That was the second time Zoe had that question posed to her. A traveler or a wanderer? As she thought about the question, she also contemplated making a run for the door.

Smoking Girl

I think you're a wanderer, doomsday goddess. That means you owe us aurishas tribute.

Zoe

I'd better get to class.

Zoe turned towards the door.

Smoking Girl

Wait, wanderer!

Against her better judgment, Zoe turned around.

She saw two versions of the girl. The one in front of her looked normal. But the one reflected in the bathroom mirror was not. In fact, the girl's reflection in the mirror was as far from normal as anything Zoe had ever seen.

Smoking Girl

Don't look so surprised. I told you I was an aurisha.

And with that, two wings sprouted from the girl's back. The wings were made of tendrils of black smoke. As Zoe turned to run, a smoky tendril flailed out towards her leg.

Zoe

You're going to think I'm crazy. But okay. I just tried to talk to my best friend, and he acted like he didn't even know who I was. Right before that, I tried to open my locker. Even though I'm sure I had the right combination, it wouldn't open.

Smoking Girl

That happens.

Zoe

No, not like this. Things were weird before I came to school too. My dad was home—that's a long story too—but also, at the bus stop, there was this weird kid who asked me these weird questions.

Smoking Girl

Did you know the answers?

Zoe

No. They didn't make any sense. Nothing makes any sense, nothing since last night. This is going to sound completely crazy, but—I found this glass thing on a beach. And when I looked through it, I think I had a religious experience or something—

Smoking Girl

So you are new here.

Zoe stopped and looked more closely at the girl. She took a long, slow drag from her black cigarette. Weirdly, the girl didn't exhale any smoke.

Zoe

What do you mean new here? That's what the kid at the bus stop asked.

The girl took another long drag from her cigarette. She closed her dark eyes as she sucked in the smoke, and the whole cigarette fell away in ashes.

Zoe

Who are you, exactly?

Smoking Girl

Do you have a cigarette?

Zoe

No, I don't smoke. You know. It's bad for you.

Zoe laughed faintly, to break up the sudden chill in the conversation.

Smoking Girl

I know it's bad for you, but obviously that's not the case for me. You really don't have one?

Zoe started to slowly back away from the girl. For some reason, her eyes started to water, as if the bathroom was filled with smoke.

Zoe

No, I don't. Who are you? Are you ... human?

Smoking Girl

No. Duh! I'm an aurisha. And what are you—a traveler or a wanderer?

The source of a voice was a tall, pale girl dressed in black with black ribbons in her hair. Zoe hadn't seen her when she went in the bathroom. She was leaning against the sink and held a smoldering black cigarette lightly between her third and fourth finger. The girl smiled casually as they made eye contact.

Zoe

Yeah. Kind of.

Smoking Girl

I don't mean to pry. I just noticed you sounded a little upset.

Zoe blushed a little. Was it that obvious? She put on her expressionless face to hide the fact that she was crying.

Zoe

No, it's okay. It's just been a really weird morning, that's all.

Smoking Girl

Howso?

Zoe

It's kind of a long story....

Smoking Girl

I don't mind. Now I'm curious.

Zoe studied the girl. She had never seen her before. And try as she might, Zoe couldn't exactly place her in any of the school's conveniently stereotypical cliques. Her black get-up indicated she might be a goth, but her lack of makeup made that a stretch. She seemed friendly and genuinely curious, but at the same time, emotionless. In a strange way, thought Zoe, the girl reminded her of herself, especially herself right at this moment—a curious outsider with a mask on her face. Was she a kindred spirit?

Zoe stared at the boy. Her eyes felt glassy. She quickly looked away because she realized they had teared over.

Zoe

W-what?

Robert

Um ... I mean, I don't think I've ever really talked to you before. I think I had a class with you once but—is this some kind of joke?

Zoe ran to the bathroom.

In the stall, she wiped away a tear.

She forced herself to stop crying. As soon as the initial shock wore off, she could think rationally about the situation. Robert was a terrible liar, and he clearly wasn't lying when he told Zoe he had never talked to her before. He seemed as confused as she was.

So he wasn't trying to be mean to her. His reaction was symptomatic of a greater problem. Again, reality was not working right for Zoe. As she walked out of the stall, she wondered if she should even stay at school.

Girl's voice

Having a rough day?

Robert

Ow!

Zoe gasped. In her mind, she had prepared for an awkward, gradual reconciliation with Robert, not this.

Zoe

Hi Robert. Sorry.

Robert

That's okay.

