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football. Steven didn’t even like football. I never told anyone that. He did it for his dad, who played through high school and college but never made it pro. That was when I first began to hope that he liked me—he was telling me secrets no one else knew. Secrets he trusted me with.
    I never got to tell him mine. I spent three years pining for him; just when things started to shift, just when it looked as if the romance wasn’t all in my head, I killed him.
    I set the Chevelle in front of his headstone. Every night, I tell him everything, even about the curse I live with. He’s the only one who knows the truth. Unless I want all my old friends to end up in the ground next to him, I have to keep them away.
    I kiss my fingertips and then place them on his headstone. For a brief moment, my fingers linger on the marble, and I wonder for the thousandth time what it would have been like to be with him for more than just a moment. My sixteenth-birthday party could have been the start of something. And instead, it was the end.
    I wonder for the thousandth time if he could have loved me in that same fierce way I loved him. “Good night, Steven.”
    I get up and wipe my knees off and then step back onto the pathways. It’s getting darker now and harder to see. I have another night of swimming ahead of me. Even as I leave his body to rot in a grave that I put him in, I must return to the water.
    “See you tomorrow,” I whisper, as if someone will hear.
    And then I take the first few steps that will leave him behind.

CHAPTER FIVE
    I swam all night, but my stomach still churns as I walk into the doors at school, zipping up my fleece jacket as though somehow it will protect me from what’s to come. Getting through today will be a gauntlet.
    We’re two weeks into the school year, now, which means one thing: it’s my birthday. It should be a happy day. For any other person in this school, it would be. But my birthday will forever mark the anniversary of Steven’s death; and no one is going to let me forget it. The police may have cleared my name, but to everyone else, I was found guilty. Forever and always, the one who stole Steven from their lives.
    I tip my chin up, square my shoulders, and try to walk to my locker as if I don’t notice the watchful eyes of my classmates.
    An underclassman, oblivious to the tension in the hall, walks by me, his eyes sweeping over me in an appreciative, almost lustful way before he catches my glare and turns away.
    A group of people, Sienna and her boyfriend Patrick, plus Nikki and Kristi, stand together not far from my locker. They lounge around a big bay window, officially reserved for seniors. Unofficially, it’s for top tier seniors, and that means it belongs to them. Why did I have to be cursed with a locker so close to their stomping grounds?
    I turn to my locker, concentrating on keeping my hand from shaking so much they’ll see it. I screw up the combination the first time and have to start over. I can feel their eyes on my back, watching me. My chest tightens and it seems harder to breathe.
    Finally, I hit the last digit and pop the door open.
    Sand spills out in a wave, piling up at my feet. My books, my papers, everything is filled with grit.
    I whirl around, wondering which of my classmates is to blame. Sienna’s closer than before, her hand on her hip. She’s wearing a kneelength black skirt and one of Steven’s old T-shirts, the one he used to wear at least once a week. I haven’t seen that shirt since last year. Since my seventeenth birthday. I wonder what else of his she’s kept.
    My chest rises and falls rapidly, and I’m so close to losing it I want to just leave everything like this and run.
    “Happy birthday,” she says, her voice trembling.
    I blink.
    There’s no anger to her words.
    I clench my hands, desperate to hold it together. “How long are you going to do this?”
    She tilts her head to the side and the light streaming in from their window catches the