“She’s not. Nothing’s happened. We just hang out.”

“You’re so full a crap, you could pass for a toilet. You like her, Wate. Admit it.” Link wasn’t big on subtleties, and I don’t think he could imagine hanging out with a girl for any reason other than maybe she played lead guitar, except for the obvious ones.

“I’m not saying I don’t like her. We’re just friends.” Which was the truth, actually, whether or not I wanted it to be. But that was a different question. Either way, I must have smiled a little. Wrong move.

Link pretended to vomit into his lap and swerved, narrowly missing a truck. But he was just messing around. Link didn’t care who I liked, as long as it gave him something to hassle me about. “Well? Is it true? Did she?”

“Did she what?”

“You know. Fall outta the crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down?”

“A window broke, that’s all that happened. It’s not a mystery.”

“Mrs. Asher’s sayin’ she punched it out, or threw somethin’ at it.”

“That’s funny, seeing how Mrs. Asher isn’t in my English class, last time I checked.”

“Yeah well, my mom isn’t either, but she told me she was comin’ by school today.”

“Great. Save her a seat at our lunch table.”

“Maybe she’s done this at all her schools, and that’s why she was in some kinda institution.” Link was serious, which meant he’d overheard a whole lot of something since the window incident.

For a second, I remembered what Lena had said about her life. Complicated. Maybe this was one of those complications, or just one of the twenty-six thousand other things she couldn’t talk about. What if all the Emily Ashers of the world were right? What if I had taken the wrong side, after all?

“Be careful, man. Could be she’s got her own place over in Nutsville.”

“If you really believe that, you’re an idiot.”

We pulled into the school parking lot without speaking. I was annoyed, even though I knew Link was just trying to look out for me. But I couldn’t help it. Everything felt different today. I got out and slammed the car door.

Link called after me. “I’m worried about you, dude. You’ve been actin’ crazy.”

“What, are you and me a couple now? Maybe you should spend a little more time worrying about why you can’t even get a girl to talk to you, crazy or not.”

He got out of the car and looked up at the administration building. “Either way, maybe you better tell your ‘friend,’ whatever that means, to be careful today. Look.”

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Asher were talking to Principal Harper on the front steps. Emily was huddled next to her mother, trying to look pathetic. Mrs. Lincoln was lecturing Principal Harper, who was nodding as if he was memorizing every word. Principal Harper may have been the one running Jackson High, but he knew who ran the town. He was looking at two of them.

When Link’s mom finished, Emily dove into a particularly animated version of the window-shattering incident. Mrs. Lincoln reached out and put her hand on Emily’s shoulder, sympathetic. Principal Harper just shook his head.

It was a bad cloud day, all right.

Lena was sitting in the hearse, writing in her beat-up notebook. The engine was idling. I knocked on the window and she jumped. She looked back toward the administration building. She had seen the mothers, too.

I motioned for her to open the door, but she shook her head. I walked around to the passenger side. The doors were locked, but she wasn’t going to get rid of me that easily. I sat down on the hood of her car and dropped my backpack on the gravel next to me. I wasn’t going anywhere.

What are you doing?

Waiting.

It’s gonna be a long wait.

I’ve got time.

She stared at me through the windshield. I heard the doors unlock. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re crazy?” She walked around to where I was sitting on the hood, her arms folded, like Amma ready to scold.

“Not as crazy as you, I hear.”

She had her hair tied back with a silky black scarf that had conspicuously bright pink cherry blossoms scattered across it. I could imagine her staring at herself in the mirror, feeling like she was going to her own funeral, and tying it on to cheer herself up. A long black, I don’t know, a cross between a T-shirt and a dress, hung over her jeans and black Converse. She frowned and looked over at the administration building. The mothers were probably sitting in Principal Harper’s office right now.

“Can you hear them?”

She shook her head. “It’s not like I can read people’s minds, Ethan.”

“You can read mine.”

“Not really.”

“What about last night?”

“I told you, I don’t know why it happens. We just seem to—connect.” Even the word seemed hard for her to say this morning. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “It’s never been like this with anyone before.”

I wanted to tell her I knew how she felt. I wanted to tell her when we were together like that in our minds, even if our bodies were a million miles away, I felt closer to her than I’d ever felt to anyone.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t even think it. I thought about the basketball playbook, the cafeteria menu, the green pea-soup-colored hallway I was about to walk down. Anything else. Instead, I cocked my head to the side. “Yeah. Girls say that to me all the time.” Idiot. The more nervous I got, the worse my jokes were.