Robert had dropped his books on the floor. He blushed brightly as he picked them up. Zoe stood, keeping her distance.

Zoe

Really?

Robert

Huh?

Zoe

I mean ... you're really okay? You're not mad? Because I really am sorry. I shouldn't have said what I said.

Robert

Um ... what did you say?

Zoe turned away. She didn't want to repeat it.

Zoe

You know, last night at your house. Anyway, if you're really not mad at me—oh, Robert, you don't know how happy I am that you're not mad at me. I really need to talk to you!

She hugged him, lightly at first. When he didn't hug her back, she squeezed him harder and then pushed him away playfully.

Robert

Okay....

Zoe

I'm sorry if that was weird to do. It's just, you have no idea what happened to me last night after I left....

Robert

Listen—I don't really know how to say this, but I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about.

She walked quickly down the halls towards Robert's locker. If he wasn't there, she would wait for him.

There was no doubt in Zoe's mind that both the weird Asian boy and her locker had something to do with her experience last night. Something supernatural had happened to her, and now reality was not working the right way. She supposed that she shouldn't be surprised, but she suddenly felt very alone, and she needed help figuring out exactly what had happened to her when she looked through the glass.

Zoe rounded the corner and bumped right into Robert.

It didn't open.

She tried it again. 32-24-32. She tried it more slowly this time, carefully lining up each number with the topmost notch.

But it still didn't open.

She spun the dial around and started over, 322432 really quickly, trying not to think about it, because maybe she had thought too hard about it last time and messed up.

It didn't click open.

Zoe

Thirty-two, twenty-four, thirty-two.

She tried it five more times, alternating fast and slow, and she double- and triple-checked her locker number.

Had she remembered the numbers wrong? She usually didn't even think about opening her locker. Maybe, by thinking about the numbers, she somehow misremembered them, and now the entire process was doomed. Or maybe the earliness was throwing her off.

But she was sure that was her locker combination. And the more she thought about it, the more something seemed completely wrong.

She looked around her. Some of the other students were opening their lockers. She noticed a few of them were looking at her, with puzzled expressions.

She shivered suddenly. She changed her mind: she needed to talk to Robert, right now.

Zoe followed the kids on the bus as they trickled out down the narrow aisle. It was a wet, grey morning with little particles of sunshine coming down through the clouds like a mist. Zoe followed the line of students into the main entrance.

She had never been to school this early. The halls looked empty. Zoe was used to arriving just minutes before class, when the halls were lined with throngs of students clumped around popular kids' lockers. But this early, the halls were free and clear. The glossy tile floors of the hallway reflected the glare of white florescents above. Aside from some squeaky steps and locker slams and snatches of muted conversation, the school was dead quiet.

She arrived at her locker and twisted the lock by rote. 32-24-32.

Imaginary Zoe

Hi Robert. I'm really sorry about last night.

Imaginary Robert

Oh, Zoe. That's okay. I'm sorry too. I feel like a jerk.

Imaginary Zoe

So we're friends?

Imaginary Robert

Of course!

Imaginary Zoe

That's good, because I have something amazing to tell you.

Zoe sighed. She wasn't being realistic at all.

Imaginary Zoe

Hi Robert. Robert! Don't turn away! I'm really sorry, listen to me!

Imaginary Robert

...

Imaginary Zoe

I know you're feeling hurt right now, but I have something to tell you that's so important and amazing you're not even going to care.

Imaginary Robert

...Are you screwing with me?

Imaginary Zoe

Never!

Imaginary Robert

Whatever. I don't want to talk to you.

Zoe sighed again. The girl with headphones next to her shot her a dirty look.

Zoe sat in the back of the bus, next to a girl and across from two more girls, so that the Asian boy would not be encouraged to continue his interrogation by sitting next to her. Zoe watched him out the window. He continued to stare at her, up through the bus window and past her oblivious, iPod-listening seatmate.

Then, the bus jerked into motion. The Asian boy didn't come on. But his head swiveled to track her as Zoe and the bus skipped down the road.

Zoe wondered what the boy's problem could possibly be. Maybe he was a dork, like Robert, and that exchange was some weird way of flirting with her. But why didn't he get on the bus?

Zoe sighed. She didn't want to remind herself about Robert, but now all she could think about was how much she needed to talk to him. He was the only one she could tell about the magical glass she found.

She spent the bus ride practicing ways to initiate the conversation in her mind.

After a while, though, she decided she didn't want to talk to Robert at all. At least not yet. He probably needed some space. For that matter, so did she.

