"Not your fault," he says after a short pause. "I shouldn't have snapped."
No, it wasn't my fault, but I could have tried harder to contact him. After he moved, I used to check his Facebook page every so often, looking at all the unfamiliar names on his wall and wondering what his new life was like. As soon as we learned what had happened, I searched for him again, with every intention of sending him some sort of message, but his profile had disappeared.
"How?" I finally ask. "I mean, I know that there was a fire, but-" I cut myself off, realizing that the last thing he probably wants to do is answer a bunch of my nosy questions. "You know what? Never mind."
We sit in silence for a few moments, listening to the night bugs. He starts to pull absently at the tall grass creeping up alongside the stairs. "I wasn't there," he says suddenly. "When it happened. I was playing video games at a friend's house."
"Was it an accident?"
"That's what the fire chief said. Faulty wiring. I was just lucky to be out of the house. Or unlucky," he notes darkly.
I don't know how to respond to that. I want to ask him another question, but I tell myself it's not the right time. Still, he must see something on my face.
"Just ask."
"How can you live here then? I mean, by yourself?"
"I turned eighteen in August. There was a lot of insurance money."
"Yeah, but a house? Doesn't that take some sort of credit history?"
He waves a hand in the air. "Look around, Sophie. It was on the market for six months-I could have told them that I wanted it because my old one was full of dead bodies, and they still would have asked me when I could sign."
We fall into another uncomfortable silence. "So you're not going to school?" I finally ask.
"Nope."
"Why?"
"Like it even matters anymore."
"What does that mean?"
He starts to say something, but then thinks better of it. "Who's going to care?" he asks after a few seconds, less impassioned.
"The future people who have to talk to you." The jab rolls off my tongue before I can stop it, and I'm immediately wracked with guilt for my insensitivity.
"You're just the same, you know," he says, and I am relieved to see that he's smiling.
"Mean and a slow runner?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"Honest," he says, giving me a look I can't decipher before pointing at my nose. "And you still have three freckles right there."
Caught off guard, I bring my hand up to my nose without thinking. Suddenly, I'm desperate to fill the silence with something that's not my misbehaving heartbeat. "It's late," I blurt.
James looks amused. "It's nine o'clock."
I check my watch. "Nine-oh-seven," I say, starting to feel foolish. In my scramble to think of a topic of conversation that's not my recent transformation into a giant spaz, my mind stumbles across a legitimate question. "Hey, if you're not going to school, why are you registered?"
"I'm not," he says.
"Yes, you are," I insist. "My friend is supposed to interview the new students, and your name is on her list. Unless there's another James that hasn't been showing up."
He doesn't answer for a few beats longer than natural. "It's a popular name," he says.
"Yeah, with pilgrims."
He stands up abruptly. "It's getting late. You should probably get back."
I stare up at him, baffled by this sudden about-face. He holds out a hand to help me up, and I take it without thinking. He pulls me forward quickly enough that I bump into his chest. When he apologizes, he sounds so frustrated that my only response is to mumble that it's okay. I open my mouth to ask him if he's sure he didn't just register one day and then get sudden amnesia, but I catch myself when I see how serious his expression has gotten. Maybe he deserves his secrets.
"Please don't tell your family that I'm here," he says softly. "I want to keep a low profile."
"Done," I say, knowing that the story of how I got caught peeping in his back window like a weirdo will be an easy secret to keep. After an awkward good night, I turn and head for the gap.
His voice calls out when I'm halfway there. "It's good to see you again, Sophie."
When I turn around, he's already back on the porch step, watching me.
"You too, James," I say, surprised at how much I mean it, and then duck through the bushes.
Chapter Four
True to his word, James isn't at school the next day, or the next, or the day after that. I know I should be planning some sort of antitruancy PSA for his benefit, but right now my time is occupied elsewhere. Since Vlad and his friends arrive early in the morning and linger in the halls until late at night, one would think that I'd have plenty of time to corner them, extract a few mundane details, and then call it a day.
One would be wrong.
That's why I'm spending my precious after-school time crouched in front of the room where the speech team practices. Lindsay told me that Neville joined their club on the first day and has since been laying waste to everyone in competition. At this point, I will drag him into the girls' restroom and corner him in a stall if it means I can start this stupid project. The excited laughter coming from behind the door tells me that it's going to be a while, so I camp out on the floor and try to recap what I've learned these past few days about my other targets.
Violet has been the easiest nut to crack, but that's not saying much. She volunteered for the French club on day two, bringing our total membership to five. I'm president, but she's nearly fluent. When I asked her if she had studied in France, she just blinked and said, "Governesses." While it's been nice to have someone advanced enough to talk about more than the weather and the physical characteristics of our classmates, she won't stop harping on her inattentive crush. She's found her own source of magazines, and in nearly every English class she hands me a rippled copy of Glamour with most of the corners folded down and then asks for my opinion. I don't know how she got the idea that I'm a wellspring of boy knowledge, but I'm afraid to reveal my inexperience in case she decides to stop answering the personal questions I manage to sneak in. So far I know that her favorite color is purple, she used to ride horses in a park, and she and her friends moved here from upstate New York.
"Look here," she said one day before English, deflecting my question about her dream vacation and pointing a finger at an article in the dating section. "This implies that kissing on the first date is appropriate. Is that true?"
"Sure."
"Then I have been going about this topsy-turvy for so many years," she said, seemingly close to tears.
"Have you ever thought about dating someone else?"
She just shook her head. "No, I can't give up on him. He owes everything to me. I refuse to let this happen again, do you hear? I refuse."
I decided to save the battle for another day, possibly armed with self-help books. Considering I've never seen her eat, I'm halfway convinced that she runs entirely on relationship advice.
Marisabel has been a more difficult target. While her schedule puts her in French with me, she has yet to show up to repetez, s'il vous pla?t. I hear she spends most of her time in the bathroom, sulking and commiserating with any girl who skips class. Most of the time they're the ones who dress in black, favor combat boots, and carry around battered copies of The Bell Jar in oversized messenger bags. Because I am scared of them, I've been waiting to catch her without her posse. So far, no luck.
And then there's James. I shouldn't even be thinking about him. James is not my problem, he's Lindsay's. In fact, he's her biggest problem.
"I pestered the attendance aide today," she fumed in journalism, flipping through her papers. "He hasn't been here at all! I told Mr. Amado so he would let me take him off my list, but he says that sometimes a journalist has to put a little work into finding her subject."
I just smiled nervously and told her that I understood. Even now, I feel guilty for keeping mum about James's whereabouts, especially since I suspect my silence is more because I want to prevent Lindsay from one-upping me than because of my promise to James. There's no reason I can't tell her something that will convince Mr. Amado to strike him from the list. I should do it. I will do it.
I'm frowning into my notebook, wondering how long I can legitimately stall without falling into the "bitchy" zone, when two voices float around the corner-one male, one female, and both angry. I scoot behind the door of an open classroom; they'll most likely be gone in a second, and I can still maintain surveillance on the speech practice.
"Marisabel, I told you. This is politics," growls a voice that I now recognize as Vlad's. So far, most of what know about him I've gotten secondhand from Caroline, who's still overflowing with giddiness at having snagged the mysterious new guy. The only thing that I, personally, have determined is that I would like to punch him. Hard. And not just because he refuses to give me my interview. I've watched him with Caroline. When her eyes are on him, he's relaxed and charming, but the second she turns away, his face grows cold and strangely . . . resolute.