Amy tilts her head, and I sneak a glance.

Some thoughts shout, and others whisper. The shout says, This girl is amazing, and the whisper says, You’ve only known her a morning.

The shout says, Who cares? Look at her, and the whisper says, Remember what happened to your mum.

Shouts drown out whispers.

The longer I spend with her, the sillier I feel about the holes. I made up a story and cast her in it before I even knew her. She doesn’t look trapped. She looks calm. Whatever issues she has with her mum, and, whatever happened at her old school, here, now, she seems happy.

“We were in eighth grade,” I say, looking at the head-start line. “It was sports day. But Simon was lightning-quick. He was always going to win.”

And then he fell, only, now, I say crumpled. And the crowd all around him—the one supposed to be cheering—was staring and crying and freaking out. Miss Suman was pushing on his chest. Thinking about it now, it was like she was trying to pump a slashed football.

The next day, in assembly, the principal said that there’s no age restriction on tragedy.

“Kids don’t have heart attacks,” I tell Amy.

She bends down and touches the line. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“When they painted it, they said Simon had a head start in heaven. That’s what the line means.”

Amy doesn’t look up for a long time. When she does, I must be staring, because she says, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t normally do this.”

“Do what?”

“Talk to girls.”

She laughs. “Do you have any more stories like that?”

“Sad ones?”

“They don’t have to be.”

I think of all the things Mum and I have been through, but say, “Not really.”

Amy stands and hugs me, and I wonder what that means. The blush spreads quickly from my cheeks to my ears and everywhere else. She notices, because it’s impossible not to. During class presentations, my face could warm the coldest room, but, today, it could heat a whole house.

The tiniest smile dances across Amy’s eyes, and my face turns a shade darker.

“Do I scare you?” she asks, and I lie.

“No.”

She sighs, looks one last time at the head-start line and says, “I will.”

9

I thought I was being stupid. I thought that, for once, there was no terrible truth, just a harmless coincidence. And then Amy said she would scare me, and I doubted my doubts.

I should have more faith in my paranoia. I’ve been practicing for years.

Does she know what I know? Is she waiting for me to find the holes in her door and ask what they mean?