Zoe hadn't taken the bus since last year. She sees some new faces at the old bus stop, younger kids mostly, wide-eyed and gossiping. After a few minutes, a small Asian boy with glasses she had never seen before joins them from a bend around the block.

He unapologetically stares at her. He walks back and forth, taking her in from different angles. He never takes his eyes off her. Zoe looks down at the ground and across the street to avoid eye contact.

Asian Boy

Pardon me.

He keeps his distance as he speaks. Zoe looks at him.

Asian Boy

Are you a traveller, or a wanderer?

Zoe

Huh?

He walks back and forth again, still staring at her. The three other kids at the bus stop are oblivious to this exchange.

Asian Boy

Are you new here or something?

He seems incredibly confused.

Zoe

No. I usually ride my bike to school.

Asian Boy

Your bike? What?

Zoe doesn't know how to respond, so she doesn't.

Asian Boy

P'tah! You can't fool me! I know what you are. You're a thousand-headed doomsday goddess!

The hum of a bus's engine saves Zoe from any further awkward conversation. The yellow log opened its door jerkily and Zoe was the first to climb up the ridged metal steps.

Zoe's father looks up at her. When had he come home? He wears a ratty bathrobe, but he is clean-shaven for a change.

Father

What do you want, kiddo? Surprised to see me?

Zoe

Well....

Zoe doesn't press the point. Stranger things had happened, after all.

Her mother is completely ignoring her. It is for the best, Zoe decided. Her father doesn't give any indication that he cares about his missing gin, or Zoe's cruel words towards her mother—predictably. He never confronted Zoe about anything.

Father

Do you have school today?

What a stupid question, Zoe thinks. Of course she did, it was Wednesday.

Zoe

Yeah. I have to catch the bus. So—bye.

Father

Bye.

Zoe wakes up the next morning and knows instantly that the events of the last night were not a dream. She never remembers her dreams, but she clearly remembers everything that had happened to her, right up until she put down the glass and crawled into bed, dumbstruck.

She had always wondered how crazy people must feel. Now she knows. It is actually quite exhilirating. She can't decide who to tell—the only person who she would ordinarily tell, Robert, is probably not talking to her—but she is so confident that she isn't dreaming, that something truly extraordinarily had happened, that the mundane details of who would believe her seem trivial. She doesn't yet feel confident enough to deal with the glass object, safely hidden under her shirt on her desk. But she at least feels confident enough in her apparent insanity to face the world.

She gets dressed and skips down the stairs. Halfway down she remembers that her bike is no more. She'd have to catch the bus to school.

Zoe

Oh well.

She could handle it.

Downstairs, her mother is cooking breakfast. Upon further examination, she is cooking breakfast for someone sitting in the breakfast nook, drinking coffee and reading the paper. It is her father.

Zoe

Dad?

She sits down on her bed, breathing heavily. She holds her hand to her cheek, to make sure she still exists.

When she realizes she is still gripping the glass tube, she throws it on her bed as if it is burning her hand. She stares at it from a safe distance for a few moments. Then she lifts it up with just two fingers and gingerly places it on her desk.

When she was little, she used to have nightmares about monsters in the closet, their outlines barely visible through the closet doors to her half-closed sleepy eyes, so she always closed the closet door. Now she worries she is having a very different sort of nightmare. She throws one of her shirts on top of the glass so she doesn't have to see its weird shape as she sleeps, which she knows she must do now, even though she doesn't feel particularly tired.

It takes a few minutes of lying on her bed in thought, but Zoe finally arrives at what frightens her so much about the glass:

She is not sure who pulled the glass away from her eye—her, or the girl she had seen in the glass's vision.

She sleeps.

...a girl in pajamas hunched over her desk, holding a strange glass object to her eye.

At that moment, she pulls the glass away from her face.

Then she saw a blue planet orbiting the yellow star. She knew that the blue planet was Earth, even before she saw the familiar jigsaw puzzle outlines of continents. Her vision swooped down into the planet's atmosphere. It zoomed towards North America like a hawk diving steadily, until Zoe saw the great lake, the city, then the forested streets, her house, and through her open window....

Through clouds of nebulas, and against a background of millions of stars, her vision focused on a single, yellow-white star....

The smaller lights were not merely pinpricks either. Each one looked like a galaxy. Some were cloud-shaped. Others had wispy, spiraling arms.

