"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Translation: This is the worst idea. Ever. Jeremy had no idea what he was getting into. "I mean, you do know what goes on at a rave . . . don't you?"

He looked insulted. "Jeez, Leigh. I may be a loser, but I'm not an idiot!"

"I wasn't suggesting that you're an idiot . . ."

"And I happen to enjoy doing Sudoku and watching the History Channel on Friday nights. There's nothing wrong with that."

I laughed, kicking him gently with the tip of my shoe. "I didn't say there was. I just don't want you to get in trouble."

"I won't." He kicked me back. "I already talked to our sponsor. She said I can run the article as long as there aren't any photos of 'questionable content.' Besides, I'm not going to print any recognizable photos of anyone's face, and I'll change the names to protect the innocent."

My laughter evaporated as I considered the best way to tell him . . . tell him what? That I'd be posing as a narc's girlfriend to facilitate a drug deal? That it might be my name he had to change?

"Fine, but if you snap any pictures of me, I might have to kill you."

"You're going?" He sat up, looking confused. "But I thought you just said you wouldn't be caught dead . . ." He smiled, thin and brittle. "Oh . . . I get it. You wouldn't be caught dead at a dance with me."

My heart hurt. I wanted to explain. To fix what I couldn't stop breaking over and over.

"Jeremy," I began, unsure how to say what needed to be said. "You know I love you. You're my best friend . . ." I took a breath, and forced myself to speak the truth I'd never had the guts to tell him. Not part of it. Not half of it. All of it. "But that's all you are to me."

He lay back down, eyes glued to the ceiling.

My voice trembled, but I needed him to hear this even though I wished he didn't have to. "I need that to be enough for you too. I can't make myself love you more than I do. And it's not fair to either of us to try."

He flinched, a movement so small I might have missed it if I hadn't been looking so closely at his eyes, waiting for them to blink.

"Can you understand? Will you please just look at me?"

His silence was disorienting. I'd navigated my life by him. Had always counted on him swinging back to me, his true north. But he'd turned away, and wouldn't look back.

Even as he said "I think you should leave."

31.

I spent Sunday morning with the shades drawn tight, sagging into our creaky dirt-brown sofa. I was still in my pj's, buried under a faded afghan that smelled like mildew and cigarette smoke. The TV was bright in the dimly lit room. I poked the remote through a gap in the blanket where it was pulled up to my ears, flipping between channels with the sound muted so it wouldn't wake my mother. News stations had footage from the Air and Space Museum on a loop, each showing different angles of the front of the building, rows of yellow buses, and flashing police lights. The police hadn't released many details to the press, only that an unidentified minor was found dead during a school field trip, and police were investigating the possibility of foul play.

Possibility. No mention of how he'd been asphyxiated with his own shoelace, or the mysterious number left in stickers on his arm. Five.

Emily . . . ten.

Marcia . . . eighteen.

Posie . . . three.

Teddy . . . five.

I'll put it all on the table for you.

I looked past the reporters' faces searching for someone

familiar in the background, someone who might have a reason to frame me for murder. Someone who might stay through the chaos to see me carted off to jail. But the media was careful not to show any students on camera, and the police barricades kept the press from getting too close.

Who wrote the ads? What did he want from me and what was he trying to tell me?

I flipped the TV off and sat in the dark for a while, listening to Mona snore in the next room. Then I threw off the quilt, padded to my room, and flopped on my bed. Einstein stared back at me from the poster on my wall, as if to say: "Why the hell haven't you figured this out yet? It's four lousy numbers. Not the Theory of Relativity, for crying out loud."

But those four numbers were impossible to solve. I had no idea what factor connected them. It's like I was missing the value of x, because I couldn't figure out what x was supposed to represent.

The phone rang on my nightstand and I reached to grab it before the second ring.

"What are you doing?" Anh asked before I could say hello. She knew I'd be the one to answer this early on a Sunday.

"Talking to Albert."

"I bought you that poster to demonstrate the correlation between frizzy hair and scientific brilliance. Not so you'd become all codependent upon Our Holy Father of Modern Physics."

"It's Sunday. Let me worship in peace."