Kori was in the process of straddling the wall, sitting down, so I couldn’t see her expression. “How do you know that name?” Accusation filled her tone, giving me chills.

“He found you. Well, found me. Saw my pic. Thought I was you.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself. “He IM’d me while I was online. I let him think I was you.”

She snorted. “Did you now?”

“Yeah, it was kind of fun being you.”

“I bet. So what’d you talk about?”

“Nothing really. He got disconnected. Dial-up. So who is he?”

“No one you would know. Just another guy who couldn’t resist my charms.”

I laughed. “Since when do you withhold your charms?”

Kori faked a hurt expression. Something dark surfaced in her eyes—sadness? worry?—that made me almost believe it, but hurt was one thing Kori Kitzler didn’t feel much of. Not physically or emotionally.

“What do you want me to tell him if he comes back?”

She laughed as she leaned back onto the wall. Her shrunken T-shirt scooted up to reveal a one-carat diamond. Its twin dangled on my belly button, courtesy of her fifteenth birthday gift from her mother, who would freak if she knew the ones in Kori’s ears were zircs. “Tell him …” She spoke around the joint held tightly in her lips. “Tell him you want to meet him. Run away. Cross state lines.”

I finished my beer and stretched out on the rock ledge with her. We both stared up at the star-splattered sky. Our heads were touching, but our bodies were pointing in different directions.

Her hand floated into my sky of vision, coming high and from behind, reminding me of the sun slowly arching against the heavens. Her fingers wriggled, beckoning mine. My arm craned back, awkward and painful, but I knew she needed me to link our fingers together and tether her to me. When she’s high, she thinks her body is going to dissolve, or something equally crazy, if she’s not holding on to someone else. I wondered if it would terrify her to know I felt like that all the time.

Most people get all slothlike when they’re high. Not Kori. After about thirty minutes she abruptly sat up. “So let’s do something.”

“What?”

“Like with Doc’s assignment. Except I get to tell you what to do and vice versa.”

“You mean dares?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I rolled my eyes.

She shrugged. “You can even go first.”

She’d been daring me to do stuff for weeks now. I wasn’t sure how this was any different, but anything had to be better than putting more holes in my body.