“That sucks.”

“Yeah, it kind of does,” she says with a bitter laugh. “Are you sure you won’t hang out with us? I miss you. We all . . . miss you, Lex. That was boss the way you kind of took down Mrs. Blackburn.”

We all, she said.

“Is Steven going to be there?” I ask.

“He doesn’t have to be,” she answers, which means yes, he’s supposed to be, of course he is, he’s their friend still even though he’s no longer my boyfriend, but she’ll uninvite him if it would make me feel more comfortable.

I can’t face Steven. But I can’t kick him out of the party, either.

“Like I said, I have to keep my mom company tonight,” I say. “Sorry. It sounds fun.”

“Okay, well.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Hey, if there’s anything I can do . . . If you ever want to talk . . .”

“Right. I have to go,” I say. “I have class.”

She knows that. She has class, too, the same class—AP History—and then third-period calculus, fourth-period physics, fifth-period computer programming, sixth-period calc lab, and then lunch, all of which she and I have together until seventh period, when she takes French and I take German, and then eighth period, when I am a teacher’s aide in Mrs. Seidel’s chemistry class, and Beaker has a drama class that serves as the first hour of the afternoon rehearsal for the school play.

But she lets go of me, and I back away, and then I walk off before I have to look too long at the disappointment on her face.

8.

FOR DINNER I MICROWAVE a frozen chicken pot pie and sit watching the news on our tiny kitchen television while I pick at it, until the coverage of all-things-love-related for Valentine’s Day becomes too nauseating. I turn off the TV. Outside, snow is falling, the passing of yet another winter storm.

I should shovel the driveway, I think. That would make a nice surprise for Mom when she gets home.

But that would mean going into the garage.

I don’t go into the garage.

The phone rings. I pick it up, but there’s nobody there—just silence for a moment while I say hello a few times, and then I hang up. It’s the old phone in the kitchen, so I can’t see the number.

I wonder if it’s Steven, checking up on me.

I wish he would have said something, if it was him.

Not that there’s anything left for him to say. Not that I’d know how to respond if he did say anything.

I finish my pot pie. It’s not a candlelit Valentine’s Day dinner while I’m being serenaded by a string quartet, but as freezer meals go, it’s not too bad.

There’s a noise in the hallway, the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

I go to investigate.

A picture has fallen off the wall. I pick it up, turn it over in my hands. The photograph is missing. I search the floor, but it’s not there. The back of the frame is fastened, so someone must have removed the photo and then hung the empty frame up again.

That’s weird.

I know the missing picture. It’s a photo of Dad and Ty, four years ago, pre-Megan, as they were about to head off on Ty’s first deer hunting expedition. They were wearing neck-to-toe camo and neon orange caps. They were both smiling, holding up their rifles, but Ty’s smile was strained.

He didn’t want to go. He’d been dreading it for weeks.

But he went because he thought it would make Dad happy.

I remember the day they came home from that trip. They had a deer, a small scraggly little guy with a tiny rack.

“Uh-oh,” I said when I went out to watch them hang it from the rafters in the garage. “Bad day for Bambi.”

Ty smiled at my joke, but he was quiet. Dad was proud, talking about the difficulty of the shot that Ty had made, what a clean shot it was, so the animal didn’t suffer, but Ty didn’t say anything. He didn’t have much of an appetite at dinner. He went to bed early that night. When Mom framed this photo and put it up, he never stopped to look at it as he passed in the hall.

I feel the beginning of the ache in my chest. The hole.

Then all of a sudden I’m flooded with the sense that I’m not alone. If I turn and look, I’ll see a shadowy figure at the end of the hall. I’ll see him.

Ty.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up at the thought. I never knew they would actually do that, before—stand on end like that—but they do. I have goose bumps up and down my arms. My shoulders are so tight it hurts. My mouth is dry. I suck in my bottom lip to wet it.

I won’t run this time, I think. I’ll face it.

Slowly, I turn.

There’s no one there. The hallway is empty.

I let out the breath I was holding, then try to laugh at myself. Delusion, I think. A belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth. Not a ghost, not a hallucination. A delusion.

I hang the empty frame back in its place on the wall.

14 February

Sometimes I miss being kissed.

It seems like such a small thing, a trivial thing, my lips meeting his, but sometimes, like tonight, I lie in bed unsleeping and stare up at the ceiling and remember what that felt like, not just the kissing part but that moment right before, when our faces were so close together, when I could feel his breath and see his eyes up close, the curve of each dark eyelash, the tiny crease where his neck met his jaw. The seconds before he kissed me. The anticipation. The rush of his lips on mine.

The average person, or so the internet tells me, spends 20,160 minutes of life kissing.