Nobody was there. Zach was pretty annoyed. He'd told his mom to pick him up at four so that he could stay after with Ada and her friend Molly to help them paint a mural on the wall outside the art room, and if they didn't show, he'd be stuck there by himself for an hour. The last place he wanted to be if he didn't have to was school. It was bad enough to be there for six hours every day, let alone an extra one for no good reason. He'd only opted to stay in the first place because Ada's friend had a nice body. He'd never noticed the girl until this year. It was like, over the summer between eighth and ninth grade, the girl got implants or something. And all of a sudden, Zach started noticing her in his classes. When he'd asked Ada who she was, she'd just looked at him all disgusted and said, "Molly's only been here since, like, fifth grade. You want me to introduce you to her chest?"

And Zach hadn't really known how to respond to that, because that's exactly what he'd been fantasizing but was too embarrassed to admit it. Ada knew him too well. All his thoughts. Well, most of them. She didn't know what he really thought of her and the choices she made; if she did, she probably wouldn't talk to him so freely.

I know where she is, thought Zach to himself. She's with Nate. She forgot about me again. She's off with that freak I should never have introduced her to.

"Hey . . ." said a hesitant voice behind him.

Zach spun around. He was right outside the art room. Knew the art teacher was in there but didn't want to go in without Ada and her friend. Behind him were Molly and her chest. He tried to keep his eyes in the right place so as not to look like a total jerk.

The girl chewed her lip. She felt weird, he could tell. He must've been obvious. "Uh . . . have you seen Ada Haushalt?"

Say something smart . . . something cool. "No."

She raised her eyebrows. "Ooook . . ." She said it like that, with the o being really long, as if she only half-believed him. Then she went into the art room and was gone.

Zach wanted to kick himself. Where was Ada? If she'd been there, Molly and her chest wouldn't have left so soon or looked at him so strange. By himself, it was like, why the hell was he just standing in the middle of the hallway with no apparent purpose? No wonder she'd looked at him weird. I bet last year, before her upper half grew five inches, she would've been flattered to have me looking at her. He tried to comfort himself with that thought. But it didn't quite work, and he was starting to feel like a total nerd, so he gathered his backpack off the floor and shuffled off down the hallway.

Stupid Ada. Stupid, stupid Ada.

He should never have introduced her to Nate. That jerk. Zach didn't even know him too well. The guy was his cousin's friend and played in a band in the Centerton School District. Was a high school junior. Nearly eighteen because he'd flunked the seventh grade. Zach ran into him at a restaurant where he and his band played regularly on Thursday nights. Nate was not really the brightest guy—into some shifty stuff—but a brilliant bass guitarist. He and Zach weren't exactly friends, and it had been a total chance meeting that one night over the summer when Zach showed up with Ada and found Nate and his band playing. He'd had to introduce them. It was totally inevitable. And Nate was too attractive in a grunge-rocker-band-junkie sort of way for Ada to resist. Like she knew Zach, he knew her, and he knew in his gut that she wanted Nate right when she saw him. There was no way around that. Now, the two of them were a hot item. Nate cut out of his school early, like, every day to drive the twenty minutes from Centerton and make sure he was in the school parking lot to see Ada right when she left the building. He'd even tried to come in several times before school ended and gotten banned from the premises. Ada went to see him and his band every single time they played, and her time spent with Zach had been cut practically in half.

Pre-Nate, they did a ton of stuff with each other. Even better, Ada told Zach what was on her mind. She trusted him with whatever was bothering her. Now that she was around Nate, she talked things over with him. Not Zach. And she didn't seem to talk to anyone at all about how it was going with Nate.

Zach worried about that sometimes. He wasn't so sure that Nate was the nicest guy.

As he left the building, he became more annoyed. He didn't have a ride home now and would have to walk. That really bothered him. He could call Evan. Evan was a sophomore and was already fifteen and a half, so he had his permit. Even though he wasn't supposed to drive without an adult in the car, he sometimes did, and his parents didn't care, oddly enough. He was lucky he'd never been pulled over for anything.

But Zach didn't really want to call Evan, he realized. Evan had gone kind of strange, recently. Like, over the past several days. He didn't really talk about what was going on, but Zach had an idea that it was something to do with his parents. Evan's parents were weird. They were still together and seemingly happy with the fact (unlike Zach's), but that didn't make them normal. Though he hadn't been able to figure out what exactly it was, he knew that they were just . . . strange. Could tell when he went over to Evan's house or even called over there. It was like, he could sense in their voices and the way they looked at Evan that they didn't feel entirely safe around their son.

Anyway, Evan had sort of been testy lately. Zach couldn't really tell why, because they never talked about emotional things. There was that guy wall between them. They were guys. They didn't talk about emotional stuff. That was for girls. If Zach had problems, he went to Ada. Or, at least, he used to go to Ada. Not anymore.

Which was part of the reason he felt so frustrated lately.

The sky rumbled overhead. Clouds were gathering. Dark, blackish ones with gray linings; they resembled massive mountains in the sky. Zach rolled his eyes up to look at them without moving his head. As he did so, a crack of lightning squiggled sideways across the sky from the gut of one cloud into another. The thunder that followed it was distant—sounded more like the burp of a far away giant than actual thunder. Rain would come soon.

Lightning made Zach kind of nervous. There was some story in the back of his head—something he'd read or seen on TV somewhere—about a sixteen-year-old having his brains fried by a freak lightning bolt that came through his window and struck him when he was sleeping in his bed. Whether that was the real story or just some enhanced version morphed out of the real one, he didn't know. But it didn't matter. The image of lightning shattering a window and boiling a brain as it was sleeping in someone's skull was just plain freakish. Weather was unpredictable like that. Could cause freakish things to happen. Ugh.

