He bit back the impulse to continue the argument. “I’m going. I’ll watch you on the way to school.”

“Watch,” she retorted. “That’s all you’ll ever do.”

Balthazar stormed out, slamming her bedroom door behind him. She didn’t follow.

If she understood, he thought, if she knew how … unclean I am, how poisonous to everything I love—

Which was the first moment he knew beyond any doubt that he loved her—the same moment he walked out of her house, intending never to return.

Chapter Eighteen

SKYE MANAGED TO GET READY FOR SCHOOL AS though it were any other day. Her body went through the motions, while her heart kept breaking on the inside.

She’d been rejected. Well, that happened. She’d liked Jason Mulroney in middle school, and he’d never looked twice at her. So she would cope.

Liking a boy in middle school is nothing like finding a guy you can share everything with, someone who knows where you hurt and what you’ve lost and still cares about you—

So, like losing Craig. She’d survived that.

Craig went to bed with you once, and after that he just walked away without a backward glance.

Maybe you’re just an easy girl to leave.

And she had never wanted Craig as badly as she’d wanted Balthazar this morning. That was something she’d never understood until now—how she had sex with Craig more because she longed for closeness and comfort after Dakota’s death. She’d learned about real desire only when she woke up in the arms of a guy she couldn’t have.

Skye grabbed some tissue to dab at her eyes. Then she kept on getting ready as if it were any other day—except she used the waterproof mascara. The tears were probably going to keep coming.

Being at school made the situation even worse. Every noise seemed deafening to her, and even the pale sun that crept through the constantly falling snow was too bright, as were the fluorescent lights in Darby Glen High. And was it her imagination, or was her hearing better than before? Tennis shoes squeaking on linoleum, the metallic slam of locker doors, Florence and The Machine in someone’s earbuds: All of it flooded through her, leaving her overwhelmed.

“Hey,” Madison said, falling into step with her as they walked into homeroom. “Whoa. What happened? You look like crap today. No offense.”

“None taken. I feel like crap.” Skye let her books drop onto her desk, then winced at the sound of it.

“Oh, my God, are you hungover? You’re totally acting like you’re hungover.”

“I just slept badly.” Skye cast about for any additional way to explain this, then came up with something. “Plus my horse threw me yesterday afternoon. I wasn’t injured or anything, but it shook me up, and I’m bruised everywhere.”

“Poor you.” Madison leaned across her desk, mock confidential. “What if I told you something guaranteed to make you feel better?”

“School’s canceled forever?” Skye was too tired to think of a better joke. Craig and Britnee walked in, hand in hand, and she had to close her eyes.

“Like I’d be here if it were. Listen, you know the Valentine’s Dance is coming up. And you’re gonna have a date. Guess who’s asking you? Keith!”

Skye had to work to remember exactly who Keith was—one of Madison’s friends, of course. He was actually pretty cute, though in a blond, catalog-model way that had never much appealed to her. “Oh.”

“Oh? That news only gets an oh? Keith’s about the hottest guy in this school.” Madison paused before adding, “Except, of course, for a certain homeroom teacher.”

Balthazar had just walked in. Skye glanced up at him to see him looking at her; his expression appeared as desolate as she felt inside. They broke the connection at the same moment, and after that she could only stare at her desk and be glad about the waterproof mascara.

Madison whispered, “He’s acting as weird as you.”

Skye shrugged. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

Somehow she made it through homeroom and history class; for the first day ever, it was dull. Balthazar was obviously phoning it in, and it was a very small consolation to know that he felt rotten, too.

It could have been so different, if he’d just turned to her this morning.

When the bell rang, louder than ever before, Skye hurried out as quickly as she could. Mr. Bollinger’s room felt like the only safe haven at school, even if he did make her polish the triangles again. But as she walked past Ms. Loos’s room, she felt it:

Pain shooting up the arm, circling the chest. Knowing the doctor said to be careful but not really believing death was possible, not until now—

“Oh, no,” she whispered. Never before had she been able to sense the death if there was some kind of barrier between her and the place where that person had died. But her senses were heightened today—all of them.

She started running away from the room, hurtling down the hall much faster than was allowed or safe. Some people swore as they ducked away from her, and she could hear cranky Coach Haladki yelling for her to slow down, but she didn’t. All that mattered was getting farther away from that death—

Then she slammed into someone so hard that she stumbled and her victim fell.

“I’m sorry!” Skye gasped as she bent to grab her books, and only then did she see who it was she’d knocked over. Britnee Fong stared up at her, a little angry but more shocked.