The stares follow me through the corridors at school. I should've known my first day back would be like this. Girls whisper from behind textbooks, and boys quickly walk by, avoiding eye contact. My eyes desperately search the shiny white floor, the wide open space of the foyer, for any sign of my friends, but they're nowhere in sight. They're not even in the hallways, by the lines of metal, blue lockers, or on the tile steps leading to the second floor.

After bobbing my head around for a few more seconds, trying to glimpse at least one familiar face, the stares and whispers become more than I can bear. I hurry around the corner and into European History.

The seats are mostly empty today, even though it's five minutes to the bell. It's only the third week, yet school is already taking its toll on everyone, not just me. I slide into a seat toward the back, one row ahead of the door. I need a quick exit route to be available should I need it.

To my surprise, Graysen flops into the seat beside me a minute later.

"Hey," she pants. "How's it going?" Her eyes widen. "Oh, I didn't mean for that to sound flippant. I genuinely want to know." Her face grows more solemn, losing the playful edge that her thin, pink-glossed lips usually wear.

"I've been, uh, getting through it." That's about all I can say that would be halfway honest. My throat tightens, and I unscrew the lid on the iced tea Mom packed me. It's lemon and peach flavored — my favorite. The sweet, fruity taste helps distract me from the pain on the fringes of my mind, helps dry up the tears so they don't spill just as the class is beginning to fill. Students filter around me, and rapidly, the empty seats disappear. I'm determined to not cry in front of an audience.

Audience. Auditorium.

Evan's dead body appears in my mind's eye, swaying on the stage in front of an audience of one.

Me.

"We're getting our group project assignments today." My head snaps in Graysen's direction. My heart pounds in my chest, anxiety coursing in my veins. Graysen pauses, unsure how to react. I force myself to swallow.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" I whisper.

"Yeah." Graysen shifts in her seat. "Mrs. Zao is going to announce our groups for the ongoing group project this semester. You haven't missed much, to be honest. All we've done is go over the origins of Europe after the Roman Empire split."

My worry shifts from Evan to this project. For some reason, this is the first time I'm hearing about it, though maybe I didn't read my emails carefully enough. "What's required for the project?"

"It's for an end of the year capstone," Graysen explains. "Each group will be assigned a country, and then we'll have to research its specific history, culture, political system, and so on. There's like checkpoints and everything, all culminating in a final presentation we'll do for class."

"Wow," is all I can think to say.

"Hey, Graysen," someone says, sliding into the seat beside her.

"Talk to you in a moment," Graysen says as she turns to the boy sitting next to her. I exhale a small breath, grateful that I don't have to keep the conversation going.

The bell rings, and Mrs. Zao enters the room. Her gray eyes, a similar color as the skirt and blazer suit she wears, land on me, and she offers me a sympathetic smile.

"Glad to see you back," she says.

"Thank you," I say quietly.

She walks to the front of the class and turns the projector on. After a moment, a slide appears reading "group assignments."

"Today, I will be handing out group assignments," she says. "You will have the class period to start working on your first project, but I suggest you start figuring out times in which you will work outside of class. You may also want to figure out how you will divide the parts of each assignment. As I mentioned before, you will each fill out group member reports at the end, so if anyone doesn't do their part, I can factor that into final grades."

Mrs. Zao clicks on her mouse, and the screen flips to the group numbers, under which there is a list of names. My name is under France, along with Hannah, Brooklyn, Steven, and Henry.

"Once you see your name, start trying to find your other group members," Mrs. Zao directs. I stand, spotting Brooklyn in the same spot we were in the first week of school. Hannah is in the front, by the teacher's desk, and Henry and Steven are high fiving each other in the middle of the room. They have the same enhanced sense, so I guess they're good friends.

The three girls in my group, including myself, migrate to the middle, while other groups disperse to the edges.

"France, let's go!" Steven says. "I love the French Revolution."

"Roll out the guillotines," Henry says.

Hannah glares at Henry. "Not funny."

"What? I'm just joking around."

"That's not something to joke about." Hannah's eyes shift to me, then back to the boys. Nerves prickle on my skin.

Does she know about my aversion to anything death related? Or does she suspect my involvement in... the incident?

Steven and Henry exchange glances, while Brooklyn purses her lips.

"Oh, sorry Hannah," Steven says after a moment. "I forgot about... that."

"Seriously?" Hannah looks at me again, more quickly this time. "You might be more careful to remember and be more sensitive if we're going to be in a group together."

"People shouldn't mind if we discuss the french revolution," Henry says. "It's a part of history."

"It's the way you go about it." Now, Hannah fully turns to me, irritation taut on her brown-skinned face. "Back me up here."

I blink at her in surprise. "Uh, death really isn't something to joke about."

"We get that Madelyn has been through a lot..." Henry says.

"And lots of other people in the school," Hannah says. "You seem to forget that we were in theater practice together. I knew him personally. I saw him—" Her voice breaks. "I saw him just a little bit before he died. We were literally walking through the halls together after play practice. And you think you can make jokes about guillotines? Nuh-uh. I'm sorry, but you have to be more sensitive. Otherwise I'm asking for a group change."

"Jeez, fine. Sorry." Henry doesn't sound the least bit sorry. Annoyed, yes. But not sorry.

The rest of class passes without any more mentions of guillotines or deaths. A few minutes before the bell rings, Mrs. Zao dismisses us to pack up our things. Before Hannah can walk away, I say,

"Hey, do you mind if I sit with you at lunch?" Her dreadlocks, threaded with pink and blue beads, tilt to the side. "It's just that I didn't really know Evan, and after, well, you know, I feel I need some sort of..."

