1
SCOTT

IN THE BEGINNING THERE was darkness. Mary was alone, at peace, at rest—all those things they said about you right before they put you in the ground. Finally at peace. The thought didn’t seem to bring her any grief, or rage, or any feeling at all. She felt nothing, and it was good. The pain throughout her body was gone. The blinding spotlights and the deafening music before the bullet shattered her skull were all gone; everything was gone.

Whatever had happened to her, it had come fast and hard, like the storm that had drenched the city. She had not been ready for its full force, she realized: the rain had fallen, wild and powerful, and there was no getting out of its way. The darkness had shrouded her all day; she had seen it outside the windows, in the gray sky above the city—the rain had lashed down, spattering across her as she lay planted in the cold ground at the empty house, like a girl half-buried by a grave digger, already half dead. Her friends had vanished. She had tried to run, but the storm raged and the bullets came, first for Dylan and then for her—they paid the ultimate price, as those Daily News crime stories always put it. The victim paid the ultimate price—and here she was, paying it.

Because I’m dead.

The strange calmness that followed the realization—the way it was no more shocking than I have a cold or I’m late for school—convinced her. I can’t feel anything, she confirmed to herself, and it didn’t make her afraid. I can’t feel anything because I’m dead.

But she did feel something: she felt regret. Regret that she had failed to escape whoever had it in for her; regret that she was too slow, too stupid, and now it was too late to do anything about it. Regret that she would never see any of them again, never be able to explain.

And she felt something else. Physically, she felt something—which was impossible, an illusion. But, concentrating, she was sure of it: a sensation was penetrating the void, barely there but growing, like the drone of an approaching plane. Something was pressed against her back. There was no getting around it. She wanted to move; she had to move.

I’m sleeping, Mary thought dazedly. I’m dreaming. I’m waking up.

That had to be it. I dreamed all that. I had a nightmare, a paranoid nightmare.

And why not? An anxiety dream—waking up naked with a skull-pounding headache, and a scornful crowd pointing and laughing. Isn’t that the standard paranoid fantasy? A slow ride into panic, where everybody’s trying to get you, trying to kill you; you try to run but you can’t move, you can’t get away. And then you wake up.

And it was all a dream.

Right?

Isn’t that it? Isn’t that what happens next? Mary realized she could hear her own breathing. She’d been ignoring it, pretending it wasn’t there. But she was breathing fast; not exactly panting in terror but not exactly calm, either. I hear my breathing, because I’m alive. It’s later and my headache’s gone and I’m waking up alone.

I’m alive.

That made sense, didn’t it?

“Wake up.”

She heard a female voice, youthful and distorted, blasted with static as if coming in on a radio station. Mary’s eyes snapped open. Her heart was pounding. The voice was right there, just inches from her head. Her eyes were watering and she reached to wipe at them with hands that felt sluggish and swollen; her fingers felt oddly thickened as they bumped against her eyelids and the bridge of her nose. Am I bruised? she wondered dazedly. Did my face swell up?

It seemed as though her ears were ringing from the gunshot to the back of her head. But no. There was no ringing at all. No gunshots, she told herself. No rainstorm, no endless, baffling chase that turns into Death Race 2010 before you’re blown to kingdom come. Just silence, and the low hum, which sounded like it was coming from a fan—an ordinary electric fan.

She could move, she realized. The numbness was slipping away, like the rough bedsheets that slid from her body as she flinched and sat up, squinting against the blinding, blazing white sunlight that bathed her face.

“Wake up.”

The same robotic voice. Alarm clock, Mary realized. Her heart was still thwacking in her ears like a snare drum as she tried to wipe her eyes clear with fingers that were too short and fat. That’s an alarm clock, a novelty alarm clock that talks.

Taking her hands from her face, Mary could see the alarm clock with the robot voice right next to her. It was a porcelain statue of a slender, buxom young woman holding a sword. The woman wore a colorful costume and a mask that tied around her long blond hair. The base of the statue was a block of stone that had a digital clock face set into it; the bright burgundy numbers said 7:01 A.M.

It was difficult to see anything else; the light was too bright. And her body was heavy and bloated. She had to strain to lift her own weight, just to sit up. The effort made her head feel light, and when she moved her shoulders and brought her thick new hands to her face she instantly realized her hair was gone.

Someone cut off my hair. All the familiar touches of her hair—the flicking of the smooth ends against her shoulders, the softer waves that always cascaded down over her eyebrows and cheekbones until she swept them back—were gone. Somebody had taken a razor, a big electric clipper, and cut all of it off during the night.

Oh, Jesus, someone cut off my hair—

She could still hear the fan—a computer fan, she realized, looking around as her eyes continued to clear. The room she was in—a cluttered, wide bedroom with a bright triangle of sunlight spearing across its walls—had a big desk, covered in stacks of books and disks and boxes, and a pair of computers, their fans humming, with glowing neon lights, orange and green.

Where the hell am I?