And again, she felt as though her vision was being drawn by some dreamlike undercurrent into the arm of one particular galaxy, a spiral-armed galaxy. For a fraction of a split second she thought about tearing the glass away from her eye—if she even could at this point—but then she saw where her vision was being pulled into the galaxy's arm....

The pinpricks became brighter. Zoe saw that it was a night sky, full of stars. At first it was a familiar sight, though she wondered how she could see a starry sky in her glass tube.

But then she looked more closely—or was something pulling her vision more strongly?

The pinpricks of light were not stars. Each point of light was an amorphous cluster of smaller lights.

She had the sensation of zooming in, like on a camera, on one particular cluster of lights.

Everything that had happened to her so far that night, Zoe reflected, could be explained by natural causes. She would never have guessed that her mother would slap her, or that Robert would choose tonight of all nights to kiss her. And the sudden thunderstorm and her near death experiences were even more improbable. But what happened next was different.

Through the sand-glass, Zoe saw what at first appeared to be nothing. Even though the tip of the glass and much of its interior was quite clear, she just saw blackness when she looked into it.

Then she twisted it slightly, and the nothingness became edged with faint rainbows.

At first Zoe thought the glass was a sort of natural kaleidescope. She squinted and focused. The rainbows seemed to blend into the nothing and expand and swirl around, but they remained on the periphery of her vision, even as she attempted to look directly at them.

Then Zoe realized that she was not supposed to look at the rainbows—she was supposed to look through them. They were the frame of a picture. And as she realized this, the picture inside the rainbow frame began to take shape and swell, enveloping her consciousness.

At first Zoe was a startled, because she felt like she was losing control of herself. But she was sure she could see something within the rainbow-framed nothingness—little pinpricks of light. She was too curious to stop looking now. If she just looked a little closer, through the rainbows....

They were still warm. Zoe mulled over the penny first, but it was just an ordinary, slightly molten penny—it wasn't as interesting as the glass.

Parts of the glass were as clear as a window. Other sections looked like dried, caked-on sand. And still others had a sort of rainbow luminescence. Most parts felt grainy and rough, but some felt smooth. Zoe wondered if its root-like shape was the same as the shape of the lightning bolt that made it. She also wondered how transparent it was.

Zoe had to see the penny and the glass again before she went to sleep. Otherwise, she worried they'd evaporate into unreality.

She tumbled out of bed and limped to her bag on the floor and rifled through it. It was still a wet from the rain. Her heart leapt to her chest as she searched—what if it had all just been a dream?—but then she found the shirt with the penny and the weird glass.

Zoe felt a tinge of embarrassment—there they were, proof of her whole escapade. It all seemed seemed overly dramatic now that she was back in her bedroom, and she never liked dramatic people.

She laid them on her desk and took a long look at them.

Then she held the glass up to her eye, like a kaleidescope.

It took her an hour and a half to get home. She walked slow, and a few times she dove into foliage to avoid the headlights of an oncoming car. But she had so much to think about that the walk seemed to take no time at all. The two lightning strikes replayed over and over in her mind's eye. She mulled over the different angles and interpretations.

So it was only when she walked into her lawn that she fully realized that she had failed to run away, and that she was, in fact, returning home in a dreamlike state. If she got caught, Zoe thought, it might not be a lie to attribute the entire incident to sleepwalking.

But her mother wasn't awake, and with some difficulty Zoe climbed up the siding back into her bedroom window. She quickly changed into dry pajamas—she had forgotten how freezing cold she was—and climbed into her warm bed. Her body's lower half felt numb, whether it was from cold or from overexertion she couldn't tell. She had never felt so tired in her life.

But then she remembered her treasures.

The crater looked like molten quicksand that had re-solidified into a crusty shell. Zoe decided against digging around in it with her bare hands, so she found a long piece of driftwood and started poking.

Yes—there was something in the middle of the crater, buried underneath the charred sand. She dug at it, tracing around its shape, and pried it out of the ground.

And out came a chunk of something. At first it just looked like a chunk of sand, but it wasn't—there was something glassy underneath. Zoe could feel its warmth even down the length of her stick. She scraped at it, and dirt and sand came off in layers, baring more shinyness.

She took off her sweater and wrung it out over the object. A small gout of steam shot back up at her. That cleared it up a little. She scraped more dirt and sand away, and poured more water on top.

It was a glass tube, shaped vaguely like a ginger root. There was still plenty of sand caked around its edges, but there was no denying that the thing was solid glass.

Zoe

No way....

She looked back at the crater. There, directly below where she had dug out the glass, was a charred, half-melted penny.

