I smile, knowing that if I ever attempted to take them up on that offer, they’d run like hell in the other direction. My experience with tragedy is that people will offer condolences and support but never be around when you want to collect. That was the way it was when I was seven; I was utterly alone. Yeah, things were better when I started dating Griffin; it felt like I was making my way back to Normalsville after an extended absence. Being Griffin’s girlfriend showed everyone I wasn’t contagious, or a ticking time bomb ready to explode. That gave me confidence. I cringe, remembering how I’d get whenever someone ignored me, or gave me that mock-sympathetic look, or whispered behind my back, There’s that girl! You know, the one who … I’d cry and get all flustered, which just kept the rumor mill churning out news of how Julia Devine would never, ever be normal again. She’s obviously still scarred, they’d say. Mentally unstable.

Griffin’s reputation also preceded him. I knew he’d had a long line of girlfriends, and every week, someone different was gossiping in the girls’ locker room about how difficult he was. Most of the time, they would whine about how he never took anything in life seriously, which sounded just wonderful to me. Because if there was one thing I was sick of, it was people taking me so seriously. And then Kiki would say, “He called me higher maintenance than the space shuttle!” and Bad Breath Britney would say, “He told me that whenever I opened my mouth, it smelled like a raw-sewage plant.” They were all so insulted, but the more I heard about him, the more I liked him. He was right, after all. He just called things as he saw them. They, maybe, were too sensitive to put up with it, but I knew that if I ever had the chance, I would handle it. I would force myself to.

And then, miracle of miracles, the chance came.

It was a Saturday, right after Thanksgiving, so the mall was packed solid. I was already a little frazzled, because one of the girls who usually worked with me had just quit, and I was stuck with a bunch of newbies who kept asking stupid questions like “What is the difference between sprinkles and jimmies?” The line for ice cream wrapped past the Sunglass Hut stand, it was the end of the day, and my feet were killing me. And then there he was, standing in front of me.

At first I didn’t think I could speak, but I channeled my inner Avon lady, put on my plastic smile, and said, “How may I help you?”

He rubbed his stubbly chin and studied the menu. The first thing one noticed about Griffin was his thick mop of reddish blond hair, which always fell just a tiny bit below his eyebrows. When he looked up, his gorgeous eyes were visible; he had eyes that were round and big and blue, enough to make some babies jealous. And he was tall and broad and substantial; you couldn’t help seeing him. At Sweetie Pi’s, we pride ourselves on having “3.14 hundred menu items!” which customers order by the number. Griffin smiled slyly at me—his smiles were always laced with mischief—and said, “Do you know all these menu items by heart?”

Leave it to Griffin to have no concern at all about the several dozen people waiting in line behind him. I’d been working at Sweetie Pi’s on Saturdays since the summer had ended, so although I wasn’t the master of the Sweetie Pi’s operations manual, I was pretty competent. But right then I didn’t want to play games, even with Griffin. My smile dissolved. “Yep. What do you want?”

“Um, how is your three point one three?”

I pushed away from the counter. “Is that what you want?”

“Depends,” he said. “Do you know what a three point one three is?”

“Of course,” I said. “Is that what you want?”

He leaned over the counter, reached up, and covered my eyes. “Don’t look. What is it?”

I squirmed away. “Apple pie sundae. Is that what you want?”

“Eh, on second thought, no. How about your one point one zero?”

I stared straight at him. “The chocolate brownie fudge bomb?”

He crossed his arms in front of him. “Point two nine.”

“Vanilla custard shake,” I replied, unblinking.

“Point eight six.”

“Lemon cookie bar blast.”

“One point one four.”

“Funnel cake.”

“Two point zero three.”

“Blueberry ice cream and caramel sauce on a waffle.”

He grinned. “Impressive,” he said in his Darth Vader voice.

I couldn’t help breaking into a smile, but then I caught sight of the next person in line, this old lady, looking like she was about to launch her boulder-sized purse over the counter at me. “Is that what you want?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I’ll take a one point two six.”

I swallowed. What was a 1.26, again? “Sure,” I said, then furtively looked at the menu. Egg cream. What the hell was that? Did it involve raw eggs? I’d have to take out the Sweetie Pi’s manual to figure out that one, and then my cover as Sweetie Pi’s Master would be blown. I quickly turned to the back of the kitchen, trying to look like I knew what I was doing, when I caught him smirking out of the corner of my eye. He was totally on to me. “Ah,” he said. “You are not a Jedi yet.”

The line was growing longer, and someone turned up the heat on my cheeks. But then I remembered who I was dealing with. Griffin Colburn’s whole purpose on earth was to get a rise out of people and never let them live it down. I calmly walked to the back and consulted the manual, then retrieved the ingredients. I poured a bit of milk into the bottom of a Sweetie Pi’s fountain-drink cup, then filled the cup to the top with seltzer and drizzled the chocolate syrup over the foam. When I handed it to him and he paid, I said, “Have a nice day, Darth,” and smiled as big as I could.

When I got off work, two hours later, he was sitting outside, waiting. For me? I was glad it was dark, because I was positive I had a chocolate-sauce smudge on my nose and quite possibly a raspberry one. It was cold, so I pulled my jacket tighter over my Sweetie Pi’s T-shirt and tried to walk past him. He stood up as I did and said, “Your name is Julia. You’re a freshman, right?”

I turned to him, thinking, Oh my God! My vocal cords froze up. Luckily, my facial muscles were too damn tired and cold to react in surprise, so I must have looked noncommittal and bored, like Yeah, and who the hell are you?

“Do you speak anything other than the language of ice cream?” he finally asked.

I was thinking he would go into the whole thing that some insensitive jerks would approach me with: You were that girl. The one from the papers. Right? But he didn’t, and he didn’t look like he wanted to satisfy his morbid curiosity by getting the inside scoop on it. Still, I was suspicious, so I said, “Darth Vader?”

He laughed. “So, you going to the fair tomorrow?”

My mind kicked into overdrive. Fair … fair … fair. What fair? This was cruel and unusual punishment for a girl who had just worked a mind-numbing eight-hour shift at a restaurant that combined food and geometry.

“The Brighton Christmas Tree Fair?” he finally said.

“Oh. I don’t know,” I said, still frozen, because oh my God, was he asking me out?

“Julia,” he said in his Darth Vader voice, “I am not your father. That means we can go to the Brighton fair together and nobody will look at us funny.”

I couldn’t help it: I burst out laughing. After that, I realized that if I ever wanted to look calm, cool, and collected, all I had to do was pretend to be bored and tired and just keep my mouth shut. Easy. It didn’t matter what I was feeling on the inside; it was all about what I showed on the outside. From that day on, I was officially Griffin’s shadow. We were always together. He hated it when I rolled my eyes and looked away, but he also couldn’t get enough of it. Most girls would pout or complain … but I had found the thing that made him weakest—pretending not to care, even when I did. Griffin always spoke in slogans from television commercials, and one of his favorites was “Never let ’em see you sweat.” After a little practice, I was a pro at that.