You

It’s your favorite subject. Which surprises you.

Last year your teacher tried to convince you that you had a real “aptitude” for math, but all you got in the end was a B minus. The truth is you weren’t even trying. But then you got low Cs and Ds in all your other classes and you weren’t trying there, either, so maybe you are good at math after all.

You like it because either you’re right or you’re wrong. Not like social studies and definitely not like English, where you always have to explain your answers and support your opinions. With math it’s right or it’s wrong and you’re done with it. But even that’s changing, with Ms. Ortman up there at the whiteboard saying how this year you’ll be writing something she calls Mental Notes, which explain how you solved the problem and support your answer, saying that having the right answer isn’t as important as explaining how you got it and bam, just like that, you hate math.

“Now, tomorrow you’ll have a quiz worth sixty percent of your grade this quarter.” She pauses like she’s some stand-up comedian before she adds, “Only kidding,” as if it wasn’t obvious. But then you notice half of your classmates sitting there with their eyes all popped out and you think, are they really that stupid?

She glances up at the clock, so of course everybody else does, and she sees she’s got eight minutes left in the shortened period. Time to launch into the math version of the same speech you’ve heard in all of your classes so far and you wonder if they teach this time-wasting crap at teacher school.

“The first day of the year is always my favorite,” she starts, and you already know where this is going. “All of you begin with an A plus, nobody has turned in their homework late, I haven’t had to send any of you to the principal or give you detention or call your parents.” She nods in your direction. “I always think of the year as a big, blank canvas. Everything you do throughout the year is like a brushstroke, and how you fill in your canvas is completely up to you. Some of you have your year all sketched out. Soccer in the fall, then into rehearsals for the winter concert, then it’s tryouts for either the basketball team or the school musical-unless of course you’re like AJ here, and you do both.” And as if on cue, the class looks at handsome, athletic, all-sport AJ with his perfect smile and his J.Crew polo shirt, and he fakes an embarrassed shrug and does this little wave thing like he’s saying “aw, shucks,” and you find yourself hoping some fat defensive tackle takes out his knees in practice.

“It’s important to keep in mind that you have control over your year,” Ms. Ortman is saying. “If you don’t like the direction your life is going”-and now you’re positive she’s looking at you-“then you have the power to change it. If you’re not happy where you’re at, figure out where you want to be and make it happen.”

Which all sounds good, but you know it’s ridiculous. You know where you want to be and there’s no way you can make it happen.

Because if you could make it happen, if you could suddenly be back in eighth grade, you’d do it.

Because this time it’d be different. You’d work your ass off in all of your classes, just like Rick and Dan and Denica and Ari, and you wouldn’t have spent all that time morphed to your Xbox, and when it came to picking a high school, you would have had the grades to go to Odyssey and not ended up at Midlands High. You’d be in the honors program with the friends you knew since fourth grade, doing those geeky after-school programs like MindQuest and Brainstormers and Forensics, which doesn’t have anything to do with dead bodies. And you wouldn’t have that scar on the back of your right hand and you’d be able to bend your middle finger all the way and you wouldn’t have had to talk to counselors. And you wouldn’t have to talk with losers like Max or Ryan or Derrick, either. You wouldn’t have even met them.

But that would mean you wouldn’t have met Ashley. And now you have to think the whole thing over.

One way or another, it’s going to be an interesting year.

And then nothing happens until October.

Well, nothing worth mentioning. Every day you get up, go to school, fake your way through your classes, come home, get hounded about your homework, go online, fake your way through your homework, go to bed-and the next day you get to do it all over again. Weekends you hang out with the other hoodies, stay out as late as you can, sleep in as late as they let you, get hounded about finding a job, go to the mall, hang out. Repeat. Some of your friends get dragged to church, but other than your baptism-which you don’t remember-and your grandmother’s funeral-which you don’t want to remember-you’ve never been inside a church. Weeks of your life have slipped by, as if that matters.

If there was something that all that time had in common, what your English teacher would call a “theme,” it would be this: Don’t get caught.

Don’t get caught copying homework, don’t get caught going to certain websites, don’t get caught climbing up onto the roof of the mall at night, don’t get caught stealing beers from the fridge in the neighbor’s garage, don’t get caught kicking the side of your father’s Bronco, don’t get caught slipping into all eight movies at the Cineplex, don’t get caught sneaking glances at Ashley every chance you get or sliding up against her at lunch or finding yet another reason to put your arm around her shoulders. And definitely don’t get caught lying wide awake in bed thinking about her.

You don’t get caught, which means they must not be trying too hard.

Maybe it would have been better if you had.

But you didn’t.

Saturday night. Halloween is this Tuesday and that sucks. You haven’t gone trick-or-treating in years but there’s something wrong about Halloween being in the middle of the week. No one’s talked about it, but everyone’s treating tonight as Halloween. Everyone’s a little edgier, a little more pumped up. Not your parents, of course-they don’t notice these things. Neither does your kid sister, but she’s only five. Paige is excited about Halloween and she doesn’t care what day it falls on. She’s going as some Disney princess and she’ll look real cute, which is good since she’ll haul in more candy than she could ever eat. But that’s what older brothers are for.

You’re cutting down Thornapple Crescent to Ryan’s house when you see Derrick cutting through the Fullers’ yard and out to the sidewalk. He sees you and nods.

“What’s up?” He says it all ghetto, like it’s one word with a z in it, the way you all say it, just with a harder edge, like he owns it. Derrick’s father’s an accountant and his mother teaches French at the community college. It’s hard to be ghetto when you live in a middle-class suburban development twelve miles from any building over four stories. But since he’s black, people seem to expect it, so he gives it to them. You heard he’s smart enough to have gone to Odyssey High but chose to come to Midlands. If it’s true then he’s not that smart after all.

“Goin’ to Ryan’s?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Nothing else to do.”

“Thought you’d be over at Shannon’s.”

He shrugs but doesn’t explain. “Why ain’t you with Ashley?”

“I didn’t call her,” and you’re thinking, what the hell, does everybody know your business?

“I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

Neither do you, but you don’t say it.

“Wanna call her now? You can text her from my phone. She won’t ignore a message from me.” He makes like he’s digging in his coat pocket and before you can say anything Max comes running up behind you, bumping into both of you. He’s out of breath like he’s just run a mile, but you don’t think that’s ever happened. He’s just a few pounds heavier than you, but he’s the laziest person you know.

“Can’t go to Ryan’s,” he gets out between pants. “His mom’s going out. Won’t let us over. Meet him at the park. He just called me.”

You rattle off the expected swearwords, Derrick adds a few extra with Max rearranging the combinations. When did swearing become so easy? You still would never swear in front of your parents or most adults, but when you’re with your friends it’s like every fifth word. Why couldn’t learning Spanish be that easy?

“It’s gonna be cold tonight,” Derrick says. He’s got the same thing on as you do: jeans, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, and a hoodie. It’s what Max has on and what you know Ryan will be wearing. At least you’ll all be suffering equally.

“We can go to the woods, start a fire.”

“What, and smell like smoke for a week? No thanks.” You pull the zipper on your hoodie up an inch.

It takes ten minutes to walk to the park. Ryan is sitting on top of one of the picnic tables. You can see the red