“Darn it!” She stomped her bare foot on the rug, pulling at her hair in exasperation at the sweat that had broken out under her arms, dampening the shirt she’d just buttoned up.

She blew a gust of breath out into the stupid balmy warmth of her bedroom, which had the best-working radiator in the entire house. She usually had to open her window in order to sleep, which made her dad furious. “I’m not paying to heat the neighborhood,” he’d mutter, along with a string of curses, if he was passing by her room and happened to see the window open. It didn’t help at all, either, when she was trying to remain cool while getting dressed.

She went to the window and shoved up the sash, peeled paint chips dropping onto the rug. The bushes that separated the Daltons’ house from the Giffords’ house rustled, dropping a spray of dry snow on the Daltons’ side. Charlotte did a double-take and squinted at the bushes. Was someone there? Her skin prickled and she stepped back from the window, her sweat chilling on her skin. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the weird shiver. It was probably just the Giffords’ cat (which was not black).

Charlotte tried to focus on getting dressed and not on the weird feeling that someone was watching her. If she pulled the roll shade down, her room would be too dark. No one was out there anyway. She shook her head again and reached into the closet for her boring old black pencil skirt. She remembered Max Zimmerman saying he liked when girls looked casual. “Like they don’t really care.”

Well, she thought, nothing says “I don’t really care” like this skirt. She had flattened herself against the wall farthest from the window to pull on the skirt, and then reached out to snag the red cardigan from the back of her chair. Her paranoia flashed briefly with what she imagined Sue would say about her sweater as she fastened the buttons. “Ugh, red, on Valentine’s Day, Char?” or “Oh, Charlotte, red? Really?” The thought annoyed her enough to distract her from thinking about the rustling bushes. She didn’t care what Sue had to say on this occasion, because Max Zimmerman wouldn’t be putting anything in Sue’s locker. Not that he would be putting anything in Charlotte’s, either; she had to remind herself not to get her hopes up.

Charlotte turned sideways as she eyed herself in the mirror, jutting out her chest and wondering if she should add just a little padding, maybe. Her mother refused to buy her a pointy bra, so she did what she could to draw attention to her breasts. She faced forward again, and then turned to the other side, smoothing the sweater over her stomach. She felt another prickle of suspicion crawl over her scalp, and shot a look at the window, wondering how much someone standing outside on the ground could see into her room.