“Can we get started, people?” Mrs. English looked up from her desk.

Emily slunk to her usual seat in the back, far enough from the front that she wouldn’t have to answer any questions the whole year, and today, far enough from Old Man Ravenwood’s niece. And now, far enough from me. Which felt kind of liberating, even if I had to analyze Jem and Scout’s relationship for fifty minutes without having read the chapter.

When the bell rang, I turned to Lena. I don’t know what I thought I was going to say. Maybe I was expecting her to thank me. But she didn’t say anything as she shoved her books back into her bag.

156. It wasn’t a word she had written on the back of her hand.

It was a number.

Lena Duchannes didn’t speak to me again, not that day, not that week. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about her, or seeing her practically everywhere I tried not to look. It wasn’t just her that was bothering me, not exactly. It wasn’t about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn’t about what she said in class—usually something no one else would’ve thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn’t have dared to say. It wasn’t that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious.

It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn’t.

It had been raining all day, and I was sitting in ceramics, otherwise known as AGA, “a guaranteed A,” since the class was graded on effort. I had signed up for ceramics last spring because I had to fulfill my arts requirement, and I was desperate to stay out of band, which was practicing noisily downstairs, conducted by the crazily skinny, overly enthusiastic Miss Spider. Savannah sat down next to me. I was the only guy in the class, and since I was a guy, I had no idea what I was supposed to do next.

“Today is all about experimentation. You aren’t being graded on this. Feel the clay. Free your mind. And ignore the music from downstairs.” Mrs. Abernathy winced as the band butchered what sounded like “Dixie.”

“Dig deep. Feel your way to your soul.”

I flipped on the potter’s wheel and stared at the clay as it started to spin in front of me. I sighed. This was almost as bad as band. Then, as the room quieted and the hum of the potter’s wheels drowned out the chatter of the back rows, the music from downstairs shifted. I heard a violin, or maybe one of those bigger violins, a viola, I think. It was beautiful and sad at the same time, and it was unsettling. There was more talent in the raw voice of the music than Miss Spider had ever had the pleasure of conducting. I looked around; no one else seemed to notice the music. The sound crawled right under my skin.

I recognized the melody, and within seconds I could hear the words in my mind, as clearly as if I was listening to my iPod. But this time, the words had changed.

Sixteen moons, sixteen years

Sound of thunder in your ears

Sixteen miles before she nears

Sixteen seeks what sixteen fears….

As I stared at the spinning clay in front of me, the lump became a blur. The harder I focused on it, the more the room dissolved around it, until the clay seemed to be spinning the classroom, the table, my chair along with it. As if we were all tied together in this whirlwind of constant motion, set to the rhythm of the melody from the music room. The room was disappearing around me. Slowly, I reached out a hand and dragged one fingertip along the clay.

Then a flash, and the whirling room dissolved into another image—

I was falling.

We were falling.

I was back in the dream. I saw her hand. I saw my hand grabbing at hers, my fingers digging into her skin, her wrist, in a desperate attempt to hold on. But she was slipping; I could feel it, her fingers pulling through my hand.

“Don’t let go!”

I wanted to help her, to hold on. More than I had ever wanted anything. And then, she fell through my fingers….

“Ethan, what are you doin’?” Mrs. Abernathy sounded concerned.

I opened my eyes, and tried to focus, to bring myself back. I’d been having the dreams since my mom died, but this was the first time I’d had one during the day. I stared at my gray, muddy hand, caked with drying clay. The clay on the potter’s wheel held the perfect imprint of a hand, like I had just flattened whatever I was working on. I looked at it more closely. The hand wasn’t mine, it was too small. It was a girl’s.

It was hers.

I looked under my nails, where I could see the clay I had clawed from her wrist.

“Ethan, you could at least try to make somethin’.” Mrs. Abernathy put her hand on my shoulder, and I jumped. Outside the classroom window, I heard the rumble of thunder.

“But Mrs. Abernathy, I think Ethan’s soul is communicatin’ with him.” Savannah giggled, leaning over to get a good look. “I think it’s tellin’ you to get a manicure, Ethan.”

The girls around me started to laugh. I mashed the handprint with my fist, turning it back into a lump of gray nothing. I stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans as the bell rang. I grabbed my backpack and sprinted out of the room, slipping in my wet high-tops when I turned the corner and almost tripping over my untied laces as I ran down the two flights of stairs that stood between the music room and me. I had to know if I had imagined it.

I pushed open the double doors of the music room with both hands. The stage was empty. The class was filing past me. I was going the wrong way, heading downstream when everyone else was going up. I took a deep breath, but knew what I would smell before I smelled it.