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clawing his way into our room through the open window.
    â€œOh. Him? He’s Nate. Just someone I draw now,” I lied.
    It was a lie, because Nate wasn’t just someone I drew . I couldn’t get away from him. He was everywhere, and he made himself appear in everything I drew or daydreamed about. It was inevitable that Nate—the Next Accidental Terrible Experience —would catch me again and again.
    Wasn’t it?
    Annie shook her head. Her hair danced. It was hot, the way she could do that. Then she stared at me and I could see her eyes gettingwetter. Annie folded my comic and slipped it into her bag. Neither of us said anything.
    When we finished eating and put away our trays and stuff, Annie took me by the hand and walked me over to the freshmen’s side of the cafeteria.
    She said, “I want you to introduce me to your roommate.”
    â€œSam Abernathy?”
    â€œYes. Sam Abernathy.”
    â€œWell, he might be hard to find. He’s really small. We might have to get down on our hands and knees.”
    â€œStop being mean,” Annie said.
    I was confused. I didn’t think I was being mean.
    As we threaded our way through the tables of ninth graders, all these sets of little eyes fixed warily on us, as though they expected some major and humiliating act of hazing to initiate them into Pine Mountain.
    Now I knew how sharks felt when they cruised through massive schools of mackerel.
    But Sam Abernathy wasn’t among the fry.
    It wasn’t like I was keeping tabs on the kid, anyway. He could easily have come, eaten, and gone without ever being noticed.
    â€œThe Abernathy fish stick is not here,” I said. “He’s probably asleep inside his Poké ball or something.”
    â€œOh, stop it, Ryan Dean,” Annie said. But she was smiling, too.
    We walked slowly back toward the De-Genderized Zone between the dorms. I was so tired, but I didn’t want to say good night to Annie and then have to be alone, far from home, in a room with a stranger. Because I’d never really been alone since Joey died. I always had people I knew—my friends—to stay with. Now it was as though everything was new, changed, and I didn’t really want things to be like that.
    And why does that last night of summer, on the day before school starts, always have to be so goddamned depressing?
    We stopped at the T in the walk.
    â€œYou think something bad’s going to happen, don’t you?” Annie said.
    I shrugged.
    â€œDo you want to talk about it?”
    â€œI guess we are,” I said.
    â€œI mean talk to somebody about it. Maybe my mom.”
    I kind of lit up at the thought of visiting Annie’s house again. Her mom was a psychologist, and she’d helped me out more than I can say after Joey died. But I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
    And I could feel Nate watching me, hidden in the dark thorny hedge that separated the dorms. I felt dizzy and sick, like I was about to fall off the ledge of a skyscraper, worried that something bad was going to happen to Annie.
    I leaned close to her—so close, our bodies touched, and Ithought about duct-taping Sam Abernathy inside a desk drawer and sneaking Annie into my dorm room so we could mess up Princess Snugglewarm together.
    I shook my head. “I don’t need to talk to anyone, Annie. I’ll stop drawing that guy if it bothers you. I just . . . I . . .”
    And when I put my lips to hers, a flashlight beam splashed onto our faces.
    â€œHey! That’s enough of that, you two!”
    It was Mr. Bream, the resident counselor who lived on the ground floor of the boys’ dorm.
    â€œAre you trying to start off the school year with a PDA write-up and a call home to Mommy and Daddy?”
    Annie and I backed apart.
    I cleared my throat and squeaked, “I’m sorry, Annie.”
    Mr. Bream turned off the flashlight and stepped up to us.
    â€œRyan Dean