He’d been very quiet and kept his head down most of the time, diligently following along in whatever text we happened to be reading. The one and only time I’d really gotten a good look at his face was when we’d been forced to answer a set of questions on Frankenstein.

It might have been easy to forget a guy who rarely ever spoke, but this guy happened to be the most distracting person I’d ever met. I’d become tongue-tied almost the second he’d looked at me with these bright hazel eyes that made me feel like I was being X-rayed.

Looking back on that class now, I realized I’d done my best to forget the whole experience because of the annoyed expression on that attractive face the entire time we’d worked together. What girl wanted to remember the moment a guy made it clear he’d rather be doing anything else but look at you?

Come to think of it, that had seemed to be Archer Morales’s attitude toward everything. JFK Prep was a big school, but I’d seen him in the hallways from time to time, easy to spot because of his height and tousled dark hair, but he’d always managed to be on his own, and everyone had always given him a wide berth.

Archer Morales was—had been—one of JFK Prep’s outcasts. And now he was gone.

I bolted upright in my seat when the first period bell rang overhead, pulling me out of my reverie. The rest of the class was already on their feet and filing from the room, talking quietly with one another instead of chatting and laughing like normal. It was even more obvious now, the change in the atmosphere. I trudged my way through the halls to chemistry class in a daze, unable to wrap my mind around the fact that one of my classmates was dead.

It wasn’t as if I’d really known Archer Morales. We couldn’t even have been called friends on any sort of level. He’d been all but a perfect stranger to me. So why did I feel like I was about to fall apart?

By the time school let out, the temperature had dropped outside, making the air chilly and uncomfortable as I headed for one of the buses at the curb. What I really needed was to curl up in bed and forget this day ever happened.