“I know,” I said. I worried that somehow she could see through me. “I’m still working on it.”

“I normally wouldn’t accept something this late, but I’d like to see you finish it. I think that it’s important for you…” And with that she trailed off. I guess she didn’t want to say since your sister died. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t understand. She wouldn’t. This is our world. And she can’t have it. But instead of saying any of that, I nodded and left.

Then I went to my locker, and I was looking at the picture of you I have hanging inside of it, when I noticed something else. A homecoming invitation. It was cut from red construction paper into the shape of a rough heart. Like a kindergartner had done it for a valentine. For one hopeful moment, I thought that it could have been from Sky. But it wasn’t. Will you go to homecoming with me? it said. Evan F. I felt queasy.

I’ve only talked to Evan Friedman once before. He’s a popular boy, one of the most popular in the freshman class. His face is very pale, and honestly, it kind of looks like an albino monkey. But that makes him sound ugly, and he’s not. Also, he’s very good at sports and skateboarding and school, like everything in the world is easy for him. We are in algebra together. A couple of weeks ago, I turned around to ask him to borrow a pencil, because my lead had broken off. His hand was sort of down his pants. My eyes went there, and then darted back up. My throat got dry, but I had to say something so he didn’t think I was just looking. So I just stuttered out my original question. “Do you have an extra pencil?” He took the one off his desk and put it in my hand. After that, I caught him looking at me more than once.

Why was he asking me? I am nothing like his ex-girlfriend, Britt, who is blond with cherry-kissed lips and bubbly like cream soda. I wondered if it was just because I looked at his crotch that time or what.

Secretly I had been hoping that Sky would ask me. I’ve been looking for him since we went on our drive, one week and a day ago. But he hasn’t been at lunch. I saw him only once, walking in the hall with some other junior guys and a girl who had dyed-black hair that matched her tall black boots. She was laughing and touching his arm. Sky looked up as he passed by and saw my eyes on him. He held them for just a moment before tilting his head up in greeting. I must have pretty much seemed like a freak, just staring.

At lunch today, Kristen and Tristan came to sit with me and Natalie and Hannah at our table, and I told them about Evan’s invitation.

Hannah exclaimed, “Mr. Popular is totally trying to get in your pants.”

“Well, I know he gets in his own pants,” I said.

This made everyone laugh, because I never say things like that. Hannah almost spit out her Capri Sun.

“Are you going to say yes?” Natalie asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. Then I asked Tristan and Kristen, “Are you guys going?”

“We’re over school dances, right, babe?” Tristan answered.

Kristen nodded.

“Do you think Sky’s over school dances, too?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, I’d have to answer that in the affirmative,” Tristan said.

Hannah said, “My analysis is that it appears that he’d like to spend as little time at school as possible, since he’s been ditching lunch. And although he has license to stand with the cool kids, he still doesn’t fully belong anywhere and hasn’t relinquished his title of Mr. Mystery. Hence the throng of girls who are always leaning in and touching his arm. But of course, my money’s on you.”

Kristen added, “Mine, too, but I know his type, Laurel. He’s not a girlfriend kind of guy. He’s the type that just, like, has girls sometimes.”

“Is Tristan the girlfriend kind of guy?” I asked, because I was trying to figure out what this meant.

Kristen laughed. “He wasn’t before I met him,” she admitted.

“But she converted me!” Tristan said. “I’m living proof it’s possible.”

“Maybe you’ll convert Sky,” Kristen offered.

“We haven’t even talked since last week. I don’t know if he actually likes me.”

“I hypothesize that Sky does like you,” Tristan said. “He asked you to ride in his Chevy lovemobile after all—and the fact that he hasn’t spoken to you since is evidence that you make him nervous. Which is evidence that he likes you. Guys get shy, too, you know.”

It’s hard for me to imagine that I make Sky nervous, but I hope Tristan is right.

When lunch was finished, I still wasn’t sure what to do about Evan. In Algebra, I sat on the other side of the room from him and tried not to look over. After class, I took a long time placing my notepaper in my binder and snapping and resnapping the rings, hoping he’d leave. But when I looked up, he was there.

“Did you get my note?”

I looked at him blankly for a moment. “Yeah.”

“Does that mean yeah you’ll go with me or yeah you got it?”

After what Hannah and Kristen said, I figured my chances of Sky asking were pretty much none, especially since there’s only a week and a half left before the dance. And it seemed hard to say no to Evan and his paper heart. So I said, “Oh. Uh. Yeah, I’ll go.” Then I added, “But I kind of have plans beforehand. So, can we meet there?”

I’ve seen plenty of versions of homecoming dates on TV—the girls in their satin dresses cutting tiny pieces off of rib eyes they won’t finish at somewhere like Outback Steakhouse, drinking Shirley Temples and virgin piña coladas, while the guys scarf their whole plates and then tackle the girls’. And I know that Evan probably has popular friends who do this kind of thing. But what would I say to them?

Honestly, I don’t want him to pick me up, because I couldn’t stand him coming to our quiet house. I don’t want him to see inside it. And I don’t want Dad feeling like he should have to pretend and pull out the camera. We don’t take pictures anymore.

Evan was still looking at me.

I tried to give him a way out. “You know, if you want to ask someone else who can go to dinner first, I totally get it. It’s totally okay.”

Evan just said, “No, it’s cool. You can come out after, right?”

I guess this was the part that really mattered. If he thought we would make out or not.

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled.

So now, this is going to be my first dance. With Evan Friedman and his jagged red heart. It was supposed to be Sky.

At May’s first dance her freshman year, I watched her get ready in her red dress, not satin, but silk. She was so perfectly alive. Her date, Justin Alvarez, a senior boy, rang the doorbell like he should and pinned on a corsage. I stayed hidden in the door frame, watching. Even though they’d already split up by then, Mom and Dad both wanted to be the ones to see her off to her first dance, so Mom came over that night. She took pictures of May being beautiful. Dad shook Justin’s hand and said, “Be home by twelve.” I had this feeling that the boy dressed in a suit was carrying her away, into her new life that I couldn’t see. I wished I could go.

When she got back that night at two a.m., she tiptoed into her room. She’d called Dad and told him what a great time she was having and begged for a couple extra hours. He’d finally agreed and gone to sleep, but I had been in bed waiting up, my eyes open to the moonlight. I heard her and pushed open her door. She said, “You have to hear this.” She put on a CD and played “The Lady in Red.” Over and over and over. I lay on her bed and watched her unpin her hair, placing freed bobby pins on the dresser, and wiping off the lipstick. When her curls were a mess over her shoulders, she lay in the bed next to me, starting the song over again and closing her eyes. She fell asleep in her red dress. I saw the hem of it with its sequins crumple between her thigh and the sheet. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I wondered if anyone could ever think that about me.