ALL THE TIMES THAT I’D followed Mr. Matthews home, watched him from his window, I’d never gotten caught. Hadn’t even come close.

Which meant I started to get sloppy. Didn’t leave as much room between us as I had at first. Didn’t bother stretching as much as I used to. In a way, I’d come to feel that we were simply spending time together, getting to know each other. The fact that it wasn’t actually a mutual relationship was something I mostly skimmed over in my mind.

And one day, it seemed like he was walking more slowly than usual. As there’s a limit to how slowly you can jog, I kept getting closer and closer to him.

Less than a block away from his house, there was the sharp cracking sound of a car backfiring behind us. He swiveled around and there I was, less than fifteen feet behind him, smack in the middle of open, empty pavement.

“Jess?” He cocked his head, staring at me like he barely recognized me out of context.

I froze. Act natural, my brain commanded. Act natural. Unfortunately, I could not remember what on earth that might look like.

He started to walk toward me.

I opened my mouth. No words came out, just an odd, scratchy noise from the back of my throat. I feigned a coughing fit to cover it up.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded as I continued to cough, trying to extend it as long as I could. Once I’d bought as much time as I could without permanently damaging my throat, I made my eyes go wide. “You surprised me,” I said.

He furrowed his eyebrows. “How did I surprise you? You were running right behind me.”

I edited myself. “I meant that the noise surprised me.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “It was pretty loud.”

“Yes, it was.”

He continued to look at me strangely, so I seized on the first thing that seemed faintly plausible.

“I was actually trying to catch up with you. I was about to call out to get your attention when the car backfired.”

“Okay,” he said. “What did you want to tell me?”

Oh. Right. I hadn’t gotten that far. I considered faking another coughing fit, but that seemed a bit much. I looked down at my gym shoes and then back up.

“Track,” I said. “I wanted to tell you that I appreciate you letting me on the team even though the sign-up period was over. I’m enjoying it.”

I prayed he wouldn’t ask why I suddenly wanted to talk to him about that now. Because I had no answer.

Fortunately, he seemed to accept the comment at face value. “That’s great,” he said. “It seems like you’re really taking to it.”

“Thanks.”

I wondered if we could leave it at that, but I wasn’t sure how to make an easy retreat, so I decided to keep talking—bury the awkwardness of it all with more inane chatter.

“I’ve heard good things about your English class,” I offered. Lay it on thick, I thought. Compliment him into a stupor and then head for the hills.

“I’m glad,” he said. “You should sign up for it next year.” He said it more like he thought he should say it rather than like he genuinely meant it. Still, I was surprised that he was tactless enough to say it at all.

“Yeah, I guess I could do that, now.”

“Now?”

I flushed, annoyed that he was making me spell it out. “Anna was in your class before. So I had to go in another section. Because of the policy.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“The policy about siblings. About them not being in the same class.”

He shook his head slowly. “There isn’t a policy about that.”

“Yes, there is.”

“No, there isn’t. There are two brothers in one of my AP classes right now.”

“That’s against the rules, then. Because there’s a policy. It’s new—they rolled it out last summer. That’s why Anna and I didn’t take classes together this year. I distinctly remember her telling me….”

His face fell, taking on a look of sad embarrassment. I recognized that look, had seen many variations of it over the years. It meant I hadn’t understood something someone had said and they weren’t sure how to explain it to me.

I traced back. He’d said there was no policy. That he currently had siblings in one of his classes. Anna had been so clear on that point, telling me that if we didn’t pick different classes one of us would be forced to select again later.

Had she been lying?

I looked at Mr. Matthews’s face, his eyes filled with pity.

She had been lying.

He started to backtrack. “I mean, I could be wrong—maybe they made an exception for the kids in my class….”

He fell silent again. Because he wasn’t wrong. We both knew that.

I tried to make my voice even; instead, it crackled with hysteria. “Sure. I really should get going.”

“Jess—”

I shook my head. Hard and fast. Hard and fast. “No, I should head home.”

He reached out toward my arm. I jerked away. No touching. No, no, no touching. Especially not by him. Especially not like this.

I turned and started to run, to put as much space as possible between us.

Because I needed to process this alone.

Alone.

Apparently, that was what I had been for a long time. Had been even before Anna fell.