A voice startles me back to the present. “Yo, insane freak. Talking to yourself?” It’s BFF Sarah, trying to sound tough, sitting down at the computer two seats away. She takes out a notebook.

I frown. “What do you want?”

“You messed up our V-Day Dance decorations.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be standing in the middle of a crowded hallway with them, then.” Where I’d normally be scared, I am now bold. I look at her and wait for her response.

She wavers just slightly. “You’re pissed because nobody ever invites you. That’s why you did it.”

I glance back at my screen and minimize it, then look back to her. “Invites me to what?”

“Anything. Homecoming. Winter Ball. Valentine’s Dance.”

I sigh and wonder if she’s feeling empowered today too. If she is, it’s not working. I lean toward her. “Did you come here to harass me?”

She doesn’t respond, probably because she’s so dumb she doesn’t have an answer. She pulls out some papers and ignores me.

I go back to studying my screenshot.

But she’s not done. A minute later, she says, “Is that what made you insane, freak? You’re in love with Sawyer Angotti, but he never asks you to anything, and now you’ve lost your marbles. It is, isn’t it.” It’s not a question.

My neck grows warm. There’s only one way she could have found out I told Sawyer I love him. Unless she’s just digging at me. That’s probably more likely. I stare at my computer screen and say nothing, heeding the inner instinct to brace myself for more.

“But you can’t help being insane, can you,” Sarah says in a pitying voice. “Your family and all.”

I close my eyes and grip my chair arms. In my mind, I decimate her. I scream, I kick, I hurt her on the outside for what she just did to my insides. I take a measured breath, and then I open my eyes and turn slowly toward her, covering my teeth with my lips and imitating that scary, gummy man from the hospital when Dad was there. In a harsh voice, I whisper, “Do you want to find out how crazy I really am?”

Twenty-Six

It was pretty awesome seeing Sarah react to that, I have to admit. She pushed her chair back with a loud scrape and her eyes went wide, her mouth open, her wad of gum just sitting there, tempted to roll out. And then she pulled her stuff together, called me a lunatic, and took off. I wonder if she got her assignment done. Tsk.

I spend an hour studying close-ups of each scene, landing again on the one quick shot of the dining room window. There’s still something odd, but I can’t figure it out. I spend a couple bucks to print out all the screenshots, but when I go to pick them up off the printer, they’re not there. There’s just a stack of color shots of Skinny Wallets, Fat Love. Now I really do look insane.

“Big sigh, Demarco,” I mutter under my breath. “Maybe next time print just one and check it, hey?”

• • •

Once I get home, everybody’s down in the restaurant already. So I start digging for a disguise.

I sort through the hoards and piles and boxes. Because I know that somewhere in here, there’s a whole crap ton of Halloween costumes. And I definitely can’t be recognized again—at least not right now.

After an hour, and just when I’m about to give up and get my butt to work, I find the mother lode in the far corner of the dining room, under a musty box of canning jars, which we keep in case we ever decide to fix the seventeen broken pressure cookers in the living room, which we’ll do if we ever learn how to can things. It all makes sense, doesn’t it? Especially since we have all this spare time to take up hobbies.

Anyway, right on top of the pile are some retro glasses and three wigs: Elvira, Marilyn Monroe, and a generic one with brown dreadlocks, or maybe it’s Bob Marley, I’m not sure. I shake them, and only dust falls out—a good sign that even the mice are repulsed. A careful sniff of each doesn’t kill me or even knock me flat, so I confiscate them, putting them into a plastic bag and shoving them under my bed.

• • •

Five useful things about living with a fairly clean hoarder:

1. If you look around long enough, you’re bound to find something for a science project

2. There are endless opportunities for organizing if you have OCD

3. The potential for canning is good to great

4. It’s easy to hide things in plain sight, like gnomes and bird cages an’ shit

5. Survival rate is over one full year when zombies attack

When I walk downstairs and into the restaurant, Rowan and Trey are standing on chairs at the entryway to the dining room, both with rolls of masking tape on their wrists and strings of shiny heart cutouts around their necks.

I tie my apron around my waist and squint up at them. “Seriously? Do we really have to encourage it?”

“Sing it,” Trey mutters. He slaps a circle of tape on the back of a red heart and sticks it to the trim work.

“Oh, come on,” Rowan says. “It’s a beautiful tradition. Mom found those heart-shaped pizza pans.”

“Wasn’t too beautiful for the martyred dude,” Trey says.

“Heart-shaped pans. Like we need more crap,” I mutter as the front door jingles and Dad walks in with two magazines and a newspaper. Trey snorts and Rowan’s eyes bug out.

“Feeling better?” Dad asks me. He doesn’t look quite so freaked out as he did the other day. I glance at Trey, who has a ribbon in his mouth. He nods once from his perch.