Chapter 1

The seat next to me on the bus was empty, like it always was.

I'd stopped taking it personally somewhere around sixth grade. People didn't avoid me on purpose. They just... didn't sit there. The bus would fill up, kids doubling up in seats, sitting three to a row when Mr. Patterson wasn't looking, and somehow the spot next to me stayed open. Like there was an invisible force field. Like their bodies just naturally drifted toward other options.

I used to think I smelled bad. Spent a month in fifth grade showering twice a day, stealing my dad's deodorant, until I realized that wasn't it. It was something else. Something I couldn't fix because I couldn't name it.

The bus lurched through Millbrook's morning streets. Past the boarded-up storefronts on Main. Past the old factory on the hill, its windows dark, its parking lot empty. Past the Presbyterian church where my mom's funeral had been three years ago, which I tried not to look at and always failed.

A kid named Tyler Briggs got on at the Maple Street stop. He was in my grade. We'd been in the same class since second grade. He walked down the aisle, eyes scanning for a seat, and for a second he looked right at me. Right at the empty space beside me.

Then he kept walking. Squeezed in next to two girls who had to shift their backpacks to make room.

I put my headphones in even though I wasn't playing anything. It was easier to pretend I couldn't hear the conversations I wasn't part of.

The bus pulled up to Millbrook Middle and I waited for everyone else to file off before I stood. It was a system I'd developed. If I was last, I didn't have to navigate around anyone. Didn't have to feel them flinch when I got too close.

The morning was cold, that October cold that sneaks up on you because the sun is bright. Leaves scattered across the sidewalk in reds and oranges. Pretty, if you weren't paying attention to everything dying underneath.

I had my hand on the school's front door when someone called my name.

"Eli! Wait up!"

Shelby Hoffman was jogging across the parking lot, her backpack bouncing against her shoulders. Her hair was down today, which meant no volleyball practice. She was wearing the purple hoodie I'd gotten her for her birthday, the one with the faded logo from some band neither of us actually listened to.

"You didn't text me back last night," she said, falling into step beside me.

"Sorry. Phone died."

"You missed like forty-seven memes. Highly quality content. I'm offended."

"I'll review them at lunch."

"You better." She held the door open for me. "I expect a full report. Ratings out of ten. The whole thing."

This was how it worked with Shelby. Easy. Light. She filled up the silences I didn't know how to fill myself. She'd been doing it for three years, ever since my mom died, and I'd never once asked her to. She just did.

The hallway was the usual morning chaos. Lockers slamming. Conversations bouncing off cinderblock walls. Someone's phone playing music too loud. I kept close to Shelby as we walked, like she was a shield between me and everyone else.

It worked, mostly. People talked to her. Waved at her. She was normal in a way I'd never figured out how to be. And when she was next to me, some of that normalcy rubbed off. I became Eli-who-was-with-Shelby instead of just Eli-the-weird-kid.

Someone called Shelby's name. Madison Taylor, passing in the opposite direction with two other girls.

"Saturday still good?"

"Yeah," Shelby said. "See you then."

And that was it. Madison kept walking. I didn't think much about it. Shelby had other friends. That was normal. That was how normal people worked.

We stopped at her locker first. She spun the combination without looking, muscle memory, and started trading out books. I leaned against the locker next to hers and watched the hallway traffic. A group of guys from the basketball team walked by, laughing about something. A couple was arguing in hushed voices near the water fountain. Normal stuff. The ordinary machinery of middle school grinding along.

A kid I didn't recognize brushed past me, his shoulder catching mine.

Something flickered. A flash of something that wasn't mine. Nervousness. First day jitters. A new school, new faces, everyone staring—

I yanked myself back. Took a breath. The feeling faded.

"You okay?" Shelby was looking at me.

"Yeah. Just... tired."

"You're always tired." She closed her locker. "You should sleep more."

"Probably."