The lightning must have shot towards the penny and melted the sand in its path into glass. Zoe laughed again. The penny was the luckiest penny ever.

When they were cool enough to handle, Zoe bundled the glass and the penny into her sweatshirt and put them in her bag. She left her bike where it was and started walking.

Zoe pinched herself. What had just happened was impossible.

It made sense that a bolt of lightning would strike her bike. Her bike was made of metal and it was standing up on a flat beach. She was lucky to survive it—if she had been a little closer to her bike, that would have been it.

But the second lightning bolt should have killed her.

Why did it strike empty sand—not five feet away from her body? It made absolutely no sense. There was no logical reason why she was alive.

She imagined herself encased in glowing electricity, hair sticking straight up in spikes, with her skeleton flashing through her skin every now and then. She wondered if that was what people really looked like when they got struck by lightning.

Zoe snickered as she crouched in the sand. She hadn't had a good laugh in a while. It felt good, so she didn't stop laughing until she started gasping.

She wiped the tears away from her eyes and rolled over on her stomach and took a long look at the sky. The storm was finally dead. A wet breeze blew over her wet nose, but she heard no thunder and saw no lightning.

She pushed herself up and wiped the sand off of her hoodie. Then she walked over to the smoking crater in the sand, where the lightning had struck.

There had to be some explanation. An investigation was in order.

Another bolt of lightning, this time not five feet in front of her.

Once again, she was thrown backward. Her hair stood up and crackled, and her ears felt like they would explode.

She had seen the bolt of lightning arc out of the sky and slash into the air, in front of her eyes.

This time, Zoe stayed on the ground.

She blinked her eyes for a full minute. When the residual flash from her vision cleared, she looked closely in front of her. There was a smoking crater in the sand, in the middle of the beach, not five feet from her.

—Another blinding explosion.

A pillar of light—

After a few minutes, the rain stopped.

The front of Zoe's hoodie was covered in wet, muddy sand. She breathed in and out slowly for a full minute, then pushed herself up to a low crouch. Her clothes were heavy with water and caked on sand. There were no arcs of lightning in the sky now, but every now and then a patch of clouds lit up white-grey, along with its double in the lake's surface.

If this wasn't the worst night ever before she fell asleep, Zoe thought, it certainly qualified as the worst night ever now. Her mom, Robert—and now her bike! And maybe her hearing too. She had only been to one concert, but it was loud and her ears sounded much worse now.

She had managed to crawl a few yards away from her bike. The way home would be even longer.

She slowly started walking across the beach—

She heard her own voice faintly. So she wasn't deaf.

More lightnings grumbled and flashed in the distance. She pushed herself away from the sizzling metal of her bike and dug herself into the sand. She kept as low as she could, remembering something about lightning striking the tallest objects in a field.

But she needed to put as much distance between her and her bike as possible. The melted metal bike was death. She winced at every crack of thunder, recalling the static coursing over her skin just a few moments earlier. The lights in the sky and in the water battled on, slashing in the darkness and cutting open the bloated clouds.

Zoe forced her body to crawl. The rain pounded down on her. Her eardrums wailed. She felt numb and half-alive, but she crawled on through the sand.

Zoe was thrown back several feet. Her ears rang like telephones. Even though she was soaked, all of the hair on her body felt tinged with static. Her wet hoodie felt hot against her skin.

She clawed the sand—she had landed on her stomach—and looked up at her bike, or the remains thereof. It took a while for her vision to look past the pale Z-shaped flash that had engraved itself into her eyeball.

Zoe

H e l l o...?

The ruins of her bike smoldered and steamed as rain hissed against the hot metal. Blue tongues of electricity raced up and down the bike and then flickered out of existence. The seat and handlebars had completely melted and were dripping onto the sand in black splotches.

She cursed herself in her mind. What kind of moron was she, running towards a metal bike in a thunderstorm?

—A huge explosion of light.

A bolt of white lightning—

Zoe

Ack!

Zoe woke up. She was dripping wet. Water had just soaked through her hoodie and hair and touched her skin.

Her first thought was that the tide had swallowed her. But she quickly felt the patter of rain. She looked up at the sky through squinty wet eyes, and then and only then did it start to pour.

Grey and white lightnings flashed in the distance, twin forks in the sky and in the lake's black mirror. The lake whorled and gurgled as it digested the shower. Thunder cracked hollowly through the howling wind, which Zoe heard faintly through her wet hoodie, as if she was underwater.

