I laughed, but it sounded, um, crazy, so I stopped. “No. I just . . . I think I’m coming down with something. He was checking on me. It was nice, actually.”

Mary Beth wobbled up to my side and frowned. “Probably only because he wanted something. I don’t trust David Stark as far as I could throw him.”

That’s when I finally noticed the crown dangling from Bee’s fingers, the rhinestones shining dully in the florescent lights. “Is that . . .” My voice came out squeaky, so I started over. “Is that the Homecoming Queen crown?”

She looked down like she had totally forgotten about it. “Oh, yeah! Duh. That’s why I came to look for you. You totally won!”

She squealed and threw her arms around me. I kind of hugged her back, but mostly I was just thinking, I missed it. I’ve wanted this for years, ever since Leigh-Anne won it two years ago, and I missed it because I was having a schizo freak-out in the bathroom.

Bee didn’t seem to notice that I was less than enthusiastic. “We looked for you, like, everywhere when they called your name.”

“Everywhere?” I parroted.

“Well . . . everywhere in the gym. So then Ryan said I should just go up there and, like, accept it on your behalf, so I did, and then I remembered you’d gone to the bathroom, so I came to find you!”

Pursing her lips, Bee tilted her head to one side. “Seriously, Harper, what’s wrong? You look really bad. No offense.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. “I told you,” I said from behind my fingers, “I started feeling sick.” I put my hands down and tried to smile brightly, but I had a feeling I looked demented. I felt demented.

Bee was still squinting at me when Abigail took the crown from her hands. With a big smile, she reached up and plonked the crown on my head. “Well, there you go, Your Majesty!”

I turned and looked in the mirror. My face was still gray, my eyes were still huge, and the crown looked fake and stupid. Plus it was crooked.

I burst into tears.

All four girls wrapped me in a group hug, and at first I thought they were comforting me, that somehow they understood that I’d had a terrible night, and that I had thought I’d killed a guy, but actually, I was just going insane, and seeing that effing crown on my head had been the final straw.

But then Abigail squealed, “Oh, sweetie, I know! It’s, like, a dream come true!”

• • •

“What do you know about schizophrenia?” I mumbled against Ryan’s mouth.

He raised his head, his eyes hazy, his hand still hovering around the hem of my dress. “Huh?”