History class at the second school I transferred to. A girl’s called up to write something on the board, and as she brushes past my seat, her bony elbow rams into my side, hard enough to bruise. I flinch back, more from shock than pain. Oops, sorry, she says, but I can see in the cold lines of her face that she’s not, that she’s been waiting for the opportunity to do this, that she’s heard the rumors already. Bile fills my mouth. I pretend nothing happened—

That’s her, they whisper at lunch. I stab my fork through the soggy spinach in my bowl without lifting it, hide my face behind the black veil of my hair. I just have to make it through these next ten minutes. My lips quiver. And then the next ten. And the next ten. Then it’ll be class, and then school will be over at last, and then—

Everyone’s gathered around the table, laughing so loudly that the paintings left on the drying rack quiver. My stomach turns when I see what they’re laughing at. The clay dragon figurine I’d made during our last pottery class. I’d been so proud of it, so happy while I was making it, but now all I can see is how crooked the figurine’s head is, how comically large the eyes are—

Cyrus holding my lunch high over his head in the playground. Give that to me, I snap, but he just grins, black eyes glinting, and steps back, out of reach—

Cyrus chasing me across the oval, the warm, momentary press of his palm between my shoulder blades. Tag. You’re it. I run after him, but the grass is still wet from the rain yesterday, and my feet slip—

Cyrus reading in the bus seat next to me, only a few days ago. He arrives at a line that makes him pause, reads it again as if to savor the words, save them for another day, and he turns around to point it out like he’s just come across a rare natural phenomenon. I know that no art can be perfect, he says, but have you ever read something that so perfectly captures everything you’re feeling—

Cyrus, sitting alone at dinner last night, the way I used to at school. He’s in one of those moods I’ve come to recognize, where he retreats somewhere deep into his own brain, lost in an endless spiral of thoughts he’ll never share with anyone else. He stiffens when I go to join him, then his eyes soften when he realizes it’s me—

A brilliant beam of light burns through the darkness, accompanied by footsteps. Real, solid, drawing closer.

I blink fast into the sudden glare, my heart pounding.

The light sways, catching the thin silver edges of the leaves overhead, and then the snake bare inches away from me.