She studied me for a second longer than felt normal. Then she smiled, and whatever she'd been thinking disappeared behind it. "Come on. I'll walk you to homeroom."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know I don't have to. I want to. Stop being weird about it."

I wasn't being weird about it. Or maybe I was. It was hard to tell anymore where normal ended and I began.

We walked. She talked about some show she was watching, something about vampires or werewolves or maybe both. I wasn't really listening. I was thinking about the kid who'd brushed past me. About that flicker of feeling that didn't belong to me.

It happened sometimes. Not often. Not predictably. But sometimes when people touched me, I felt things. Their things. Emotions that weren't mine bleeding through like watercolors running together.

I didn't understand it. I didn't talk about it. I just tried to avoid touching people, which was easier than it should have been since most people avoided touching me anyway.

"Eli. Earth to Eli."

"What?"

"I said, are you coming to the game Friday?"

"What game?"

Shelby rolled her eyes. "Volleyball. My game. The one I've been talking about for two weeks."

"Oh. Right. Yeah. I'll be there."

"You forgot."

"I didn't forget. I just... temporarily misplaced the information."

She laughed. It was a good sound. Warm. Real. "You're such a disaster."

"But I'm your disaster."

The words came out before I thought about them. Shelby's expression did something complicated, too fast for me to read.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess you are."

We'd reached my homeroom. She stopped outside the door.

"Lunch?" I asked.

"Obviously. Save me a seat."

"I always do."

She started to walk away, then turned back. "Hey. You know you can talk to me, right? If something's going on. If you're not okay."

"I'm okay."

"You always say that."

"Because I always am."

She looked at me for a long moment. There was something in her expression I couldn't identify. Concern, maybe. Or something else.

Then she smiled, and it was gone. "See you at lunch, weirdo."

"See you."

I watched her walk away until she turned the corner. Then I went into homeroom and found my usual seat in the back and tried not to think about the expression on her face or the flicker from the kid in the hallway or any of the other things I didn't have words for.

The announcements came on. Something about a bake sale. Something about homecoming. White noise.

I stared out the window at the October sky and waited for the day to start.

Lunch was the best part of any school day, and the reason was simple: Shelby.

We had our spot. Corner table in the back of the cafeteria, near the windows, far enough from the lunch line that the noise wasn't overwhelming. We'd claimed it at the start of sixth grade and defended it through two years of middle school politics. It was ours.

I got there first, like I always did. Set my tray down. Waited.

The cafeteria filled up around me. Groups forming and reforming like cells dividing. The basketball guys at their table. The theater kids at theirs. The complicated social geography of eighth grade, mapped out in lunch trays and seating arrangements.

I didn't fit anywhere on that map. I was a blank space. An error in the data.

But I had my corner. I had my table. I had Shelby.

She showed up ten minutes later, sliding into the seat across from me with her tray and her phone and her particular brand of chaos.

"Okay so I know you said you'd review the memes but first you have to hear about what happened in second period because oh my god."

"What happened in second period?"

"Mr. Kessler tried to use the projector and somehow connected to his home computer instead and his desktop background was this picture of his cat wearing a tiny hat and he tried to play it off like it was intentional but you could see him dying inside."

"That's amazing."

"I know. I wish I'd gotten a picture but he switched it too fast." She stabbed a tater tot with her fork. "How was your morning?"

"Fine."

"That's not an answer. That's a placeholder for an answer."

"My morning was uneventful and contained no cats in hats."

"See, that's better. Details." She pointed her fork at me. "You need to give me more to work with."

"I'll try to witness something interesting this afternoon."

"Please do. I'm counting on you."

This was us. This was how we worked. She pushed and I deflected and somehow it felt like conversation. Like connection. Like the thing other people seemed to do naturally that I had to work so hard at.

I watched her eat her tater tots and felt something loosen in my chest. This was real. Whatever else was wrong with me, whatever weirdness I carried around that made people keep their distance, Shelby was still here. Shelby still chose to sit with me.

That had to mean something.