A loud noise drew Mary’s gaze to the far wall, and the door in the shadows, back beyond the dim outlines of other furniture she couldn’t quite see.

Someone’s outside the door. Footsteps were definitely approaching; Mary could clearly hear the repeated thump and squeak of rubber-soled shoes advancing.

“Scottie?”

A female voice, getting closer. Middle-aged, friendly. And familiar—Mary wasn’t sure why, but she was absolutely convinced that she’d heard it before.

“Scottie? Are you up?”

Mary noticed a sweet, candied aroma. Industrial blueberries, she thought: the kind of mass-produced processed food Joon always scorned (while scarfing down one of her macrobiotic box lunches). Those rubber-soled footsteps kept getting louder; it sounded like a basketball player was approaching across a newly waxed court.

Mary looked around wildly, like a cornered animal, trying to find a way out. She blinked but couldn’t quite clear her eyes; everything in the distance, beyond the bed, was hard to see clearly. There was a bathroom—with a hexagonal grid of gleaming white tiles stretching off into the blurry blackness beyond—but nothing else. Mary was trapped and the bedroom door was opening—she’d forgotten that door completely, because now she was looking full-on into the mirror on the wall that showed Scott Sanders, soft cheeks reddened by the sheets, short hair askew, brown eyes squinting in the glare of the morning light. Even out of focus, there was no question about it: Scott Sanders was staring back at her with a shocked, comical expression.

“Scottie! Wake up, sleepyhead!” The voice was huge, deafening as the door swung open and the woman with the loud sneakers was there, framed in the doorway. That’s Mrs. Sanders, Mary realized dazedly; she recognized her voice.

But Mary couldn’t tear her eyes from the mirror. She was still staring at Scott’s reflection, matching him blink for blink.

“Scottie?” Mrs. Sanders repeated. “Are you feeling all right? I thought you hit the sack early.”

“Wh-what?” Mary croaked. She tried not to jump as her voice rang out, reverberating inside her skull exactly as if it were her own, but it was Scott’s voice, a teenage-male tenor that buzzed and vibrated in her throat—Scott’s throat—as she spoke. “What—” she tried again.

“Feeling all right?” Scott’s mother repeated. She came forward, recognizable to Mary from years and years of school plays and home games and parent-teacher days. For Mary, the strangest part was seeing her in her sweats. “I asked if you were—Scottie, sweetie, what’s wrong? I’ve brought you breakfast.”

The blueberry smell was overpowering, wondrous. Mary could feel her mouth watering as she fixed her eyes on the plate moving toward her, and she realized that the weakness and dizziness she felt was hunger. Scott’s mother wakes him up with Pop-Tarts, Mary realized. She wasn’t sure why, in the middle of the hallucination, the dream, the delusion, whatever it was, she found herself thinking about that, about Scott’s mother. She brings him breakfast and asks if he’s feeling all right. But she was fascinated, because it was so utterly strange.

“Go ahead,” Mrs. Sanders urged. Mary reached out with Scott’s pale, soft arm and took a Pop-Tart. Her eyes were beginning to water along with her mouth. She was hungry; she was taking a bite before she even realized it, her teeth squeezing through the hot pastry as if she’d never eaten anything before.

“Take the plate,” Mrs. Sanders scolded, mock sternly. “I’m not standing here waiting on you.”

Mary was chewing and swallowing. She bit the side of her mouth and winced; even her teeth felt strange, irregular and misaligned, and she had to chew carefully not to bite her own—Scott’s—tongue. Pop-Tart crumbs flew from her mouth and hit Mrs. Sanders, bouncing off her sweatpants. Mary reached to take the plate, the Pop-Tarts on it rattling and sliding. The sensation of tasting the food was incredible; she was barely done swallowing each bite before she wanted more.

“Look at my hungry little man,” Mrs. Sanders murmured as Mary finished the Pop-Tart—it had taken her three bites. She was so close that Mary could smell her scent and identify it—Clinique’s Happy—before she turned away. “Come on, champ—better get moving. It’s five past. And don’t you have a test today?” She was walking away, legs hissing beneath blue terry cloth, shoes squeaking on the polished floor. “That means no gaming—and be sure to leave time for a shower.”

I want to wake up, Mary thought as the door slammed, feeling a sugar rush kicking in. I want to wake up now; I’ve had enough of this dream. She was breathing heavily again, out of fear; she could see Scott’s chest rising and falling beneath his yellow Grand Theft Auto T-shirt—she could barely read the blurred logo, backward, in the mirror.

