Chapter 5

“They’re trash-talking Ashley,” Amber explains to him. “Using dirty little tricks. You haven’t heard anything about it?”

“No.”

Zachary, as always, is wearing glasses and looks composed and focused even at lunch, and Amber can’t resist a jab:

“God, you’re perfect, Zack! Definitely from another universe. Tell us your secret. How do you manage to not give a damn in the best possible sense? Is there really nothing in the world that can knock you off balance?”

I think Zachary knows very well, and that he has his reasons. But he only shrugs:

“Everyone hears what they want to hear. And doesn’t hear what they don’t want to hear. That’s the whole secret. They simply don’t exist.” He nods toward Sean entering the courtyard with his arm around Kate. “Don’t you see, Ash?” he asks me, sensing how I’ve gone still. “There’s nothing there.”

But for me, there still is. It’s hard to believe my friend’s words when your stepsister is walking past with her arm around your boyfriend so confidently, as if they weren’t the ones who trampled your heart.

Correction. Your ex-boyfriend, who turned from someone close into a stranger over the course of one summer.

Kate didn’t spend last weekend at an expensive spa for nothing, seeing a hairstylist and an esthetician. Her hair gleams with a fresh shade of blonde, her makeup is too bright for a school day, and her short skirt boldly shows off the long tanned legs of the cheer captain. Beside blond, broad-shouldered Sean, glowing with his own importance, they look perfectly matched. All I can do is wonder how I never noticed Renton’s swagger before, or the crooked playboy smirk on his handsome face.

So should I really be surprised by the rumors those two have spread about me?

I don’t see them. I don’t see them.

I would love never to see or feel the weakness that has just punched through my armor. But words have power, and lying words can cut deep into the soul, and for one second I almost lose control.

Kate and Sean cross the courtyard surrounded by their entourage of friends and noisily settle at the center table, where only the school’s popular people are supposed to sit, while I lower my eyes.

Empty space. Zachary is right. They don’t mean anything to me. Life goes on. The sun still rises in the east, day still turns into night, and people…

Sometimes some of them lose their shell and their significance for others, dissolve in three-dimensional space into meaningless physical particles. And if I can’t become invisible, I can at least not notice them.

No one will ever know what Sean said to me. And I’ll forget. Turns out feelings, if they aren’t real, have an expiration date, just like food. Time to throw everything out for good.

I can’t hide my heavy sigh, and Zack says quietly:

“Don’t, Ashley. He simply didn’t live up to your trust. It’s okay. You can live with that. It happened to me once too.”

“Really?”

We look at the couple together, and he confirms:

“Really. If grass withers, new grass always grows in its place. You just have to pull the weeds out by the roots and plant new seeds.”

Zachary’s mother is Korean, and his father is American. He has an attractive face and a truly original mind. More than once, I’ve been amazed by his ability to look at obvious things from a special angle.

“Korean wisdom?” I guess.

Zack pretends to think and importantly adjusts his glasses. With a short hum, he slides my plate of pasta toward me.

“Hmm, maybe. But I think it’s more my personal philosophy.”

“And what follows from it?”

“Only that you’ve been thrown out of Sean’s gravitational field, and you’re free again. Don’t you feel it, Ashley? The world didn’t close in. It got wider.”

“But the armpits thing was stupid!” Amber protests. “And low. You should have heard that crap, Zack! It felt like we were back in middle school, where people put crickets in girls’ hair and squeezed mustard out of a tube onto boys’ butts, then offered them toilet paper. At twelve, at least it was funny!”

“By the way, the mustard thing is a good idea,” Trisha says, pointing a finger at Amber and promising, “You and I are going to talk about that later, girl!”

Zachary has already opened his sauce and dipped a piece of chicken into it, but before swallowing, he considers it necessary to answer:

“Petty people always do petty things. It’s the simplest derivative of their original form. What’s surprising about that? If it were the other way around, then yes, you could be surprised. But with rare exceptions, that doesn’t happen. So believing rumors like that means you don’t respect yourself.”

Zachary finally puts the chicken in his mouth and finishes his thought:

“But if we try to squeeze some benefit out of it, I think, Ash, moments like this harden your character and turn an ordinary person into an ‘S.P.’”

Jake is eating a hamburger and washing it down with milk, and he almost chokes.

“A what? Baker, decode that. More of your newspaper riddles?”

Zack likes to stir up reader interest in “Ellison News” with questions and mysteries, but I don’t think that’s what this is.

“No, it’s much simpler, Finley. A strong personality. A person capable of controlling their will—the highest function of reason.”

But that is still unclear, and Jacob snorts:

“Where did you read that? A science journal? What the hell, dude?”

“I came up with it myself. See the letters?” Zachary wipes his hands with a napkin, unbuttons his shirt cuff, and folds it back. He shows us the inside of his wrist, and we all see a tattoo there that wasn’t there last spring. Two letters, “S.P.”*—small and neat.

“When I feel bad,” he admits unexpectedly, “I just look at them, and it helps me pull myself together.”

Zack has his mother’s almond-shaped eyes and a dark gaze. For a moment something flickers there, but he immediately hides that “something” deep down. As if nothing happened, he buttons his shirt and goes back to lunch. Jake, though, is unexpectedly touched by the admission.

“So you’re saying you inked those little letters under your skin and solved all your problems? Just like that?”

Baker shrugs easily, glancing at his friend.

“Everyone has their own God, Finley, and their own motivation. My motivation consists of ten points of self-development. You’re wrong. It isn’t simple at all, but I decided this for myself, and I don’t intend to back down.”

“Name at least two so I understand what you’re sick with, dude. Because when I feel bad, I prefer doing something, not wallowing in it.”

It’s still a friendly challenge, and Zachary takes it willingly.

“All right, Finley. For example, protecting personal boundaries. Are you sure you can defend yours?”

“Of course!”

“And could you say no to Renton if he wanted to invite you to a party? I heard he’s gathering the Golden Eagles at his place this Saturday. You’re going, aren’t you?”

“What?” Hearing the news, Trisha looks up from her taco wrap and tenses. She pushes her open juice carton aside and turns to her boyfriend. “Jake, tell me you’re not going,” she demands. “You said yourself the starting ten don’t take you seriously. That you’re sick of their jokes.”

Finley hesitates for a second, then suddenly frowns.

“You don’t understand, Trish. This could be important for the team. I just didn’t have time to tell you.”