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Part I

Chapter 1

Andrew Harper, Age 16

Normally, I don’t care what clothes I hen I leave for school in the earlyI spend my days with people I don’t really know Most of e ca smart

I say “curse” because unlike et to go to high school dances or hang out at football games Not that Owen ever did, but he could have if he wanted to I get to go to what’s called the Excel Progra physics and advanced calculus The trade-off is I’ll probably be accepted into any college I want, get any job I want, and find the entire process to be easy

The curse—I’m alone

My friends were Owen’s friends: always three years older; always invitingme That was the line My life was on the periphery I heard it frorade school, and my mother echoed those words whenever I would protest I couldn’t go to the party with Owen or hang out in the woods with him and his friends

“He’s only protecting you,” she’d say

Protecting me

Choking me

When Owen graduated, so did his friends My small sliver of a social life evaporated piece by piece as people went off to college or to find jobs in some town that wasn’t srandfather’s care, and I moved into a two-bedroohbors in their sixties on the other

Sopho My only frienda torturous year when both of our ood idea, moved to Guam Not the next town over Not California Not any place I could convince h for me to visit—escape to The fucker moved to Guam

I used to go to Matt’s house and spend hours playing video games We didn’t talk e played, which is what o to school, then come home I study and have dinner with my mom and her boyfriend, Dwayne Chessh school—the one I don’t get to go to because I’m so smart

In the evening, I walk to the rink in the middle of Old Town, to a place called the Ice Palace, and I skate until my feet have blisters I sprint and stop so many times I wear paths in the ice—so deep, they need to fill theo to feel soa the week, when I can come, it’s usually only me I’ve always skated, but when my brother Owen left, I beca a ball are made up for in my ability to move a puck That, and I’ive a shit about winning so, taking so how they look lying on the ice in my wake I don’t operate under those morals anywhere else But I think, maybe, there’s a dark part of me that needs it And I need to keep it on the ice

Usually, though, I’m alone out there So instead, I push myself until I can barely breathe, sometimes until my chest burns and I vo under his breath, leaning on the exit as he taps on his watch—his subtle hint to o home

My feet are sore today, but that’s the last thing I’ to change—the day I start caring about what I hen I leaveIllinois passed a law that every high school student needs to take PE, even the sh school I protested at first, dreading the bus ride I’d have to endure, the aard blue uniforeball But those anxieties are escaping h the athletic departainst the wall of the PE office, her legs outstretched, the blue fabric of her perfect dress tucked underneath her knees The vision of her hits me harder as any, and it twists in spirals, like a tornado rushing down her shoulders and spine; a dark storainst her cream skin

I sit opposite her, sliding down against the wall, stretching s out until the soles of my shoes tap the bottoaze comes up quickly, and she pulls her feet in fast, careful to tuck the botto her ray, like charcoal