The look she gave me wasn’t much happier than the VW driver’s. I considered backing away, but only for a second.

“Sorry if I offended you.”

Guy Law says nice dudes finish last. Girls like guys who ignore them, who tell them to get the hell away. She clearly didn’t want me apologizing. She raised one corner of her upper lip in a part snarl and said, “You didn’t,” as if I really had but she was so disgusted she didn’t want to waste any more of her precious breath.

“Then what’s up?” I asked.

Guy Law also says that when a girl’s pissed off at you, prying out the “why” is like brain surgery. Again, totally right. She said, “Nothing,” and continued to paint her dainty toenails. I moved closer, but she didn’t like that. She jumped to her feet and tottered, pale toes raised, up the staircase to her front door. “Look. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t talk to people like you.”

She made it sound like I had a disease. “People like me?”

“You know,” she whispered. “Touched.”

I reeled back, feeling the rejection swell everywhere, from the tips of my toes to my head. Even the new girl, a girl with whom I’d managed to have what I thought was a somewhat normal conversation, thought I was a nut job.

“But get this,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, but it was coming out as a defeated mumble. “I have this problem. But all of a sudden, when I touched you, this thing I’ve had my entire life is … just … gone.”

“I’m sorry, really I am, it must be horrible, but—” She turned to me and drew in a breath, then finally looked me in the eye for the first time today. I expected her to ask a question as to what the problem was, so her next words took me by surprise.“Wait. You’ve had it your entire life?”

I nodded, then felt the need to explain. “Yeah, you’re really not going to believe this, but—” But what? I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. I thought of how nine-year-old Sphincter had looked at me when I explained he was going to die. I clamped my mouth shut so fast and hard that I bit my tongue.

“Your entire life?” She murmured it more to the ground than to me. “What are you talking about?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s just—there’s something about you that …” Okay. Clearly it was impossible to explain why she was different without explaining why I was different. And I couldn’t do that. I threw my hands down. “Forget it.”

She bit her lip. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Welcome to my world,” I muttered, turning away.

“You’re Touched, right?”

I turned back around, narrowing my eyes, frustrated. “Touched?”

Just then, a figure appeared behind the screen door. I could see dark, cavernous eyes, like the empty sockets of a skull, and a pyramid of silvery black hair. In the shadows of the porch’s overhang, her skin shone a cold, metallic bronze. She had on a flowered blouse, but they were not cheerful flowers. They looked brown and dead. Actually, her entire presence had an air of death to it, especially those eyes and that mouth, which bore no expression. Her mouth was just a lifeless gash in her brown face. This was the grandmother Taryn had mentioned yesterday on the beach. The “whacked” one. Instinctively, I took a step back.

Her voice was deeply accented; Italian, maybe. “Who is this?” she asked, her eyes never leaving mine.

Taryn turned toward the woman and whispered tensely, “He’s one of them.” She said the last word as if there was a war going on, and I was on the other side. Then she shrugged. “I think.”

Grandma opened the screen door, came outside. Her eyes were so fastened on mine, I had to look away. I saw then that her ankles and wrists were just as thick as the rest of her body, like tree trunks. And that in one of her meaty hands, she was holding a … freaking butcher’s knife.

Another step back. Suddenly I was shivering, despite the near-ninety-degree heat.

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “What’s that you say, sevgili?” she snapped.

I wasn’t sure who she was addressing, but I wasn’t capable of speech at that point, either way. Taryn finally answered, “You’re right. I felt it, just like you said. I saw what he has.”

Her grandmother’s eyes narrowed even further. “Impossible! Not this one.”

Taryn looked confused. “But I saw it. I—”

“No,” the woman growled. I could see why Taryn didn’t get along with her. She was about as much fun as the flu. This woman had a freaking knife and was waving it over Taryn’s head as if getting ready to slice a Thanksgiving turkey. If that wasn’t God telling me to just play the hand I’d been dealt and go away, I didn’t know what was.

“But he—” Taryn protested.

“I’ve never seen this boy before in my life!” Old scary woman was getting vicious. This was not good.

The You Wills had me turning around and running in the other direction, and I knew I was supposed to go off script, but this time, I couldn’t agree with them more. “Sorry,” I said, holding out my hands. “Sorry. I mean, I still don’t know what the hell you guys are talking about. But I’m just going to go. Now.”

Taryn’s expression was guarded, remorseful. Remorseful for what? Meeting me? Having to send me away? I couldn’t tell. As I mentioned, I sucked at reading girls. But I didn’t have any problem reading her grandmother. She waved the knife some more and spat out: “You never come back, you hear me? Never!”

Oh, don’t worry about that, crazy lady.

By the time I made it back to Seventh Avenue, my brain was revving like a sports car. But that was good. The more I cycled, the better the chance I’d change Nan’s death back to that peaceful one I’d envisioned once before. And I would just have to forget about that brief moment with Taryn. That moment when for once in my pathetic life, I was just like everybody else.

When I returned from getting reamed out by Old Scary Lady, I thought I’d just go and hang out at the Tenth Avenue beach, away from the Seventh Avenue regulars who would undoubtedly stare me up and down after what happened yesterday. Work on evening out my tan, since the lifeguard uniform’s tank top had left me a lot paler on my chest and stomach. Sort out some of those messed-up visions I’d been having. Try to find what would prompt Nan to fall and somehow remove the problem.

Instead, the cycling just made for the kind of headache a cartload of Excedrin couldn’t fix. That was the problem with going off script: once I went off, a thousand jumbled next-steps in my life began to compete for attention. I tried to concentrate on the waves, the sand, the sea, which had always calmed me before. Now, every crashing wave whispered Emma’s name, and when seagulls cried overhead, it sounded like they were proclaiming my guilt. I couldn’t focus for a second on the mystery surrounding Nan’s death. The only sane thought I could make out was a picture of Taryn. Touched, she’d called me. What was that supposed to mean?

You will be annoyed by the greenhead flies. You will stand up, fold up your towel, and put on your T-shirt.

It was a west wind, too, so the greenhead flies were biting. West winds sucked; they meant cold water and flies so vicious and determined, most tourists ran away crying. But I was a local. I could handle it. Rrrrrvvvvv, went the gears in my mind. Meanwhile, an insect feasted on my skin and drew blood on my forearm. Pressing one finger into my temple, I swatted the fly away with my other hand. The nasty thing came back to my foot. Once a fly found its target, the only thing that could tear it away was death. I swatted it again, watching an old lady down the hill applying Skin So Soft, and remembering how Nan used to slather me in that stuff when I was a kid. It smelled like old lady, but it kept the flies away. When the persistent little bugger landed on my knee, I smacked it, and its crushed body tumbled to the sand. The victory was short-lived; when I flicked its little corpse away, two more flies appeared in its place.