Sasha doesn’t let go of my shirt. “Everybody knows about you,” she says. “Everybody knows. We all know how you’ve been toying with Frankie for months. Staring at her, writing songs about her, hooking up with her and then ditching her, never making anything official, never treating her like an actual person, because you think you’re some superspecial rock star, right?”

A crowd is starting to gather. I feel like I’m onstage, but without the armor of my guitar. Totally bare.

“I don’t know anything about where Frankie is,” I say. Blood is trickling over my eyebrow into my eye. “You can believe me or not. I can’t tell you anything else.”

Sasha’s eyes are slits. “Everybody knows there’s something wrong with you.” Her voice is as fast and hard as a drumroll. “I used to think you were just some pretentious loner. But that’s not it. You’re messed up. You’re not normal. Look at you. You’re not even a person.” She finally lets go, pushing me backward at the same time. Hard enough that I hit the row of closed locker doors. “What is wrong with you?” she screams. “Do you even care? Do you have any feelings at all?”

Will grabs her, his encircling arm pinning hers down. “Hey,” he says softly, “it’s all right.”

I take my chance. I turn left, striding off into the hall.

“Yeah, run away!” Sasha shouts after me. “Run away. You coward!”

I don’t run. But I keep walking.

I walk until I’m slamming through the doors, out of the school, into the cool April air.

I drive home.

Mom’s at work. Dad’s gone, too. He must actually have a job today. Thank god.

I head down the hallway to my room.

The guitars on their stands look like a bunch of hunting trophies, like dead things propped up in a row. I don’t even want to touch them.

And Goblin’s still not there.

I crouch down and look under the bed. Not there, either.

I go to the window. A faint trace of that rusty X still crosses the pane. There’s no sign of Goblin through the glass.

I check the kitchen, the garage, the basement, just in case. Then I head outside.

I know there’s no point calling his name. He’s too deaf to hear, and he never comes when he’s called anyway. But I need to do something.

“Goblin?” I shout. “Goblin!”

The woods around the yard creak and sway.

I run into the trees. Immediately daytime feels like evening. A few blades of sun try to get through, but the shadows are so thick, they dull everything. It’s chillier here. A few birds scream.

The shadows and creaks and my own panic trigger my imagination, filling it with the stupid stories Greenwood kids tell each other about all the secrets lurking in these woods: animals, monsters, serial killers. It’s too easy to picture bad things happening here. In my head Goblin and Frankie start to overlap, mixing with those old stories. I can see them both running through the underbrush. Trying to hide. Falling into the leaves. Teeth—or knives—flashing closer.