Whoever put that article in my bag, I don’t think it’s him. He wouldn’t risk getting caught. He’d be changing the habit of a lifetime. The only people he ever got that close to are dead.

I stare across the courtyard at the sixth and seventh graders turning every moment into a game, laughing their way to class like they don’t have a care in the world.

That’s when I see Jamie, the boy who pulled me back from the alley, and he catches my eye before I can look away and bounds over with the widest smile. By the time he reaches me, it has changed into an awkward grimace.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

He doesn’t say anything else, just stares at me as if he expects something until I ask, “What’re you up to?”

It’s stupid. But it’s all I’ve got. I can talk to Hanna and Emily for hours about nothing, but I can’t say a single decent sentence to a boy, even one like Jamie. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have to script it first.

“I’m off to French,” Jamie says, and for a split second, it looks like he’s going to speak some more.

Don’t ask me how, but I can actually see the thought cross his mind before he shakes his head and looks disappointed with himself. I smile because I like how goofy he is, then blush because I barely know him.

“Has anything else happened?” he asks. “You know…like before?”

I touch my bag and almost show Jamie the newspaper article before changing my mind. I don’t know him well enough to be that honest, even if he is the only person on my street paying attention.

“No,” I say. “It’s been quiet.”

I feel my tears push on whatever holds them back, then I shrug and walk away.

When I turn, Jamie is still staring at me, and I have two thoughts, one after the other: I should have showed him and What if he did it?

Chapter 58

It sounds like it’s in my dreams, a faraway scratching that grows louder until I realize I’m awake. I hold my breath and focus on the noise, convinced someone is in my room, rustling in the shadows.

But it’s not that close. It’s near but somehow distant at the same time. And when I concentrate, I hear a tap against my window, then something slowly scraping along the glass. I clench my fists, my heart racing, then I slip out of bed and creep to my desk, feeling for the head cam in the dark.

The noise stops for a moment, then starts again, a thud followed by a scrape, like fists and fingernails.