It’s just James, I answer. It’s like the way he taps on the top of a pack of cigarettes for luck before he opens them. Or the way he goes to dance clubs but won’t dance.

There’s a pause while I try to picture James in a relationship, going on dates, too busy on Friday nights to go to rehearsal or develop a new show. Uninspired.

I listen to Becky breathe out before she says, Yeah, or he’s hooked on someone he already knows.

I’ve heard this theory from her before.

And it still makes my heart race in an uncomfortable way.

Regardless of what Becky thinks. Regardless of how I always feel a little happier, a little more energized around him, James Barrows is out of my league. And regardless of the fact that he probably spends more time with me than anyone, there’s no way he’s hooked on me as anything other than his best friend.

’Night, Becks, I say and unravel the phone cord. It leaves a red mark around my wrist, shaped like barbed wire.

It’s Valentine’s Day and the girls from Student Council interrupt Mr. Solomon’s class. They’re weighed down with carnations for their fund-raiser. Red. White. Pink. The colors match the girls’ shirts and their lip gloss and the oversized bows in their oversized hair.

A garden’s worth of flowers land on a classroom’s worth of desks. Two, one white, one pink, land in front of me. The white one first from Becky. The card reads: Pretend this is from the future and signed by your one true love.

The pink one is also in Becky’s handwriting. James gave me a Kennedy half dollar to send this to you. Make of that what you will.

Sometimes it’s like this: I can stay in my room with my books and my music and my guitar and my dreams, and stare out the window and be content.

Leaving means opening the door and heading down the hall and dealing with the looks and the silences and the questions—Where are you going, Michael? and Is that eye makeup? You aren’t turning into a fag like your brother, are you?—and the glares and the anger, and sometimes it’s just easier to stay in my room.

But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s worth the abuse.

The Echo is crowded. Everyone freed from their snow caves.

I sip a Coke and watch until I can’t resist the pull of the music. Then I dance. And I dance. Waiting for that feeling of losing myself in something. Becoming something. Something that isn’t me. Something more.

There’s a boy in black watching me. We’re all in black, but there’s something darker about him, something even more than a typical Goth. He sways off tempo, like he can’t quite find the beat, his red eyes ringed with kohl against a drug-pale face that would be impossible to imagine breaking into a smile.

I try not to stare back. Try and fail. He’s captivating in the same way as a gun, in the same way as the stained knife that Andy found last month on patrol. The boy is wearing a crop top under a wool coat far too warm to dance in. His emaciated ribs jut out every time he moves.