Yes, he did. “I won’t call!” I called after him. “Not—ever!” “Have you finished your column for tomorrow’s deadline?” It was Vee. She came up beside me, jotting notes on the notepad she carried everywhere. “I’m thinking of writing mine on the injustice of seating charts. I got paired with a girl who said she just finished lice treatment this morning.” “My new partner,” I said, pointing into the hallway at the back of Patch. He had an annoyingly confident walk, the kind you find paired with faded T-shirts and a cowboy hat. Patch wore neither. He was a dark-Levi’s-dark-henley-dark-boots kind of guy. “The senior transfer? Guess he didn’t study hard enough the first time around. Or the second.” She gave me a knowing look. “Third time’s a charm.” “He gives me the creeps. He knew my music. Without any hints whatsoever, he said, ‘Baroque.’ “ I did a poor job of mimicking his low voice. “Lucky guess?” “He knew … other things.” “Like what?” I let go of a sigh. He knew more than I wanted to comfortably contemplate. “Like how to get under my skin,” I said at last. “I’m going to tell Coach he has to switch us back.” “Go for it. I could use a hook for my next eZine article. ‘Tenth Grader Fights Back.’ Better yet, ‘Seating Chart Takes Slap in the Face.’ Mmm. I like it.” At the end of the day, I was the one who took a slap in the face. Coach shot down my plea to rethink the seating chart. It appeared I was stuck with Patch. For now.

CHAPTER 2

MY MOM AND I LIVE IN A DRAFTY EIGHTEENTH-century farmhouse on the outskirts of Coldwater. It’s the only house on Hawthorne Lane, and the nearest neighbors are almost a mile away. I sometimes wonder if the original builder realized that out of all the plots of land available, he chose to construct the house in the eye of a mysterious atmospheric inversion that seems to suck all the fog off Maine’s coast and transplant it into our yard.