophomore land. “She’s a cheerleader?”

Damian’s eyes, which are a watery shade of gray, are instantly remote. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “I know her. Why?”

“Do you know where I can find her?”

He shrugs. “She’s in my biology class.”

“Which biology class?” I ask.

“Mr. Slater’s.”

“When?”

He glances up at the digital clock on the wall over our heads, which reads 6:56 a.m. “In like four minutes.”

“Thanks,” I say quickly, already moving away from him. “I should—I have to get something out of my locker. Before the bell rings.”

“Okay,” he says simply, and smiles again. “See you around, Lex.”

“Bye.” I make a beeline back toward my locker. To get the letter. To get down to the science wing and back to AP English in less than four minutes.

I’m suddenly so freaked out by the prospect of finding the real Ashley (and then what am I going to do, huh?) that when I get back to my locker, I almost miss it.

The flower.

A rose, this time, stuck in the locker slats. It’s still made from plain white paper, but more intricately built than last year. There are words written on it in faint pencil, a single sentence that I have to turn the flower around to read across the petals.

I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.

I close my eyes. Heat rushes to my face. Crap. What red-blooded girl wouldn’t go weak in the knees at that?

Oh, Steven, I think. What are you doing?

And now I have approximately two minutes. I should throw the rose away. I don’t know if Steven’s watching, but I should get rid of it in case he is. That would show him that it’s over, because he clearly doesn’t think it’s really over if he could give me this flower.

I walk to the trash at the end of the hall. My hand trembles moronically as I hold the flower over the gaping gray mouth of the trash can. There’s a half-eaten breakfast burrito in there, some random papers and flyers—Try out for the school play! Gator Girls basketball team bake sale, this Saturday!—an assortment of empty soda cans, a broken pencil.

Do it, I think.

Let go.

The bell rings. I sigh and walk back to my locker, where I tuck the paper rose into my backpack, into a side pocket, where it won’t be crushed by all my other baggage. I grab the letter for Ashley and slip it into the front pocket of my five-subject notebook, not that I’m planning to give it to her right now if she turns out to be the right one—I can’t think that far ahead—but because, for some illogical reason, I want to have the letter with me. Then I speed-walk to Mr. Slater’s classroom. If I remember correctly, that’s room 121B.

I arrive at 121B with a good minute to spare before the tardy bell rings, but before I can get a look inside I’m run down by a redhead in a cheerleader uniform. She’s in such a mad rush to get to the classroom before the second bell rings that she smacks right into me. Our books and papers go all over the carpet in front of the door.

“I’m sorry,” she says as we’re both on our knees sorting out which stuff is whose. “I am so sorry.”

The bell rings.

“Ashley,” I hear Mr. Slater’s voice boom out from inside the classroom. “You’re tardy. Again.”

She gives me a smile. “Sorry, Mr. S. Be right there,” she calls back.

“Ashley Davenport?” I ask.

She looks startled. “Yes. You’re . . . Ty’s sister, right?”

My fame as the-girl-whose-brother-died has spread far and wide.

I look Ashley over. She’s a cheerleader, all right, and a sophomore, and pretty, with large royal blue eyes and skin so pale it has a translucent quality, so clear I can see a faint blue vein branching out under the surface of her temple and disappearing into her hairline. But the hair’s all wrong. It’s too short, pulled back into a tight ponytail that ends in a nub that barely brushes the back of her neck. And it’s the color of a coil of copper. Red.