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wow. He was standing on the other side of the room, leaning against the doorframe. Dark hair just long enough to cover what I felt sure were equally dark eyes fell in his face. He was tanned, ripped, and wore a thin white T-shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans so tight they must have gone out of style before I was born.
    As if he could read my thoughts, the mystery boy looked up. His hair fell out of his eyes, which lingered on mine for just a moment before he shook his head and laughed without smiling at all.
    “Who’s the new boy?” I found myself asking.
    “New boy?” Fuchsia and Tracy spoke at once, and almost instantly, they whirled around and followed my gaze.
    The boy in question frowned, first at them and then at me, before turning his back on us.
    “What new boy?” Fuchsia asked. “Where?”
    “Never mind,” I said, strangely bothered by the fact that he’d turned away. “He looks like a skeez.”
    At my words, the boy turned back around, and from the way he was looking at me, I found myself wondering if there was something wrong with my face. Or my hair.
    “Who looks like a skeez?” Fuchsia asked impatiently.
    “The guy in the doorway,” I said.
    For a long moment, Fuchsia said nothing, her eyes measuring the expression on my face, which I kept carefully blank. I knew better than to let people see more than I wanted them to.
    “Lilah,” Tracy said slowly, looking from me to the door and back again. “There is no boy in the doorway.”
    “Of course there…” As the words left my mouth, the boy turned his back on us again, and without moving, he disappeared. One second he was there; the next he was gone, and Tracy and Fuchsia were staring at me like I’d told them I’d decided to go Goth.
    Luckily, my damage-control instinct kicked in.
    “Oh,” I said, playing the whole thing off like a joke. “My mistake. That’s not a new boy. That’s just Lissy’s little friend.”
    Taking one look at the Non girl on the other side of the caf, my friends dissolved into laughter.
    “For a second there,” Fuchsia said, “I thought you were going crazy.”
    Hoped I was going crazy, I corrected her silently. I also silently apologized to Lissy’s friend Audra. My newfound tendency toward daydreaming had me doing a lot more “Hey! Look over there!” maneuvers than usual, and even though Audra hadn’t heard me and probably wouldn’t have cared if she had, I couldn’t help but feel squicky about the below-the-beltness of it all.
    But, I reminded myself, desperate times called for desperate measures, and I was nothing if not a survivor.
    Having successfully averted a potential mini-crisis, I couldn’t help but look back at the doorway. The air blurred like static on a television, and there the boy was again, glowering in my direction.
    Tearing my eyes from his, I brought my milkshake to my mouth. When I looked back up, he was gone, and for a split second, a shattered image filled my mind.
    Three girls holding hands.
    These hallucinations/daydreams/whatever were really starting to bother me, and it was getting harder and harder to pretend they weren’t happening. I so couldn’t afford to lose my mind right now—Fuchsia would throw a popularity coup faster than I could say “if you had to choose,” and I absolutely could not let that happen.
    With a failed effort at a deep, cleansing breath, I stood up.
    “Where are you going?” Fuchsia asked.
    I turned back and pinned her to the chair with a well-executed shrug. “You’ll see.”
    Desperate times called for desperate measures.

 
    3

    Contagion
    Loser is a contagious disease,
and there’s no such thing as natural immunity.
    “Hey, loverboy. Get your girlfriend’s attention, would ya? She’s doing the whole zoning out thing again.”
    As I approached Lissy’s table, Audra tossed a rolled-up napkin in the general direction of the guy Tracy had so eloquently referred to as Lissy’s “would-be boytoy.” Dodging the napkin, Dylan smirked at