One day, Dea sat behind him at a schoolwide assembly. She hadn’t planned it that way. She was sandwiched in the very back row of the risers when he came and plopped down right in front of her. His friends soon joined him and for forty-five minutes she sat motionless, afraid to move or even breathe, afraid he might turn around and tell her to leave. When he stood up, she saw that one of his patches had fallen off his backpack: red and black with the words Turkey Army embroidered on it. She pretended to be tying her shoelaces and pocketed it.

Getting into his dream was easy. His mind barely put up defenses at all—just a series of curtains, many of them torn, fluttering as though in a breeze. Just beyond the line of flimsy fabric was a patchy yard and a cheap, aboveground pool. It was the kind of sunlight that exists only in dreams: it came from every direction at once, so it felt like being on the wrong side of a magnifying glass.

He was in the pool, not more than two feet away from Dea, shirtless. She could have threaded her hand past the curtains and touched his shoulders or run her fingers through his hair. She could have climbed into the pool with him. She could have leaned over and pressed her lips to his, like she’d seen Mishti Barns and Mark Spencer do every morning before homeroom. She wanted to, desperately.

But it was against the rules.

The water broke and Hillary Davis surfaced soundlessly, looking even better than she did in real life. Her skin was golden and her teeth were the white of bleached bone. Her hair shimmered in the sun and her boobs floated like overturned cups on the water.

Then they were kissing. Dea stood there, not two feet away, mesmerized. She could hear the suction sound of their lips and the lapping of their tongues and the whisper of his fingers on her back and shoulders. She stayed there until the curtains became iron walls and she knew Brody was waking up. She had just enough time to slip out of the dream before she felt a sudden, jolting pressure in her chest and she was back in her room, in her body, touching her lips with one cold hand.

Still, to this day, Dea had never been kissed.

FOUR

The Donahue house was a good seven miles outside the commercial center of Fielding. On the way toward town, Dea spotted Gollum riding her ancient Schwinn. Dea jerked the car off the road, sending Connor careening against the passenger-side window.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said. But he laughed.

“Sorry,” Dea said. Gollum spotted Dea’s car and came to a stop by dragging her feet, kicking up a cloud of pale dust. She didn’t get off her bike but stood up, straddling it, gripping the handlebars.

Gollum was dressed in her typical style: an assortment of clothes no doubt inherited from one of her older brothers, which she’d tucked and pinned and rolled so that they would at least somewhat fit. Her blond hair was pulled back, but a crown of wisps had escaped from her ponytail, giving her the look of a deranged angel. For the shortest second, Dea was embarrassed by her and wished she hadn’t stopped. Then, furious with herself, she rolled down the window as Gollum looked up, her eyes practically shooting out of her head.

“Connor,” she said. “This is my friend, Gollum.” She pronounced the word friend emphatically, still angry at herself for her moment of mental treachery. “Gollum, this is Connor. He’s the one who just moved in.”

Gollum stooped down to peer past Dea. Her mouth opened, and then closed. Dea had never seen Gollum speechless before.

Luckily, Connor took the lead. He leaned over the center console, his shoulder bumping Dea’s. “Gollum,” he said. “Cool name.”

“Thanks,” she said, still staring at him. “Cool . . . face.”

Connor burst out laughing. Gollum turned roughly the color of beet juice.

“Sorry,” she said. “My mouth isn’t always hooked up to my brain.”

Dea reached out and squeezed Gollum’s hand. She was filled with a sudden sense of warmth. She was driving in the car with a boy who had a cool face, and her friend—they were friends, even if they didn’t really hang out outside of school—was standing there, blushing, and the whole scene felt like it could have been lifted straight out of any teen movie.

Which made her, Dea, the star.

“That’s okay,” Connor said. “Neither is mine.”

Once again, Dea had a momentary suspicion that Connor must be tricking them. Or maybe he was secretly a freak. Maybe he was hiding a third and fourth nipple, or a secret Star Wars addiction.

“Want a ride somewhere?” Dea asked. “You can throw your bike in the back.”

Gollum made a face. “I gotta go home. Besides, the Beast would never fit.” She patted the handlebars.

“I’m getting the grand tour of Fielding,” Connor said, still smiling.

Gollum’s face had returned to its normal color. She shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose with a thumb. “Should be the most mediocre five minutes of your life,” she said, and thumped Dea’s door. “Have fun. Don’t forget to swing by the dump. It’s one of Fielding’s most scenic attractions.” When Connor wasn’t looking, she mouthed, Oh my God and did the bug-eyed thing again.

Now Dea was the one blushing.

Gollum wasn’t exaggerating: It took approximately four minutes to get from one end of Fielding to the other. The commercial district was just two intersecting roads and a heap of buildings in various stages of decay. On Main Street there were two gas stations, a church, a liquor store, a hair salon, a fried chicken spot, a mini-mart, and a mega-mart. On Center Street was a diner, a pharmacy (now shuttered), a 7-Eleven, another liquor store, and Mack’s, the only bar in town, which everyone always referred to by its full name, Mack’s Center Street, as if there were another somewhere else. Two miles past Center Street, after a quick patchwork of fields and farms and houses that were falling slowly into the dirt, was the Fielding School, serving grades kindergarten to dropout.

They didn’t even have a Walmart. For that, you had to drive all the way to Bloomington.

“Voilà,” she said to Connor when they reached the Fielding School. The parking lot was mostly empty. In the distance, she spotted a bunch of guys from the football team running drills. “Tour complete. What do you think?”

“I think the mega-mart was my favorite,” Connor said. “But the mini-mart’s a close second.” One thing that was nice about Connor: he didn’t fidget. He was way too tall for Dea’s mom’s car, another simulacrum: an exact replica of the original VW Beetle, with its engine in the back and everything. Even though Connor was squished in the front seat, knees practically to his chest, he looked perfectly relaxed. He didn’t even press Dea about the fact that the rearview mirror was blacked out with masking tape, even though she’d had an excuse ready: the glass had shattered and they were waiting on parts to replace it.

“I told you there was nothing to see,” Dea said.

“Depends on your perspective,” Connor said, looking at her in a way that made her suddenly nervous. She put the car in drive again, and rumbled slowly out of the parking lot. Plumes of red dust came up from the tires. The sun was so bright, it was hard to see. She was glad, at least, that the air conditioner was the modern kind.

“So. Anything I should know about F.S.? Trade secrets? Words of warning?” he asked.

“All schools are pretty much the same,” Dea said. “Don’t backtalk the teacher. Don’t touch the hot lunch. Try to stay awake during history.”

He laughed. He had a great laugh—just like his smile, it made him about a thousand times more attractive. “You been to a lot of schools?”

“Half a dozen.” Actually, she’d been enrolled at ten different schools, and lived in twelve different states. But no point in launching into a monologue about it. “My mom likes to move around,” she added, when he made a face. “How about you?”