After supper, Celeste collected the dishes and retreated to the kitchen to wash them. Gavin said goodnight to the rest of us, and Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths swiftly showered him with compliments, for the food and his company, like robots with a mood switch. Everyone stood up in unison and walked Gavin to the door as he promised to train Molly and Cliff in the morning. That should be fun.

"Are you coming with me?" he asked me.

"I'll stay here with Aimee, make sure she's safe." I had to decline because when I looked at her, I literally couldn't do otherwise.

"Well, you parked me in."

"Yeah, I'll... yeah."

I pointed Gavin to the front door, which was already open. We strode to our cars – his being more masculine than mine – under the star-speckled sky.

"You sure you don't wanna come back to GINM?" he asked again.

"Not if I can avoid it," I admitted, taking the question as a joke. He knew that.

I stood in thought, leaning my hand on my car door: If only my mom had another job or stayed at home. What if she didn't know what Mitchel was a part of, if she didn't know about GINM. Maybe they'd still be married. Maybe my life would be normal.

Gavin brought me out of these thoughts; he was waving his slightly closed hand in front of my face, my keys clasped between his thumb and index finger.

"Bub, you there?"

"Yeah... sorry," I said, and took my keys.

I pulled out of the driveway, and in again when he left. By the time I climbed out my car, he was long gone.

It was about nine thirty and everyone else went to bed, but Aimee waited for me in the foyer and locked up behind me, and then she led me to her room. She halted at the door, motionless for a second, eyeing into her room like it wasn't hers at all.

"I think Celeste made my bed," she said as nonchalantly as she possibly could.

I shrugged, "Maybe," I replied.

"Maybe," she repeated, climbing onto the bed, "you were wrong about her."

She grinned, quite proud for her precocious conclusion. I looked at her, following leisurely.

"Yeah... no," I said as I plopped exhaustedly beside her. All the talk of AIM and Abba and whatnot had drained me, but I couldn't blame Aimee for being curious. I would be, too, if I were in her shoes. She deserved to know whatever she wanted to know, and I could tell by the look in her eyes that she had a question on her mind.

"Do we have a plan? Or are we literally gonna go in there, beat her up and hope that she surrenders?"

"I don't know. Unfortunately, I don't make the rules," I said apologetically. "Your idea sounds pretty good, though," I laughed, and so did she, but she was sure to smack me first.

"I'll just have to train extra hard, so that I'm prepared for anything." She contemplated that concept, daydreamed, but brought herself back into the world and looked at me. "I'm gonna wash up," she hopped off of her bed and left the room.

After a while, with nothing to do, I climbed into her bed. For a moment I thought it was completely normal, instinctive, but then I started overthinking...

"I'm fully dressed," I said, oblivious to the fact that I was talking aloud to myself. "She just has to lie next to me."

Was it weird that I almost felt guilty or intrusive or... like a pervert? What the heck, you're just sleeping!

I kicked the sheets straight, one-legged, and cleared my thoughts. That was when I noticed that there was no evidence of broken glass from Aimee's window on the bed or the floor. Celeste had swept it up, I supposed. There was a broom at the door – that verified it. I couldn't help smiling.

Aimee's curtains were drawn, but the cold outside air pressed through them. It wasn't too windy a night and yet the curtains wafted. I shifted my body until I was comfy and warm and I fell asleep sooner than I thought I would. Maybe I was that tired, maybe Aimee's bed was just comfier than mine or the one in the GINM medic room or at the hospital. The last night I'd slept in my own bed was Sunday – I'd never missed my bed so much in my whole life! But that night, I slept soundlessly, as if I lived a life separate from my own.

When Friday morning came, I rolled over and Aimee's captivating face greeted me. I smiled, watching her sleep. I wondered what she was dreaming about, why she seemed happiest in slumber. After a moment of gazing at her and telling myself that it was time to get out of bed, I raised the blanket from my body and it marginally rose from hers. I dropped the sheets again in a heartbeat!

I felt as though my brain shut down. My unventilated head plopped back onto the pillow and I looked at the ceiling, but I wasn't really looking at it so much as pointing my eyes somewhere to distract myself. It didn't work. I thought of what I had seen, her pastel pink bra rising with her chest as she took a breath, the flesh of her bare torso, her bellybutton.

I swiftly threw the blanket off of me, to her, and I crawled out the bed, legs first like some backward leopard crawl. I moved to the bottom of the bed and sat there. I touched my forehead and brushed strands of hair out of the way with my fingers. I glanced behind me when she started moving, shifting for comfort as I had. And then I got up, headed to the bathroom and showered – which was an awkward feat if it had to be done with most of my weight leaned on one leg.

I donned my clothes and styled my damp hair with my fingers. I rinsed out my mouth with minty mouthwash, and then with water to dull the fiery sensation on my tongue. When I returned to Aimee's room it was 7:30, according to her bedside clock.

