I turn around now, toward my own table, ready to slip back over the edge.

“Hey, wait,” calls Frankie’s voice. “What’s your name again?”

I pause. There’s nothing dangerous in Frankie’s eyes. No shadows, as dark as they are. Just depths.

“Thea,” I say.

“Thanks for saving us, Thea.” Frankie’s smile. Pearls in a red-velvet box.

“Nice reflexes,” says Carson.

“Nice flannel,” says Sasha, not quite under her breath.

I touch the cuff of the old gray-and-black plaid. It’s a men’s shirt, secondhand and a little too large, even on me. The cuffs are so worn and frayed that they feel like silk. I smile. “Thanks.”

I move back to my table. I don’t rush. I am as gray and soft and indistinct as my shirt.

I love this shirt.

“You know who that is, don’t you?” I can hear Sasha saying to the others, in a too-loud whisper.

“No,” says Frankie.

“I’ve never seen her before,” says Will.

“Yes, you have,” Sasha hisses. “That’s that psycho who lives in that shack in the woods with Mae Malcolm.”

“I don’t know who Mae Malcolm is, either,” says Will.

“Dude,” says Carson, disbelieving.

“Yes, you do,” Sasha insists. “She’s that hermit who sometimes shows up around town, drunk, telling people about some awful thing she foresaw or whatever.”

Will’s voice is even dryer than usual. “So she’s a witch.”

“No, she’s, like, a lunatic.” Sasha hesitates, probably taking another look at me. “I guess that girl’s her niece or something. You’ve seen her, you guys. She comes to every single one of Anders’s shows. She’s, like, his stalker.”

“We go to all his shows, too,” says Frankie.

“But he actually wants us there.” Sasha’s voice gets sharper.

“He wants everybody there,” says Frankie. “I think that’s the point of performing. To have an audience.”

Sasha says something else, something in a genuine whisper this time. Carson answers her. Soon their conversation moves on, bumping away from me back to its usual course.

I sit still, my eyes on the encyclopedia. Sacraments. Saints. Saint Petersburg.

Frankie is kind.

It’s too bad, really.

Because Frankie Lynde has to go.

Anders

“Stop. Stop. STOP.”

Patrick raises his sticks. He grabs a shivering cymbal between two fingers. Their hiss dies away in the oily air of his parents’ garage. “What?”

“The beat there,” I say. “It changes time signature. It’s one six-eight measure and then a seven-eight one.”

“And then it switches back?”

“Yes. It’s one-two one-two-three one-two—”

“I know what seven-eight time is.”

“Then why aren’t you playing it?”

Patrick’s knuckles whiten. “Dude, if I hadn’t heard this song for the first time four minutes ago . . .”

“Whoa.” Jezz speaks up. “Anders, why don’t you just play it again?”

I let out a loud sigh.

“I don’t need to hear it again,” says Patrick before I can even start. “I need the chance to freaking think for a second before I can pull a perfect drum line out of my—”

“Okay, okay,” says Jezz loudly. “Someday we’ll be able to read each other’s minds, and then geniuses like Anders won’t have to feel so tortured and misunderstood. But until then, we’ll just have to deal. So let’s try it again.”