"Closure?" Hannah finishes. A sad smile finds its way onto her rounded cheeks. "Yeah, I got you. We — all of us from the drama club — sit in the corner furthest from the lunchline. We like the solitude so we can rehearse. You can join us anytime though. We're not doing much in the way of practicing. Miss Valar is even thinking about changing which play we do this semester, just to distance ourselves from what happened." Hannah shakes her head. Her lips purse together as she tries to hold back the tears forming in her eyes. "It's all so horrible."

"I know what you mean. I'm... I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," Hannah sniffs. "I'm sorry for what happened to you, too."

***

Carrying a tray of mac-and-cheese, grilled chicken salad, and a fruit cup, I walk across the lunchroom at the beginning of the half-hour lunch period. Not too many kids are inside yet, and most are more focused on getting to their seats and getting in the lunch line, rather than on me. I hurry to where Hannah, Pierce, and four other kids are seated.

"You came!" Hannah says. She rushes up the steps from the lower cafeteria level toward me, then pauses at the top, like she doesn't know what to do. I mean, we haven't really talked before, but I feel like there's also a sort of connection between us because of what happened. It places us in a weird state where we don't know whether we should act close or more distant, bonded by circumstance or strangers due to our limited interactions.

"Hi there," a girl with curly blond hair says. "You're Madelyn, right?"

"Yeah. I just wanted to sit here today, and maybe talk a little bit. If you don't mind, that is." My fingers press against the lunch tray, nervous.

"She means Evan," Hannah says. "Just to get some closure on him."

"Sure thing," Pierce drawls. "He was a really great dude."

Hannah introduces me to the others at the table: Simon, an asian boy with shoulder-length black hair and a deep tan; Charlotte, the curly blonde with freckles and glasses; Saavni, with a black bob and dark skin; and Brian, a tall skinny boy with red hair.

"So what do you want to know about Evan?" Pierce asks once we're all seated.

My fingers twitch around my fork, my heartbeat quickening. This suddenly feels like a very bad, and very weird, idea. I also feel self-conscious since glancing around, everyone else seems to have empty places in front of them. Do they not eat lunch?

"Well, I hear he was a really great actor," I hedge, trying to lead this discussion toward the timing of when they finished drama club.

Pierce brightens. "He was." He and Charlotte trade off telling about some of the productions they put on. I can feel the time ticking away, but I just can't figure out how to interrupt them.

"Hey, everyone." I turn around to see a white girl with long, straight black hair approaching, followed by another boy. Both are somehow balancing four trays on their hands and arms.

"Oh, this is Jessica and Tarun," Pierce introduces.

"Hey, you're the girl who was supposed to be Evan's date," Tarun says, passing the trays around. He flicks a longer piece of black hair, cut on an angle, out of his face to join the rest of his short hair.

"You knew about the dating app?" I say.

"Yeah, we were all in on it. Evan thought it would be funny to sign up for it a couple months ago. He's gone on at least two other blind dates before you."

"He didn't really use it over the summer, though," Charlotte cuts in. "He was dating pretty seriously."

"Then why did he use the app again?" I ask, finally having the courage to stab some lettuce pieces now that I wasn't the only one eating.

"They broke up at the end of July," Charlotte says.

"Actually, I don't think he planned on using the dating app again," Hannah says. "He told me a few days before that he just got a random message that he'd been matched again. He said he forgot about the app entirely."

"I heard that he planned our date for right after drama club," I say, grabbing the opening.

"Yeah," Pierce says. "He had planned to have half an hour before the date, but practice ran twenty minutes over time."

Wow. So there was only a ten minute window for the killer to make his move. Perhaps it is possible that I sensed the killer in the auditorium, then.

"Do you know who he was dating before?" I ask.

Hannah laughs, while some of the others just roll their eyes.

"You see that girl over there?" Pierce says, pointing to a higher level of the cafeteria. My eyes zero in on a girl with two brown braids, wearing a blue crop top with ruffles for sleeves. She's the same girl I remember from the memorial, the one who had spoken badly of Evan. "That's her."

"Do you know why they broke up?" I ask.

Charlotte rolls her eyes. "Isabella Johnson thinks the world revolves around her. I can't believe a guy like Evan would date her."

"Yeah, he really was a great dude," Pierce says.

"No matter what the police say about him," Hannah murmurs.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Oh, come on, Hannah. You don't believe that about what the police told you." Pierce nudges Hannah with his shoulder.

"They found it on him," Hannah says through clenched teeth.

"It was probably planted," Simon says.

"What was found on him?" I ask.

Pierce sighs. "Apparently, the police found a bottle of xanax in his pocket. They asked us if we knew he was taking pills, or ever acted in a weird way."

"And of course, he didn't," Hannah asserts.

The table falls silent. I mull over everything I've just heard. A random bottle of xanax? An angry girlfriend? This is heading more and more into the teen-drama world, and not the kind that's a club at school.

Something about the xanax bottle especially bothers me. Did Evan struggle with anxiety, too? If he did, perhaps he had more in common with me than I realize.

"Did anyone else know about the dating app?" I ask. "To your knowledge, that is."

"I mean, all of us in the drama club for sure," Pierce says. "Oh, and Drake."

"Drake?" An image of a scrawny, tall boy who always wore black comes to mind. "Wait, Drake Collins?"

"You know him?"

"Yeah, he used to be in my enhanced sense class. What happened to him?"

"Don't know," Pierce admits. "All I know is he goes to public school now. I reached out a few times, inviting him to hang out with us, but he hasn't responded."

Another person to talk to. My list seems to be growing longer by the second.

For the rest of the lunch period, I try to get the others talking about where they went after practice. Brian, Saavni, and Charlotte went to the cafe, Sippable Sweets, Pierce went to watch football practice, and the others headed home.

"I'm glad we got to talk to you," Hannah says when we're getting up to dispose of our lunch trays.

"Me too." They were more helpful than I even realized they'd be.