Outside the cafeteria, I saw a girl standing against a wall. I didn’t know her. She looked barely old enough to be in high school. Based on who she was hanging out with, I figured she was from one of the trailer parks along Joslen Boulevard. Four piercings framed her face: one on each eyebrow, one in each nostril. She was gorgeous, and sad. I raised my camera.

There’s no noncrazy way to say this. Through the lens, I could see her damage. I saw it billow in the air around her, like clouds of black ink. I saw it scuttle across her skin: tiny shadow crabs. The longer I looked, the more I could see. Shapes appeared in the darkness behind her—the things she’d seen, the people she was afraid of.

Shivers went up my spine. They would not stop.

What the hell was going on?

The girl looked up. Locked eyes with me. “Is it okay?” I asked, tapping the camera with one finger.

She shrugged, then nodded. Did her best to smile.

I took the picture.

A tiny glimmer of light. I saw her, and she saw me. I was sad, but so was she.

It was nothing, but it mattered.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Sure,” she told me.

Shivering, I lowered the camera. My spine still tingled. I shut my eyes, hard, as if I could unsee what I’d seen.

Just when I thought I was getting better, something else goes wrong with my brain. Something a little pill might not be able to fix.

“Hey, Ash,” Jewel Gomez said when I joined her at her locker.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m halfway through that book. It’s so fucking—sorry—it’s so good.”

Being around Jewel made me curse more than normal, because she never ever said even the mildest swear word.

“Isn’t it!! I’m so glad people don’t actually know the day they’re going to die. Can you imagine?”

I remembered when Jewel came to Hudson High in ninth grade. All anyone knew about her was that she was super-Christian. So much so that she made people nervous. I’d assumed because of her religion that she’d be homophobic or something, but she was actually the sweetest thing on Earth. To everyone. Which just made people even more nervous around her.

Everyone but me. We both loved books and movies, and loved talking about them—but on a deeper level than most people did.

A voice from behind us cheered, “Hey, ladies.”

“Hey, Sheffield,” I said, without turning around, because no one else in school was ever that happy about anything. And because my heart hadn’t slowed down, and my spine still shivered.

“Where are your blue baseball caps?”

“Oh shit,” I said as insincerely as I could. “Did I forget mine again?”