Michael was playing guitar in the living room of the house when Claire stomped down the hall, dumped her backpack without much care for the electronic feelings of the laptop inside, and threw herself full length down on the sofa. Michael stopped in mid-chord, and she sensed he was staring at her, but she didn’t look. Eventually, he started up again. The music spilled over her, beautiful and complicated, and as Claire lay there and just concentrated on breathing, she felt some of the awful tension inside her start to ease up. Still a horrible day, but she could never feel too angry when Michael was playing.

“So,” he said, not looking up from the frets as he tried out a complicated new flood of sound, “I’m thinking of going electric. What do you think?”

“Eve dumped me. I’ve been best-friend dumped.”

Michael’s playing stuttered, then smoothed out again. “Huh. I’m guessing that’s a no?”

“There’s this girl, Kim? You know who she is?” Michael nodded, but didn’t say anything. Claire felt her hands curl into fists, and deliberately, carefully straightened them out. “So this Kim, she’s like perfect and all. Ooooh, she’s an artist. And all of a sudden she and Eve have everything in common and I’m just—the stranger who doesn’t get the jokes.”

“I’ve met Kim,” Michael said. His voice was neutral, and he kept his gaze on his guitar. “She’s like a black hole; she just pulls people right out of their orbits. Eve’s still your friend. She’s just crushing on Kim because Kim never wanted to hang with her before.”

“So what’s the story of the fantastic Kim, anyway?”

He shrugged, and shot her a quick, unreadable look. “She went to OLOM, so I didn’t know her all that well.”

“OLOM?” Claire repeated.

“I forget you didn’t grow up here. Our Lady of Mystery. Catholic school across town run by the scariest nuns you’ve ever seen. Anyway, Kim bailed on school when she was fourteen, I think. She’s our resident funky-artist type, I guess—more likely to flip you off than shake your hand.”

“I’ll bet she sucks.”

It looked like Michael was trying hard to hide a smile. “Art’s always subjective. She may suck to you.”

“She doesn’t to you?” Claire felt a little sinking sensation. Oh, great, of course Michael would like Kim, too. Shane probably not only liked her, but had dated her, and was secretly still in love with her. Claire Danvers, New Girl, was probably the only person in Morganville who didn’t think Kim was all that, supersized.

Michael stilled the strings on his guitar with the flat of his palm and sat back, finally looking right at her. “You should get to know her,” he said. “She’s—interesting. Just don’t get too close.”

“She treated me like crap.”