"So," she said, her voice shifting slightly. "I was thinking. About Friday."

"The volleyball game."

"Yeah." She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at her tray, pushing food around. "It's kind of a big deal. Like, there's gonna be a lot of people there. And after, some of the team is going to Brianna's house."

"Okay."

"And I was thinking maybe you could come to the game but then after, like... I don't know. It might be weird if you came to Brianna's."

Something cold settled in my stomach. "Weird how?"

"Not weird weird. Just... it's a team thing. And you don't really know anyone on the team. And Brianna's house is small. And..."

She trailed off. I waited.

"It's fine," I said. "I get it."

"You're not mad?"

"Why would I be mad? It's a team thing. I'm not on the team."

"Okay." She looked relieved. That was the thing that stuck in my chest like a splinter. She looked relieved. "Okay good. I just didn't want you to feel like... I don't know. Left out."

"I don't feel left out."

That was a lie. I felt like I was being gently, carefully, kindly pushed to the margins. But I couldn't say that without sounding pathetic. Without sounding like the charity case I was afraid I'd always been.

"Cool." Shelby smiled, and it was her normal smile, warm and easy. "You're the best, you know that?"

"So I've been told."

"By who? You don't talk to anyone else."

"By you. Repeatedly. I'm starting to believe it."

She laughed and threw a tater tot at me and everything was fine. Everything was normal. The cold thing in my stomach was still there but I pushed it down, buried it under the sound of her laughter and the familiar comfort of our corner table.

This was real. It had to be real. Because if it wasn't, I didn't have anything else.

The afternoon crawled by. History. Math. The slow grinding of hours toward a freedom that never felt as free as it should.

I kept thinking about lunch. About the way Shelby's eyes had slid away from mine when she mentioned Brianna's party. About the relief on her face when I said I wasn't mad.

I wasn't mad. I was something else. Something I didn't have a name for.

In seventh period, I sat in the back of the room and watched the clock tick toward the final bell. Three more minutes. Two. One.

The bell rang. Bodies surged toward the door. I waited, like I always did, letting the crowd thin before I moved.

Shelby was waiting for me at my locker.

"Hey," she said. "Walk home together?"

"Yeah. Of course."

We walked. The October afternoon was golden, that late-day light that made everything look like a photograph. Leaves crunched under our feet. Somewhere a dog was barking.

"I'm sorry about the Brianna thing," Shelby said.

"You already apologized."

"I know. I just... I feel bad."

"Don't feel bad. It's fine."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

She was quiet for a few steps. We passed the old Presbyterian church. I didn't look at it.

"Can I ask you something?" Shelby said.

"Sure."

"Do you ever feel like... I don't know. Like you're on the outside of something? Like everyone else got a manual for how to be a person and you missed the day they handed them out?"

I looked at her. Really looked. She wasn't joking. Her face was serious, almost sad.

"Yeah," I said. "All the time."

"Me too. Sometimes." She kicked at a pile of leaves. "I don't know why I said that. Forget it."

"I'm not going to forget it."

"I know. You remember everything. It's annoying."

"You love it."

"I tolerate it. There's a difference."

We reached the corner where our paths split. Her house was two blocks east. Mine was three blocks north. We'd been saying goodbye on this corner for three years.

"See you tomorrow?" I said.

"Obviously." She smiled. It was a real smile. I was almost sure it was a real smile. "Text me later?"

"Yeah."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She turned and walked toward her house. I watched her until she was halfway down the block, until she was just a purple smudge against the autumn trees.

Then I walked home alone, feeling better than I had all day.

Shelby was my friend. My real friend. She'd asked me if I felt like an outsider and I'd said yes and she'd said me too and that meant something. That meant we were the same. That meant I wasn't as alone as I'd thought.

The cold thing in my stomach was still there, buried but present. The memory of her relief when I said I wasn't mad. The hesitation before she'd mentioned Brianna.

But I pushed it down. Buried it deeper.

I had Shelby. That was enough.

It had to be enough.