The rain came. Fat droplets of it, big ones that soaked through his clothes pretty much on impact. And he had at least a half-hour walk.

Halfway down Elm Street, about twenty minutes after he'd set out, Zach heard a car honk. Before he could even turn to see where it had come from, an old blue Mazda slid up onto the sidewalk next to him, nearly taking off one of his feet. Zach jumped back, startled, then glowered at the front windshield, where the wipers were going insane trying to get the water off the glass. He knew who it was without even being able to see through the window.

He walked around the front of the car to the passenger door, opened it, and got inside. His soaking shoes squelched against the rubber floor-mat as he plopped heavily into the seat. Some quiet 80s music was drifting from the radio.

"You're like a frikkin fish, man. How long have you been out there?"

Zach didn't look at Evan. He was irritated. "You going to take off my leg next time?"

Evan furrowed his eyebrows. "What?" He squealed the car back onto the road.

Hopeless. Zach knew Evan had no idea what he was talking about. He decided to let it go.

"Why are you walking around in the rain? Stuff gets you wet, you know."

"Shut up. You think I like standing out there like a sponge?

Evan scrunched up his nose, kept his eyes on the road. "Geez. No need to get all mad at me." He checked over his shoulder as he switched lanes. Nearly swerved into a car on his left but managed to scoot ahead of him just in time. Turned his gaze back to the road. "Seriously, though. Where's your mom?"

"Stepmom. And I told her to get me at four."

"Why?" He sounded incredulous. Like, why in the world would Zach want to be at school any longer than he had to be. Which was exactly what Zach knew he was thinking.

Zach sighed. Propped up his arm on the window ledge. Watched the wipers move methodically across the windshield, missing large swipes of water because they needed replacing. "I was supposed to meet Ada but she didn't show."

He could see Evan nodding out of the side of his eyes. "I saw her leave today," said Evan. "With that one guy she's going out with."

I knew it. I knew it was Nate. She forgets me for that stupid—

"Oh yeah! She told me to tell you she wasn't going to be there. But I forgot."

Zach's annoyance lightened slightly. So she did remember, at least.

"Thanks for telling me." His words bled sarcasm.

Evan didn't respond.

Silence for a couple of minutes. Then Zach asked, "What was your mom's problem last night? She wouldn't let me talk to you when I called. All I had to do was ask what we had to do for geometry."

"Yeah . . ." Evan sounded kind of hesitant to say anything about his mother. But he went on, "She was just kind of stressed. I don't know. Something's going on at work. She was waiting for a call from somebody."

"See man, that's why you need a cell. Why don't they get you one? Don't tell me they can't afford it. Your parents are loaded."

"That's not it. I don't think they really trust me."

"They trust you to drive a car!"

Evan frowned. "Yeah, but it's not the same. I don't know. They're just kind of weird like that."

Zach had nothing to say; he agreed. "What are you doing tonight?"

"Play practice."

Zach sighed. "Oh, yeah. When's all that over?"

"Last week of October is when the show comes out. After that, I'm done with the big stuff. But then there's one-acts, you know. The short ones. I'm writing one with Susannah Zinkle."

"Susannah Zinkle?" Zach thought. "Isn't she that one girl with the unibrow?"

"That's not nice," Evan remarked, but he couldn't help snorting. "Ok, yeah. But she's a brilliant actress. I mean, she can really get into a character. You should've seen her audition for Annie."

"Uh . . . yeah. Because that sounds like something I'd like to go watch."

Evan ignored him. "She was brilliant. Totally Annie."

"Did she shave the eyebrow? I don't think Annie had a unibrow."

"Shut up." Evan laughed. He couldn't help it. "Maybe that's why she didn't get the part. You know, it is kind of distracting when we're working together. I do sort of want to go grab a razor or something."

"She wouldn't be half-bad looking if she just buzzed that thing off. Her body's decent enough."

"That's all you notice, anyway." Shaking his head, Evan turned off of Elm into Zach's subdivision. "Haven't you ever looked at a girl for her mind? Her intellect? Her passion?"

Raising his eyebrows, Zach replied, "Uh . . . no," as if that was totally unthinkable. "Sometimes, I wonder if you're male, Evan."

He felt like a jerk immediately after saying it, and both of them were painfully aware of the awkward silence that followed.

The rain was lifting. Clouds were lightening. The car pulled into Zach's driveway. Evan stopped the car with a jolt that nearly forced his passenger off his seat because he wasn't wearing his seatbelt. Zach grunted something in annoyance, then grudgingly thanked his friend for the ride as he opened the door and stepped out into the soft rain.

"See you later!" Evan cried.

Zach slammed the door and started toward his house. He heard Evan's car slurch into reverse and back off his driveway. By the time he dug his house key out of his backpack and unlocked the front door, Evan was gone. Zach's sigh of relief was practically heard around the block; Evan took a lot of crap from people who weren't his friends and made assumptions about him as if something were wrong with him. Zach hadn't meant to sound like them. His words had just slipped out.

Mad at himself and the world, Zach regretted going into his house. The afternoon had started off with glowing promise but had turned wet and sour. Now, here he was in his empty house again, left to his own doings in the dim quiet. Sometimes, Zach was glad he was alone. Didn't want his dad or obnoxious stepmom around anyway. But other times, he was angry at being left by himself all the time. It was even worse, now, because Ada was off with Nate and Evan was too busy with the play to hang out with him. Tonight was Friday, too. His parents were probably going out somewhere. And Ada . . . Ada. She's probably getting it on with that jerk right now.

The thought bothered him more than he wanted to admit.