“Yes?” I said as the one-minute warning bell went off.

Melody finally settled on a word: “Cold.”

“What?” Maybe she’d been a little standoffish at lunch, but Elise wasn’t cold. She’d been there for me even though we were just strangers.

“Yeah, that’s it. She seemed cold.”

“Okay, so not wanting to bake cookies makes her cold?” I said, my irritation growing.

“No, it’s not about the cookies.”

“Miss Tsai, Miss Moon,” Mr. Hunter called out to us in the hall. “Are you planning on joining us today?”

“Sorry,” Melody said, rushing inside.

Even after class, Melody didn’t want to let it go. She seemed genuinely confused, like she’d never encountered anyone like Elise.

“Why didn’t she want to answer any of our questions?” she asked as we walked to our lockers. “It was just weird. That’s all I’m saying.”

I didn’t know what to say because I wondered the same thing. Elise hadn’t minded the attention two days ago when we were setting off firecrackers outside Cameron’s window.

Elise was a mystery, but I liked that about her.

I liked that she didn’t care about fitting in, that she kept parts of herself locked away. That she made being different look so easy.

FRIDAY // OCTOBER 14 // DAY 35

13.

With little effort, Elise could’ve had her pick of friends. She was beautiful and electric, fearless and uncompromising. She didn’t follow, she didn’t act like anyone else I knew.

Elise was everything I ever wanted to be.

She dropped by our lunch table a couple times after that but seemed to like floating better, changing tables often, sitting in the senior section one day and with the gamers the next. But soon she had her own table, and was gathering people up like strays. Lance Krasinski, who had bright red hair and wore ironic T-shirts that said things like CECI N’EST PAS UNE PIPE; Julie Adichie, who was the captain of Science Olympiad and wore her hair cropped; Mark Ransom, who modeled for department store catalogs on the weekend and rode a Vespa to school; Jae Park, who once performed magic tricks on Good Morning America when he was in middle school.

And for a little while I thought maybe that was it for Elise and me. One bright, explosive night of abandon, a comet lighting up my sky for a brief moment.

• • •

I couldn’t keep the news about Cameron from Melody forever. When I told her later that week, we went to her house and marathoned Law and Order: SVU, her favorite show, and got sick eating an entire carton of ice cream. Everything Mel knew about love she learned from the movies, including the parts about how to handle breakups—bingeing on ice cream and TV. It made talking to her about it difficult. I never knew how she’d react.

She never liked Cameron, but then again, she never liked any of the guys I liked. Whenever I tried to talk to her about them, she’d end up lecturing me about how immature high school boys were and how they weren’t worth the distraction.