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He smiles, like he’s trying it on, seeing if it will catch. When my lips don’t move, his face falls.
    “Are you going to tell me where you’ve been?” I ask.
    His forehead pinches together. “In LA,” he says. “I assumed you knew.” Trevor has grandparents out in LA, and he goes every summer to visit them. But it’s usually just for a week or two.
    “How would I know?”
    He squints and looks at me, opens his mouth. But then he shakes his head and doesn’t say anything.
    “You didn’t even call,” I say.
    “I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me.” He pauses, crosses his arms. “Was I wrong?”
    I inhale. I want to tell him that yes, of course he was wrong. All I wanted all summer was a phone call from him, to hear his voice or see his name in my inbox, but I can’t admit that. He broke up with me. He’s the one who ended things. All there is left to do now is prove I’ve moved on.
    “Is that all?” I ask. “Is that what you came here to say?”
    “Caggs . . .”
    I turn away from him, toward my door, because all of a sudden I’m afraid I’m going to cry. And if I start, I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to stop. It’s better to keep that stuff low. Way down at the core, like where they bury radioactive waste.
    “I have a lot to do before tomorrow,” I whisper, my back still turned.
    He walks to where I’m standing until I can feel him behind me. I close my eyes as he reaches out and touches my back, right below the shoulder blades. “I’ll see you,” he says.
    Then he’s moving past me, out the door. I watch his frame disappear down the hallway, and listen for his feet on the stairs. I can’t hear them, though. You can’t hear anything in this house, not even when it’s right next to you.

CHAPTER THREE
    There are two types of students at Kensington. The ones who have parents who went there, and the ones who don’t. Meaning the ones who are new to the Kensington Way. Kensington is the oldest private preparatory academy in New York. It dates back to 1842, and used to be an all-boys school until like the seventies. My father went there. His father before him.
    Abigail Adams’s father went there. Constance Dunlop’s parents went there. Kensington: Educating the Future of Manhattan, One Intolerable Child at a Time.
    Kensington is located right across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Museum Mile. Even though it’s no more than fifteen blocks from most of my fellow students’ homes, some of them actually take cars in the morning. The morningsat that place are completely ridiculous—a bunch of black town cars pouring out sixteen-year-olds in skirts, ties, and knee-high socks. Sounds like a television show, right? It would be if they’d ever let cameras inside. Abigail tried to get a reality show off the ground last year, but the board voted that no video cameras would be allowed on school premises. My mother cast the deciding vote. She’s been on the board since I was born, maybe even before. My mother may be a tiny woman, but she has a lot of power. So does my dad. And it has nothing to do with their jobs. People have a strange fascination with my family that lets us get away with things.
    Personally, I like to walk. I’m not a morning person, not by a long-shot, but I just can’t stomach being dropped off by a guy in a chauffeur hat at seven forty-five a.m. It would give the people around me too much pleasure. Trevor walks too, and last year I used to meet him on Fifth at Seventy-Second Street. He lives on the West Side and crosses the park at Sixty-Sixth. He’d have a cappuccino for me, and we’d take our time with the thirteen blocks up. We’d even hold hands sometimes, if we felt like it. Those mornings were my favorite part of the day. Just the two of us, wandering the streets of New York. Together.
    I race downstairs, glancing at the clock: seven thirty, damn it. If I walk, I’ll be late. Peter is seated at the counter inhaling cereal, and my