"So, do you want to play truth or dare?" Cameron asked. She leaned back against the glass wall of his cell.

"Do I look like a junior high school girl to you?" Michael answered, although he was already thinking of some pretty interesting ways the game could go.

"Oh, come on," Cameron begged, bouncing her head against the glass. "I'm so bored."

"If you keep doing that, you'll give yourself enough brain damage that you'll never be bored again," he answered. She shot him an annoyed look. "Okay, okay," he relented. "What's the most embarrassing thing that you've ever done? Truth or dare."

"You're supposed to ask if I'm a virgin. That's always the first question," Cameron teased.

"So are you?" Michael asked. Yeah, it was definitely going to be an interesting game.

"Too late," she said. "You already asked something. Most embarrassing, most embarrassing. Let's see."

"Too many to pick from, huh?" Michael asked. He stretched out on the floor, propping himself up with his elbow.

"Okay, I got it. I was at this party. I was about twelve, I think. And I don't know why, but we ended up doing this thing where we got in pairs and had to look into the other person's eyes for a full minute without talking." Cameron took a deep breath and rushed on. "So anyway, my partner was Sean Wentworth, this guy I had a total crush on. We started looking at each other, and I don't know exactly what happened, I guess I just got nervous, because I barfed and some of it splattered on him."

Michael cracked up. He could totally picture it.

"It wasn't funny," Cameron said. "I'd been pigging out at the party, and there were these lumps of half-digested pizza and chicken wings and stuff in there. It wasn't one of those nice, all-liquid deals."

Michael laughed harder. The story seemed like something Maria might tell him. Not Isabel, though. No way. If Isabel ever had a most embarrassing moment, she definitely wouldn't describe it down to the lumps of half-digested pizza.

"If you could manage to stop laughing at me, it's my turn," Cameron told him.

"Go ahead," he said, struggling to control himself.

"So are you a virgin? Truth or dare," Cameron asked.

"Dare," Michael answered without hesitation.

"You realize you answered the question, whether you think you did or not?" Cameron informed him. "Any guy who wasn't a virgin would be totally bragging about it."

He felt his face getting warm. If I'm blushing, then I know for sure what my most embarrassing moment is, he thought.

"I'm one of those sensitive kind of guys who respects women way too much to ever do anything as crude as bragging," Michael said quickly. "Not that I don't have things I could brag about."

"Ooohh. I'll bet you have all kinds of stories about lusty hookups, adoring female fans, and championship football games," Cameron snapped. "Am I right there, cowboy?"

"My turn. What's the worst thing you've ever done? Truth or dare," Michael asked.

Cameron pulled in a sharp breath, and her entire body tensed up.

Way to break the mood, Guerin. Michael shoved his hands through his spiky black hair.

"I'll take a dare," Cameron said.

This didn't seem like the moment to ask to see her tattoos. "Uh, all right, you have to look into my eyes for one minute without puking," Michael told her.

"You like to live dangerously, don't you?"

Michael was happy to see that the tightness in Cameron's body was already starting to go away. He sat up and moved closer until his knees were almost touching hers, then they locked eyes.

He'd always thought he went for blue eyes, like Maria's and Isabel's. But Cameron's brown eyes were pretty amazing. For one thing, they weren't just brown. Or at least not all the same shade of brown.

Michael leaned closer, so close, he could feel Cameron's breath against his face. Her eyes weren't plain brown at all. Right around the pupil there was a little ring of dark chocolatey brown, with sort of an uneven edge. Then most of her eye was a lighter sort of caramel brown, with a really, really thin ring of the dark brown around it.

"Has it been a minute yet?" Cameron asked.

Michael wasn't sure. All he knew was that even if it had been twice that long, he wasn't ready to move away. He moved a fraction nearer, the distance between them practically nonexistent now.

And she pulled away. Jerked away was more like it.

"That was definitely a minute," Cameron said, her voice all shaky. "My turn. Do you ever wish you weren't an alien? Truth or dare."

Michael stared at her. He couldn't believe she was tackling this "forbidden" topic.

"It seemed like we'd decided not to talk about our assorted freakishness," Cameron hurried to say. "I don't even know why I asked that question. I'll give you a different one."

"No, it's too late. You already asked it." Michael had never talked much to humans about that part of himself. It's not like he thought Maria, or Liz, or Alex would get all weird about it. He just never felt like it, that's all.

But why shouldn't he answer Cameron's questions? As she said, they were both freaks. So he should be able to tell her anything, right?

Adam clicked off the TV. It was fake, and he hated fake. His whole pathetic life had been fake-from believing that the sun was only something in storybooks to believing Valenti was his father.

He checked the watch that Alex had given him. Almost an hour before school got out. Almost an hour until he would be allowed to go out into the real world. Allowed. Max, Isabel, and the others didn't carry machine guns, but they still wanted to be his guards. Don't go outside unless one of us is with you, Adam. Don't talk to anyone but us, Adam.

They gave him a TV, a CD player, and real books instead of those picture books Valenti had made him read. But was he supposed to get all excited over a bunch of fake stuff? Should he be happy in his little shed world, kept away from everything real?

He wanted real. He wanted a girl-a girl as pretty as Liz-spinning around on the grass, her head flung back, her arms open wide, her long hair swirling around her. He wanted his own toes in that same grass. He wanted his fingers touching her face.

The more he thought, the antsier he became. Why wait any longer for the real world when he could get a taste of it-right now? He stood up and rushed over to the shed door. He grabbed the handle and froze. Could he really just walk out?

The thought felt shocking. Revolutionary. Miraculous.

Adam flung open the door. Sunny blue sky filled with heaps of fluffy clouds exploded above him. He started to feel a little dizzy, and he wobbled on his feet. He thought about putting on his sunglasses to take the edge off. But no. This was real. This was what he wanted. Straight-up reality.

He crossed the lawn to the back gate, hurried through and slammed it behind him, then headed to the sidewalk and made a left. He had no real plan, but he vaguely remembered that left would take him to the center of town.

As he walked, he was bombarded with new sensations, his knowledge of the real world expanding with every step. He'd seen pictures of ginkgo trees, but now he discovered the sharp, sour smell of the fleshy yellow seeds and the feel of veins in the scalloped leaves. He'd seen cars on TV, but for the first time he smelled the exhaust and felt the little whoosh of air when one passed close by.

He could practically feel his brain growing. He had the feeling that he was becoming more real as his experience of the real world increased.

Turning onto North Main Street, Adam saw a whole row of the fast-food places he'd seen advertised on TV He could eat anything he wanted, anytime he wanted. That was, if he had any money.