Needless to say, I end up walking Daphne to her car. At the risk of repeating myself, Fulton Heights is a boring town where nothing ever happens—save the occasional death by vampiric exsanguination—so it’s not as if she had to fight for a parking spot. Her secondhand Saab is right at the foot of our walk. It’s early March, snow still lingering on the ground, and a cold wind rips the breath from our mouths in shreds of white steam.

“It was very sweet of you to make sure I didn’t die in the ten seconds it took us to get here, Auggie,” Daphne says when we reach her vehicle. My parents have turned on the exterior lights and are watching through the front windows—as if they’d be able to do anything but wave goodbye if we got attacked right now. Wistfully, my tutor adds, “Sometimes I wish you were straight. And about four years older. And better at algebra.”

“Two of those things will never happen,” I declare emphatically, “and me getting older is about fifty-fifty.”

“Well, I guess it is better for me if you stay bad at math.” Daphne gives me a hug. She actually smells really nice, and just for a moment I also kind of wish I were straight; but then I remember what Boyd Crandall looked like when he got dared to make a snow angel in his boxer briefs at school on Monday, and I change my mind. She pulls back and points a stern finger at me. “Keep studying those flashcards until you’ve got your equations memorized, okay? And if you have any questions about your homework, send me an email.”

“How about I just send you the homework, and—” I stop, mid-swindle, when a strange sensation prickles up the back of my neck, like a breath puffed across my skin. Gooseflesh spreads between my shoulders, and I whirl around, convinced something is behind me. The yard is empty, though, without so much as footprints in the snow—human or otherwise.

“Auggie?” Daphne steps closer, peering over my shoulder. “What is it? Did you hear something?”

And then we both hear something, and our heads snap up as a gentle skittering noise comes from the neighbor’s roof, a shower of displaced snow drifting down from the eaves. It could be anything—a house cat or a raccoon, or maybe a weather balloon caught on a downdraft of swamp gas—but either way, it’s my signal to get the hell back inside.

“So I’ll see you next week,” Daphne says briskly, darting around to the driver’s side of her car.