“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

She turned her head away. “Just do it,” Josie said, and Matt pushed his hips flush against hers. It was the kind of pain that-even though she was expecting it-made her cry out.

Matt mistook that for passion. “I know, baby,” he groaned. She could feel his heartbeat, but from the inside, and then he started to move faster, bucking against her like a fish released from a hook onto a dock.

Josie wanted to ask Matt whether it had hurt the first time he had done it, too. She wondered if it always would hurt. Maybe pain was the price everyone paid for love. She turned her face into Matt’s shoulder and tried to understand why, even with him still inside of her, she felt empty.

“Peter,” Mrs. Sandringham said at the end of English class. “Could I see you for a moment?”

At the sound of his teacher’s summons, Peter sank down in his chair. He began to think of excuses he could give his parents when he came home with another failing grade.

He actually liked Mrs. Sandringham. She was only in her late twenties-you could actually look at her while she was prattling on about grammar and Shakespeare and imagine not so long ago, when she might have been slouched in a seat like any ordinary kid and wondering why the clock never seemed to move.

Peter waited until the rest of the class had cleared out before he approached the teacher’s desk. “I just wanted to talk to you about your essay,” Mrs. Sandringham said. “I haven’t graded everyone’s yet, but I did have a chance to look over yours and-”

“I can redo it,” Peter blurted out.

Mrs. Sandringham raised her brows. “But Peter…I wanted to tell you that you’re getting an A.” She handed it to him; Peter stared at the bright red grade in the margin.

The assignment had been to write about a significant event that had changed your life. Although it had happened only a week ago, Peter had written about getting fired for setting the fire in the Dumpster at work. In it, he didn’t mention Josie Cormier at all.

Mrs. Sandringham had circled one sentence in his conclusion: I’ve learned you will get caught, so you have to think things through before you act.

The teacher reached out and put her hand on Peter’s wrist. “You really have learned something from this incident,” she said, and she smiled at him. “I’d trust you in a heartbeat.”

Peter nodded and took the paper from the desk. He swam into the stream of students in the hallway, still holding it. He imagined what his mother would say if he came home with a paper that had a big fat A on it-if, for just once in his life, he did something everyone expected of Joey, and not Peter.

But that would have necessitated telling his mother about the Dumpster incident in the first place. Or admitting that he’d been fired at all, and now spent his after-school hours at the library instead of at the copy center.

Peter crumpled up the essay and threw it into the first trash can that he passed.

As soon as Josie started spending her free time almost exclusively with Matt, Maddie Shaw had seamlessly slipped into the position of being Courtney’s sidekick. In a way, she fit better than Josie ever had: if you were walking behind Courtney and Maddie, you wouldn’t be able to tell who was who; Maddie had so closely cultivated the style and movement of Courtney that she’d elevated it from imitation to art.

Tonight they’d gathered at Maddie’s house because her parents had gone to visit her older brother, a sophomore at Syracuse. They weren’t drinking-it was hockey season, and the players had to sign a contract with the coach-but Drew Girard had rented the uncut version of a teen sex comedy, and the guys were discussing who was hotter, Elisha Cuthbert or Shannon Elizabeth. “I wouldn’t throw either of them out of bed,” Drew said.

“What makes you think they’d get in in the first place?” John Eberhard laughed.

“My reputation reaches far and wide…”

Courtney smirked. “It’s the only part of you that does.”

“Aw, Court, you wish you knew that for sure.”

“Or not…”

Josie was sitting on the floor with Maddie, trying to make a Ouija board work. They’d found it in the basement closet, along with Chutes and Ladders and Trivial Pursuit. Josie’s fingertips rested lightly on the planchette. “Are you pushing it?”

“Swear to God, no,” Maddie said. “Are you?”

Josie shook her head. She wondered what kind of ghost would come to hang out at a teenage party. Someone who’d died tragically, of course, and too young-in a car crash, maybe. “What’s your name?” Josie said loudly.

The planchette swiveled to the letter A, and then B, and then stopped.

“Abe,” Maddie announced. “It must be.”

“Or Abby.”

“Are you male or female?” Maddie asked.

The planchette slipped off the edge of the board entirely. Drew started to laugh. “Maybe it’s gay.”

“Takes one to know one,” John said.

Matt yawned and stretched, his shirt riding up. Although Josie’s back was to him, she could practically sense this, so attuned were their bodies. “As thrillingly fun as this has been, we’re out of here. Jo, come on.”

Josie watched the planchette spell out a word: N-O. “I’m not leaving,” she said. “I’m having fun.”

“Meow,” Drew said. “Who’s pussy-whipped?”

Since they’d started dating, Matt spent more time with Josie than with his friends. And although Matt had told her he’d much rather fool around with her than be in the company of fools, Josie knew it was still important to him to have the respect of Drew and John. But that didn’t mean he had to treat her like a slave, did it?

“I said we’re leaving,” Matt repeated.

Josie glanced up at him. “And I said I’ll come when I want to come.”

Matt smiled at his friends, smug. “You never came in your life before you met me,” he said.

Drew and John burst out laughing, and Josie felt herself flush with embarrassment. She stood, averting her eyes, and ran up the basement stairs.

In the entryway of Maddie’s house she grabbed her jacket. When she heard footsteps behind her, Josie didn’t even turn around. “I was having fun. So-”

She broke off with a small cry as Matt grabbed her arm hard and spun her around, pinning her up against the wall by her shoulders. “You’re hurting me-”

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“You’re the one who-”

“You made me look like an idiot,” Matt said. “I told you it was time to go.”

Bruises bloomed on her skin where he held her fast, as if she were a canvas and he was determined to leave his mark. She went limp beneath his hands: instinct, a surrender. “I…I’m sorry,” she whispered.

The words were a key-Matt’s grip relaxed. “Jo,” he sighed, and he rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t like sharing you. You can’t blame me for that.”

Josie shook her head, but she still didn’t trust herself to speak.

“It’s just that I love you so much.”

She blinked. “You do?”

He hadn’t said those words yet, and she hadn’t said them either, even though she felt them, because if he didn’t say them back then Josie was sure she’d simply evaporate on the spot from sheer humiliation. But here was Matt, saying he loved her, first.

“Isn’t that obvious?” he said, and he took her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed the knuckles so gently that Josie almost forgot all that had happened to get them to that moment.

“Kentucky Fried People,” Peter said, mulling Derek’s idea while they sat on the sidelines in gym class, as the teams for basketball were being picked. “I don’t know…doesn’t it seem a little…”

“Graphic?” Derek said. “Since when were you aiming for politically correct? See, imagine if you could go to the art room, if you had enough points, and use the kiln as a weapon.”

Derek had been road testing Peter’s new computer game, pointing out room for improvement and flaws in the design. They knew they had plenty of time for conversation, since they were bound to be the last kids chosen for teams.