She got up and walked away without looking at me.

I straightened her chair and reached for her notebook to rip out today’s page and prepare tomorrow’s.

I stopped. The blood turned hot in my veins as I stared down at the page.

The whole thing was filled with one word, written over and over in an impossibly shaky, childlike hand:

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO

I tore the sheet out and froze.

The next page was full, too.

And the next one. And the next one.

All in all, seven pages were completely filled with the word—

Why had she done this?

“Kah,” said a voice behind me, and Agatha stood there, her expression almost blank . . . but not quite.

“What?” I asked. “What is it? Please tell me, Agatha.”

She wanted to. I saw her draw in a breath, as if she was going to just spit out the word. But then, halfway through her exhalation, her attention wandered. She drifted away.

CHAPTER

22

FOR A LITTLE while, I was so distracted by Agatha’s scribblings that I didn’t pause to dwell on any of the things Laura had said to me about Barrett. But during dinner, I felt plainly that something had changed between us. It wasn’t anything I could put into words, only a feeling of unmistakable discomfort. And most of it was coming from me.

Barrett seemed to get the message and stayed silent for the meal, except for a few single-word answers to some of Laura’s questions about how his summer reading was going, whether he’d gotten his room assignment yet, and whether he needed to order new uniforms for next year. (Good, no, and probably.)

Now I had the time to really wallow in the things Laura had said earlier. And, of course, the things she hadn’t quite said—how I failed, in every way, to measure up to the dozens of girls Barrett crossed paths with at his fancy school. How she and John thought I was a treasure, but to Barrett I was probably just . . .

Trash? Impossible. But Laura had basically come out and said it. Would she lie? She was trying to protect my feelings, that was all. And despite the old-school boys will be boys tone of the conversation, I sensed that she really thought she was doing me a favor.

What use was my judgment these days, anyway? It was better to think I was just . . . tired and confused. I’d lost my head because Barrett, who was good-looking and smart and rich and important, had parked his stupid body near my stupid body and touched my lips with his stupid lips.