I’m always on the edge. Watching.

The Anders of Greenwood High School doesn’t draw attention to himself. He keeps quiet in class. Never raises his hand. Keeps his eyes on the front of the room, so it looks like he’s paying attention, but I can see his fingers working beneath his desk, shaping imaginary chords, tapping rhythms on the denim drum of his knee. Sometimes he takes notes when there’s nothing to take notes on, and his writing comes out in columns of tight, miniature print with spaces where each verse ends or chorus begins, and then he’s not actually taking notes at all. Sometimes he falls asleep with his head propped carefully up on one arm.

The last half hour of each day, I have study hall in the library. I sit at a tiny table in the reference section, between walls of sagging bookshelves. Anders has art class just down the hall. The art room is close enough to the library that I can stand in the nook beside the chipped white drinking fountains, watching to make sure he’s gone through the art room door, and still get to my seat by the time the bell rings.

I’ve spent the semester reading Collier’s Illustrated Encyclopedia. I’m on Volume Twenty: Renner to Sibelius. The pages are whisper thin. They smell like bread dough and dust. But I don’t always keep my mind on the pages.

Because Frankie Lynde is in the same study hall.

She and her friends sit at a table in front of me and slightly to the left. When I bend over the tiny gray print, I can catch their faces, their eyes, their moving lips.

The others are Sasha, Carson, and Will. Sasha has red-brown hair and four piercings in each ear. Everything about her is sharp: her collarbones, her light brown eyes, her voice. Carson is blond and loud and big shouldered. Will has dark hair and deadpan delivery. Both guys look like they’ve wandered out of a men’s clothing catalog, polished and combed and perfect skinned.

But neither of them is Anders. They can’t even hold a candle.

I stare at the encyclopedia and listen. Their conversations are songs with five changing chords: School. Other people. Movies. The weekend. And Last Things. Everybody talks about Last Things.

They’re talking about Last Things now.

“You should tell him that,” Sasha is saying as they all sit down.

“I am not going to tell him that,” says Frankie.

“Why not? They need a gimmick. And I’m sure they’d all look great in eyeliner.”

“I thought their gimmick was being younger than the songs they play,” says Carson.

Frankie smacks him playfully. “They don’t do covers anymore. That was just when they were starting out.”

“Hey, I think they should do more covers. I want to hear Anders Thorson sing ‘Blank Space.’”

“I want to hear him do ‘Happy,’” says Will. He puts on a death metal growl. “‘Because I’M HAPPY. . . .’”

Sasha and Carson laugh.