He grinned and whispered back, “Nope. I’m wondering why someone so smoking hot would be so stupid as to care about something so small. You need to keep your hair out of your face.” From then on, he was constantly pushing my hair behind my ear so that it wouldn’t fall down over my cheeks. We never talked about my past. I find myself wishing that he were here again, just to tell me what I’m having a hard time remembering now. What was it he used to say? It’s all in the past. Leave it there.

I wish everyone would follow Griffin’s advice. It’s the last week of the school year, so in another three days, I won’t see most of these people for months. I wonder how much of my past can be erased in a little less than three months. Maybe by the time I come back, I can just be Julia again.

Yeah. Fat chance.

I wonder what I’ll have to do this time to be thought of as normal again. Before, it was Griffin who made me normal. Now … maybe I need to attach myself to a new guy. And the logical choice is Bret. I think about last night’s dream for the hundredth time this morning and shudder. Though my brain is telling me that makes sense, my heart seems to want to run in the other direction.

All the students are walking around with that extra spring in their steps that comes with knowing summer vacation is just around the corner. Grades are in, so teachers aren’t really teaching, students aren’t really learning, and most of the seniors are nowhere to be found. That means Bret is probably somewhere else.

Thank God.

I have no interest in seeing him; after all, I saw enough of him in my dream to last several lifetimes. And there was something else about that dream, something weird, that I can’t put my finger on….

I slam my locker door shut. Dreams are just dreams. I am not thinking about this right now.

Ebony smiles at me. “Are you going to Mike Nash’s graduation party this Wednesday?”

She’s the first person who hasn’t run away as soon as the “How are you holding up?” question was posed, who hasn’t expected me to be in mourning for the remainder of my teenage years. “Um … well, I don’t know.”

“You should. You shouldn’t just coop yourself up inside. It might lift your spirits.” She studies me. “You look really beat, so getting out might do you some good.”

I check my reflection in her locker mirror. She’s right; I do. My cheeks look eggshell pale and my eyes are rimmed in red. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

That’s an understatement. I think I slept better the weeks after Griffin’s death, which probably makes me evil and heartless, but it’s true. Last night, it took me forever to get to sleep. Something was just not right—different, as if I were on new, scratchy sheets. Then, after that dream, I decided I didn’t want to sleep. At all. Ever again. It wasn’t just that Bret had his tongue down my throat, though just thinking about that now makes me tremble. There was something else really uncomfortable about the dream, but I can’t remember what it was.

“A bunch of us are going, if you want to come along …,” she says, and I’m starting to think, Well, why the hell not? when I suddenly see him coming toward me in the busy hall. Oh, great.

Bret waves at me immediately, as if he’s been searching for me. I feel my face getting hot. Ebony’s standing next to me, oblivious to my meltdown, saying something about the party, but I’m completely lost. Especially when Bret stops at my locker and we’re standing toes to toes.

It was just a dream. Get a grip, I think.

Still, I can’t meet his eyes. “Hey there,” I say as brightly as I can.

He leans his shoulder against the row of lockers. “Wow. You look like crud.”

The image of our bodies pressed together pops into my head and I snarl at him, “You look like crap.”

“Great, that was the effect I was going for.”

Bret’s grin turns wicked as his eyes fall on Ebony, like Who are you and what are you doing with my property? Despite the noise in the halls, an uncomfortable silence sets in.

Ebony narrows her eyes at him, then gives me a smile. “I forgot. If you go anywhere, I guess it would be with your other hip tumor.” She motions in Bret’s direction, slams her locker, and saunters away.

“No, wait—” I start, but Bret moves between us and laughs.

“So, crud-face, what’s up?”

“Um, nothing,” I say, suddenly wishing I were in bio. It says a lot when you’d rather be sitting in bio than talking with your friend. I watch Ebony head down the hall without looking back, and I hiss, “Do you think maybe … just maybe … I could have a conversation with someone other than you?”

It comes out meaner than I expected, and I immediately feel guilty.

“With who?” He tilts his head, then hitches a thumb in Ebony’s direction. “With her? I don’t even know who she is.”

“So? I do. She’s in my class. And we were talking about going to a graduation party on Wednesday.”

His eyes narrow. “But you’re not graduating.”

“So?”

He puts an arm around my shoulder, and I nearly jump from the tingles it sends down my arms. “Okay, fine. If you want me to take you to a party, all you need to do is ask.”

“I—I don’t …,” I stammer, fists clenched. I don’t want you, I think. Then I sigh. “I’m just … tired. I need to get to class.”

“Let me walk you.”

I shake my head. “No, I have two feet. They work, too.”

“Oh, come on. Is it so bad that I want to make sure you’re okay?”

“That’s nice, but I’m fine.”

“Right. You say you are. You’re starting to do that girly, emotional, freak-out thing, and it’s breaking my heart. I want the old Julia back.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be the old Julia anymore,” I mutter. The old Julia would take the abuse and dish out some more. But lately I’ve just been too exhausted to even bother trying to be smooth and quick-witted around Bret, which reminds me how impossible that dream was. I expected that if I kissed a guy in a dream, it would be fairy tale–like, blissful. This was like kissing a Hoover. And it didn’t help that Griffin was standing there, stone-faced, watching us the entire time.

Griffin.

Suddenly, it hits me. Griffin was in my dream. Had he ever been in one of my dreams before? No, not that I can remember. But now, now that he’s dead, for the first time ever, I dreamt about him.

He was wearing a tuxedo, like he wore to prom. He was watching me, as if on the other side of a barrier he couldn’t break through.

And he was not the happy, carefree Griffin.

Far from it.

The hallway seems to blur and spin, like I’m on a carousel. I look down at my hands. They’re trembling. Bret must sense it, because he reaches out and steadies me with a firm hand on my shoulder. “Someone skipped breakfast,” he jokes. But I am far from in a joking mood.

I take a breath. Dreams are just dreams.

Right?

CHAPTER 10

Eron

It’s a beautiful, bright day and the shade of the oak I’m resting in feels heavenly. The windows are open in Julia’s home and her pink lace curtains sway in the breeze, carrying her perfumed scent, like the smell of clean laundry, out to me. I smile to myself, thinking of wash day as a child, when my mother would hand me a basket of freshly laundered sheets to fold, and I would fall asleep in them, inhaling their sweet scent. I don’t notice the absence of the incessant chirping of the birds that has always been my background noise until a grating voice nearly knocks me off my branch.

“What are you doing up there?”

I straighten and peer to the ground, between the branches, for the first time in a long while feeling rather dizzy. A bald man with a bulbous nose and ruddy cheeks is scowling at me. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and gardening gloves. Again, I’m nearly knocked off my branch when a realization floods over me.