I pick up the book and throw it across the room. The sound it makes hitting the far wall isn't as satisfying as I hoped it would be.

I think I should be doing something. Maybe calling people to tell them what's happened. Maggie has a few friends whose numbers are listed in a rolodex in the kitchen, but I'm willing to bet if our next-door neighbor, Penny, was here when it happened, everyone in town knows by now. Maggie doesn't have any family; she had a son who died in a war at some point, but otherwise it was just me and her.

It was one of the only things we had in common: we were all alone in the world.

Nobody wanted me. Not until Maggie.

The only person who ever gave me a real chance is dead, and all I can think is how disappointed I am she didn't see me graduate.

Something is wrong in my head.

I tear up my diploma. It's paper. Proof I was able to memorize some facts and copy them onto a few tests. Proof I did something everyone else does. It's not proof that I am special. I sit on the couch late into the night, thinking about Maggie. Thinking about loneliness and hospitals and useless papers that mean nothing at all to anyone once we're dead.

And I think maybe Jessica had the right idea all along.

CHAPTER 2

I made my only friend when I was thirteen. Corey Larson was as much of a loner as I was, except where I sort of took it quietly, she was loud and in-your-face. We got on well and spent our weekends in front of the TV watching any movie where people died or blew things up. We trolled cemeteries at night. Her parents hated me.

Then I turned fifteen. I was getting into no less than three fights a month at school. My grades sucked so the kids thought I was stupid. I was quiet, moody, and kept to myself, so they thought I was stuck-up. I never had a girlfriend, so they thought I was gay.

Which I am, but that's not the point.

My foster family was more than ready to pass me on to someone else. Like clockwork. I'd been to five different homes by that point. Maggie took me in, but her place was six hours north.

Six hours was a huge distance for kids our age. I saw Corey twice in that first year, once in the second, and not a single time within the last twelve months. She's changed. Blossomed into this pretty, bubbly girl who attracts attention everywhere she goes and I guess...

I don't know. Guess she moved along, too. Outgrew me.

But Corey is my only option to talk to someone about Maggie. If I don't, I think I'm going to explode. Or throw myself out a window.

(Or off a bridge.)

The last few times I tried to call her, she either didn't answer or was quick to say she had to go. I'm not up for handling that kind of rejection, so the next morning I email her instead. It takes me thirty minutes to type up a page-long letter. Another thirty to cut out all but a few lines and make the words fit together right. To make sense of them.