“Why?”
“Because even if she is interested in me, I can’t be with her. Ben loves her.”
Markie gaped at him, fell back, then rushed up to him again. “Does she love Ben?”
“No.”
“Well. Has anyone had the sense to ask her how she feels about you?”
“No.”
“I see. You’re determined to be a martyr.”
He grimaced. “I’m determined to do right by my best friend.”
“So you’re not going to doanythingwhere this woman’s concerned?”
“No comment.”
He was going to do something.
He was going to fix things with Ben. They hadn’t talked since their phone call because he’d been giving Ben time to cool off. Soon, though, he’d contact him.
Ben was a brother to him. If Sebastian couldn’t keep his relationship with Ben strong, then something was even more seriously wrong with him than he’d feared.
It was never a ringing endorsement of Leah’s teaching style when one of her students fell asleep in class.
It wasn’t terribly unusual to catch a student snoozing. She oftendimmed the lights in order to illustrate examples on her whiteboard. And teenagers weren’t exactly known for their disciplined sleeping habits.
Her policy upon noticing a sleeping student: Do nothing while the other students were present to avoid humiliating the napper in front of their peers.
Two days after Labor Day, she activated her policy when she spotted Claire Dobney asleep in the back row. After the dismissal bell rang and the rest of the class filed out, Leah approached Claire. The girl had rested her head atop her folded arms. She dressed her round body and soft limbs in enormous shirts, as if hoping the shirts would provide her with a mobile tent to hide inside.
“Claire,” Leah said.
Claire’s torso snapped upright. She held her eyes unnaturally wide, in a bid to show how awake she was.
Lunch period had just begun, which meant they both had a brief pocket of time. Leah made herself comfortable on the chair next to Claire’s. “You fell asleep in class.”
“I did? Oh. Gosh. I’m sorry, Ms. Montgomery.”
“Apology accepted. Is everything all right?”
“Mm-hmm.” Perfectly groomed eyebrows capped small eyes accented with unflattering green eye shadow. Her cinnamon-colored curls formed an oval around a circular face.
“You’ve looked tired to me for a while now,” Leah said. “I’m just wondering if there might be something in your life that’s bothering you.”
“Not really.”
“I’m a good listener.”
Though Claire existed in a perpetual state of uncertainty, she was bright enough to have made it into Leah’s class—the highest level of math available at Misty River High—last year and this year. Last year, Claire’s sophomore year, she’d earned Bs. So far this year, she was struggling to maintain a C.
Leah waited, saying nothing.
“I guess I haven’t been sleeping that well,” Claire confessed.
“Any particular reason?”