"Half past seven," I whispered huskily, shaking Aimee gently by the arm. "Hey. We gotta get you to school."

She mumbled, rolled over to see me. Her eyelids parted warily and daintily, and then sprouted open in alarm when she registered my words. She yanked her covers to the side and rushed out of bed, to her wardrobe, to pick out the clothes she'd take to the shower. So, she really didn't mind sleeping next to me or walking around like that. Truthfully, I didn't mind either, but whoa!

Aimee darted around her bedroom like a beetle – a distractingly gorgeous little beetle – to collect all of her things, and before I knew it, she'd left the room. I couldn't help ogling her bandaging, her cast and those small scratches on her body from the accident, a new bruise on her left arm. There was a kind of guilt that I'd never experienced before, sweltering inside of me. She was a teenage girl. This madness was my life, and no matter how much I wished it wouldn't, it was rapidly becoming hers. This was never the part of my life I wanted her to share with her.

I waited on her bed; I'd made it up as she went to the bathroom.

Is nearly dying a day ago a bad excuse to skip school?

I was unfurling the curtains neatly, noticing that our formerly blonde friend had completely removed what was left of that window from its frame, when I heard Aimee waking her parents up. I observed her clock – it showed 7:54 – and the GINM uniform that she had slung over a hanger on her wardrobe handle. She rushed into the room, and I jolted to attention.

"You need to take us to school, we won't be early otherwise." I raised my eyebrows; where did all that passion come from? "Please," she implored.

"I would have anyway," I chuckled and stood up promptly, and then we went down to the Beetle.

Aimee and I were on time, but we still had quite the morning. We'd missed a load of work, so we were in trouble with most of the teachers – if only they knew what we'd been through! Also, people kept staring at us wherever we went. I think they saw us as us.

First break was weird. Emma found herself a seat at the cheerleaders' table in the cafeteria, and she kept looking over at Aimee, but Aimee didn't make anything of it. We carried our food to our table, still being gawped at.

I hugged her tightly, thinking that it might help the situation and hoping it wouldn't make it worse; I didn't know how she felt about us in public. The hug seemed to have helped a little. It was just us at our table, but we felt intimidated by everyone else. I had never detested adolescents so much in my whole life.

"I shouldn't have come to school today," she whimpered. "What the heck was I thinking? I am an emotional wreck and everyone hates me."

I knew that by 'everyone', she meant Emma because only she mattered enough to affect her.

"Hey, nobody hates you," I held her hand. "If they did, they'd be idiots and I'd make them suffer for their crimes," I joked, she smiled temporarily. I looked at her empathetically and let go of a sigh, which I admit was not a very assuring gesture. "I don't know what happened between you and Emma, but if she can't see how amazing you are and that you're worth a world of craziness, well then, you're better off without her."

I leaned in and gave her a short, affectionate kiss and caressed her cheek.

"I love you," she whispered.

"I love you," I said.

I could hear our adolescent peers mumble in awe, disgust and maybe envy.

"I can't believe she's sitting with Kirsten."

I remembered that she was the spirited blonde to Emma's left. "Yeah, what's the story there anyway?"

Aimee mumbled lethargically, "The three of us used to be really close friends. Then Kirsten wanted us to join the cheerleader squad with her so that we could all be popular and rule the school, as she called it, but she was the only one who made the team. Coach Kirkwood watched my and Emma's auditions and came up to us afterwards, saying we should try out for the soccer team, so we did, and we were really good. Long story short, we tended to get more attention than Kirsten did, and she believed that we were trying to out-popular her. So, we all said some nasty things and the three of us became the two of us. Well, I guess it's the two of them now."

Aimee went quiet for a while, and we ate our lunch. As the school day proceeded, it seemed almost as though she planned to go the whole day without saying a word, and in the classes we had together, I had to take notes on her behalf. I knew that the last thing she wanted to do was 'talk about it,' so I left her, the whole school day, just gave her time to herself. I believed it was the right thing to do, even though it was painstaking. But she was different after school, as if she had been ill but then she wasn't. She was still quiet, but she was herself.

We stood under the shade of the tree where I used to park my bike, listening to the birds sing and the swaying tree branches. I was picking young blossoms off, one by one, and cupping them in my hand.

"You know, there was a time when I would've given anything to be an average kid, to go to a boring school and be smacked around by boys with an overdose of testosterone," I kidded about the last part. "But I realised that if I were that boy, I wouldn't have met you. And if I was average, I wouldn't be able to protect you. Everything happens for a reason. I promise that we'll make it through this. You'll get your life back."

She smiled faintly as she held my hand. "Thank you. You're adorable," she giggled, and I harmonised my laugh with her own.

I gave my handful of flowers to her. "For the lilies," I whispered.

She took the blossoms in her hands and laughed, "Thank you, again," she paused. "We should get to GINM."

I nodded, smiled back so lightly that I could barely feel my cheek muscles shaping. Training was the last thing on my mind. Why did it have to be essential?