She was freezing cold. She ransacked her backpack for another layer, anything to ward off the wetness. But her clothes in her bag were soaked too. She felt like she was drowning.

How long had she slept?

She located her bike in the blackness. Lightning glinted off its wet metal handles. There was nothing to do now but to go home to shelter. She pulled her hoodie as tight as she could around her head, even though it didn't make a difference anymore, and began to walk towards her bike—

.................

............

......

...

Zoe rode her bike straight down the dune's sandy slope and onto the beach. She had to skid to a stop in the soft sand—she realized that she had been riding as fast as she could ever since she left Robert's house.

She let her bike fall over and then she fell over too. She was exhausted. Her legs were shaking with exertion. Why had she rode so fast? The sand was cold, but it was soft and comfortable. A few feet ahead of her, the soft black water lapped against the wet sand.

Zoe pulled her hood up around her head and lay down on her back. The moon was almost completely hidden behind clouds now. Aside from its residual silvery light, the entire world seemed to be varying shades of black and textures of sound. The beach seemed so much vaster to Zoe now than when she came here during the day. It was like how she imagined the open ocean must look. Or outer space.

Zoe

I wonder what will happen to me now....

Then, after a moment of consideration:

Zoe

Who cares....

In the end, she thought, her and her problems were almost spectacularly unimportant. Somewhere in Iraq, a starving 14 year old girl would find her whole family dead under the smoking debris of her house. Zoe wondered if this girl would feel sorry for herself. I should be thankful, Zoe told herself.

Although, she thought, the Iraqi girl would still probably feel lost if her friend and her mother hated her.

Zoe closed her eyes, opened them, and closed them again. There was so little difference between the two states. Both were vast black spaces, and the droning, shushed voice of the water was the same as the white noise inside her head.

Zoe didn't want to think about her situation anymore. She was too tired now, and her body was too sore to think. And she didn't want to feel sorry for herself either. She wanted things with Robert to return to normal, and she wanted to take back what she said to her mom. But more than anything, she wanted to go to sleep. She curled up tight on the sand....

It had gotten colder, and the through the treetops sky looked blotted and puffy with clouds. The road was pitch black now, but somehow her body knew how to guide her. She had been to the beach before, but never alone or at night.

She knew she couldn't go home. At least not yet. She had lost her relationship with her mother, and now she had lost her relationship with her best friend. And in both cases it was her fault. She could see that as clearly as she could see Robert's little silhoutte in front of the TV in her memory. Zoe did not think she was a dramatic person, but right now she needed some place to clear her head. The lake seemed as good of a place as any.

The wind picked up and blew Zoe's hood back, so her frizzy hair flew out in the wind. The tree trunks all around her were vertical black lines set against an even darker blackness. But soon they lines faded into a uniform shade of blackness, and Zoe heard the sighing of waves.

There was a little ticket booth, dark grey in the night light, that led to the parking lot. Ordinarily they charged parking for cars, but of course nobody was there this late at night on this cold of a night. Zoe rode around the ticket booth and straight through the empty lot. Her tires scraped against sand strewn on the black asphalt. Finally, she felt dunes under her tires and saw the black and grey expanse of water.

Platonic affection?

No, Zoe thought, gritting her teeth. The flow of her anger seemed to dislodge something inside her, a realization. She wasn't physically attracted to Robert, but when he played with her hair and gave her backrubs, she felt sexy. Tonight was not a sudden revelation of Robert's true feelings, or even a confirmation of her sneaking suspicions. Deep down, she always knew for a fact he was attracted to her, because she went out of her way to make him feel that way. What she did realize tonight was that she had been using Robert for their whole friendship to make herself feel loved.

She felt like a tease—a whore.

Zoe

Idiot! You're such an idiot!

Zoe whispered this to herself, about herself, as she rode down the black roads. She felt mad at Robert for what happened, but then almost instantly her anger at Robert seemed to splash against a wall in her mind and reverse direction, rushing straight towards herself.

Of course she should have known that he would fall for her from the start. She should have known as soon as she first met him and saw him hold out his hand and flick his wrist as he approached a pair of automatic sliding doors, pretending to open them like a Jedi.

Zoe did not think she was pretty—she thought she had a plain face and hair and she hated her huge legs. But she knew she was the right level of prettiness to attract boys like Robert—boys who were too awkward and scared to approach prettier or more popular girls. She couldn't blame him for falling in love with her, for mistaking her platonic affection for something more. He just picked the worst possible night to make a move.

Her legs were tired from peddling uphill, but they seemed to know where they were going.