Some guys I recognized from school stretched along the fence, refusing to make eye contact with me and instead checking out the fresh meat. There were a few cute girls, ones I’d never seen before, who might not yet have been aware of Crazy Cross protocol. I was wondering how long it would be before they kept their distance, too, when another memory bubbled through.

You will stretch your quads and hamstrings and then you will hear …

I was just starting to relax and stretch my muscles when a tiny redhead’s words floated over on the breeze. “Hear about the little girl who died on Seventh today?”

A guy was with her. He said something about an ambulance.

Then she said, “One of the lifeguards went completely nuts. They had to drag him away in a straitjacket.”

I wanted to slither between the boardwalk planks. “Hey, wait,” the girl said. I turned away but from the corner of my eye saw her pointing in my direction. Whispers were exchanged. “Him?” the guy asked. Then they both laughed. The guy said something that sounded like “Figures.”

Great. At this rate, I’d be lucky to make it out of high school without the words “Crazy Cross” printed under my yearbook picture.

I turned back toward Sphincter and saw him breaking away from the throngs of girls. He strutted right on over to … Oh, perfect. The angel was here. Had she seen the rest of the runners avoiding me like the plague? She was wearing the same thing she’d had on when I saw her earlier today—shorts, a tight tank, and running shoes. Duh, of course she was here, she was a runner. Did she go to my school? How had I never seen her before?

I watched Sphincter put the moves on her. He said something—a joke, probably, by the way he raised his eyebrows and laughed like he was the wittiest scumbag on the planet—and she looked at him and smiled, but politely, not like she wanted him or anything. I was impressed. Most girls would have taken one look at those muscles and jumped in his arms. He said something else and she just kind of shook her head, still smiling graciously, then walked away and started to stretch against the chain-link fence.

No goal, Sphinctie.

Two seconds later I realized I was staring at her with this admiring grin on my face and wiped it off. Had to concentrate on my running.

Concentrate. Right.

A few minutes later the tryouts began. Sphincter’s group went first. He bopped and hopped at the starting line on the boardwalk, cracking his neck, all ego, Mr. Showman. Every part of his body screamed, Watch me, watch me. His dad was standing behind the fence, on the beach, in prime position to see every move. They gave each other a thumbs-up, which looked so fake, like the final scene from some cheesy sports movie. I couldn’t believe we’d ever had anything in common. Then, as he lined up among the other runners doing the 100 meter, something came to me.

He’s rotting from the inside.

It was a bit of a conversation, but it was so strong I knew it couldn’t be my imagination. I’d never heard it before, so it had to be in the future. And whenever I looked at Sphincter, I felt it so strongly that it had to have been about him. Rotting from the inside? He was the poster child for healthy living. The starting gun went off and he pulled to an easy lead right away, pumping his long legs and smirking the whole while. Rotting from the inside. Yeah.

But then I heard the voice again.

You shouldn’t be jealous of that. There’s more to him than you know.

The voice was familiar. It was one I hadn’t heard much of, and yet it was easily recognizable.

The angel. So we’d talk again? She’d want to talk to me after what happened today?

I turned toward her. She was sitting on a bench, not watching the race like everyone else. She was more interested in her fingernails. She inspected her thumbnail, then brought it to her mouth and ripped the top of it off in a sort of savage way. Somehow she made that look cute.

There’s more to him than you know.

Well, I knew Sphincter’s life wasn’t a picture postcard. For one, everyone in school talked about his dad. Yeah, it was nice that the guy came to support his son during tryouts, but he was entirely too serious about everything. In most circles, Mr. Spitzer was known as The Sergeant. I don’t think he’d ever been in the armed forces, but it was well circulated how he’d show up at all the meets and give Sphincter hell if he came in second. He’d bring along his stopwatch and argue with the officials and all that good stuff. I’m sure he was just as hard on Sphincter as he was with everything else in his life. So yeah, I wasn’t jealous of that.

Just then, the angel looked up and her eyes found mine. She quickly lowered her hand and the remains of her ragged fingernail, blushing, as I tried to look like I was checking out something behind her. There was nothing but a pile of sand beyond her, though, so as you can imagine, it came off really smooth.

The race ended and Sphincter set a new school record. I was sure he’d done The Sergeant proud. But he’s rotting from the inside, I told myself.

Didn’t really help make me feel better.

If you have this uncanny ability to see your own future, it’s not a good idea to let other people in on it.

After Carrie Weldon moved away, the Crazy Cross thing calmed down. I was nine when I met my first, and only, best friend. He liked me despite my everyday weirdness. Or at least, he tolerated it.

So say you’re nine, and your best friend tells you that he’s going to Disney World with his family and suddenly you realize that if he gets in that station wagon, he’ll never be the same. He’s so excited, parading around in his mouse ears and talking about the Tower of Terror like it’s his life’s purpose, but you just know something bad is going to happen. You can see the vigil at the elementary school, and you know that your grandmother will try, and fail, to hide the newspaper from you, the one with the article about the horrific ten-car pileup on Interstate 95. So you warn him. You scream at him that he can’t go. You even go to his house late at night and let the air out of the tires of his parents’ station wagon.

Of course, doing that means they have to get the wagon towed to the gas station so the tires can be inflated again, and when they do leave, two hours later than planned thanks to some stupid prankster, they arrive in Orlando safe and sound. They have a lovely trip and return home with a slew of pictures and one former best friend who thinks that you are a complete nutcase and never comes within ten feet of you again.

Well, unless it’s to pretend to offer you his hand to hoist you onto the boardwalk.

Evan Sphincter and I used to be best friends. A lifetime ago. Back when he didn’t have rippling muscles that made all the girls line up for him. And okay, maybe it wasn’t just that one incident that forced us apart. There were probably a thousand and one incidents where I acted weird or said something weird or looked weird, and each one drove that wedge between us deeper and deeper.

I tried to be normal. I tried to blend in, to not make waves. But this thing affected me every moment of every day. So I learned not to get too involved with anyone. Every year it got easier. Over time, pretty much everyone had discovered Crazy Cross was not someone to associate with.

I don’t really know why I wanted to go out for track that year. I loved running, and I was damn good at it, but I’d always shied away from organized sports. I guess I thought it was something normal people would do. Like lifeguarding. I think I’d gotten cocky, managing to keep that same future intact for three whole months. Managing to be not just a lifeguard but also a good one. I’d surprised myself this summer. When I’d penciled my name on the sign-up sheet for tryouts, I had this new, invincible feeling, like, I can do this. I thought all that Crazy Cross stuff was finally behind me.