A phone rang, suddenly. It was so loud that Mary flinched and nearly dropped the plate. The jangling, piercing chime—a cell-phone ringtone—was coming from Scott’s cluttered desk. Rising off the bed, Mary came to her feet, holding on to a bedpost as she weaved, unable to support herself and almost losing her balance. The ringtone was still blaring and Mary actually recognized the song it was playing: “Femme Fatale.” She stumbled to the desk, the plate clanking loudly as she dropped it there, the Pop-Tarts sliding onto a graph-paper notebook. Mary felt a cold wave pass over her when she saw Scott’s blue LG phone—the one that always looked so grimy—with its amber light blinking and its bright screen displaying the incoming caller ID:

SHAYNE, MARY

It was all so real—that was the thing about it—not like a dream at all. The phone’s display (four bars; full battery), the seven digital numerals of the world’s most familiar phone number … every detail was perfectly realistic, even through the maddening blur that she suddenly understood, staring down at the desk.

Glasses—Scott’s glasses!

There they were, on the desk beside the phone: Scott’s familiar, gold-framed antique glasses. As Mary fumbled them onto her face, the surrounding room snapped into exquisitely sharp focus. Looking in the mirror was unsettling; now she could see the red veins in Scott’s eyes and the millions of tiny white hairs on his smooth skin. A few yellowed, sticky grains of sleep were gummed to his eyelashes, and his lips were slightly chapped.

She reached down and touched the cool plastic of the phone, feeling its vibration along her arm as she picked it up, flipped it open and brought it up to her ear. Her thumb brushed against her—Scott’s—hair as she pressed the green Talk button.

“Hel—hello?” She jumped again at the sensation of hearing Scott’s voice coming from her own throat.

“Scott!”

A young female voice, garbled and distorted by the cell phone’s tiny speaker. “Can you hear me?”

“Wh-what—?” she heard herself responding—again, in Scott’s familiar tenor.

“It’s Mary. You there, Scott? I need your help.”

“Mary—wait, what?”

That’s me, she thought. That’s me. Oh my God.

“You’re Mary,” she managed to rasp out. “What the—What day is it?”

“It’s Friday,” her own voice blared in her ear through the erratic connection. “Friday, Scott, the day of the physics test—the big killer test. We were supposed to meet last night to power-cram, remember?”

“Physics test.” There was something familiar about those words—something she couldn’t put her finger on.

I said that, Mary suddenly remembered. That’s me, this morning. I called Scott at seven, from the taxicab—on the way home from Crate and Barrel.

Before it all started.

“The physics test—of course. But—but, holy shit, that’s—”

“It’s today, Scott. Come on—will you wake up, damn it? Snap out of it! This is serious.”

“Serious,” Mary repeated, as the memory came into focus. Her mouth tasted like blueberry Pop-Tart. “Right, I was—you were supposed to meet me—I forgot that we were—But—”

She was gazing around Scott’s bedroom, squinting through the dust motes at the East Side morning sky beyond the plate glass. She had never been here, of course. Probably, no girl had been here, ever. Posters around the room showed fantasy girls, all pretty and skinny with big chests, all drawn or painted or digitally rendered, pubescent dreams frozen and reproduced in rows across Scott’s walls.

“Scott!” On the phone, her voice was louder—her impatience was growing. To Mary, it was the voice of the happiest, most carefree girl in the world. “Scott, I’m trying to remember last night—what happened last night, I mean. I’m blacking out on some of it and I can’t remember if I met you after dinner or—Hello?”

Mary could hear the world’s squeakiest sneakers beyond the bedroom door. Mrs. Sanders was moving around. Mary really didn’t want to deal with her again.

I have to get out of here, she thought. The cell phone was warm in her hand, its amber light blinking. I have to get out of here right now. It was nearly an animal impulse; her spinal column felt electrified and her breathing was getting faster. Her bare feet were cold from the parquet floor.

Mary slapped the phone shut. A flush was coming over her face and her vision was darkening; she clenched the edge of the desk with Scott’s fat fingers and tried to clear her head. Frantically looking around at the mess strewn around the floor, she saw a pair of nearly new Adidas along with a tangle of T-shirts and the pleated pants that Scott always wore. Mary had managed to get her balance, but she was still stumbling since Scott’s arms and legs were so different from hers—she banged her elbow against the desk’s edge and felt a dull pain spread through her arm.

I’ve got to get out of here. She was close to panic as she picked Scott’s loose khaki pants up from the floor and began pulling them on, reeling back against the bed, getting the pants on over the loose gray sweatpants and reaching for Scott’s familiar-looking near-virgin Adidas running shoes. Why does he even wear these? she thought distractedly as she fumbled with the laces, impatiently tangling Scott’s sweaty fingers around them. He never runs, anywhere.

But she had to. It was like the times that Mary would end up collapsed somewhere, at the end of a party, on a sofa or along the edge of a well-made bed, the room reeling drunkenly around her, and she would think, time to rally—she would understand that Joon was gone and Amy was gone and she was going to have to make it out of there, wherever she was, alone. She would picture the obstacle course: getting to her feet, finding her coat, putting on her coat, checking if she had both earrings, then propelling herself down an unfamiliar corridor to a big front door, past whatever drunken people were still there, and outside. Then an elevator and a lobby and a sidewalk and a taxicab and she would be home, her ears ringing, the party sounds fading behind her.

Time to rally—she was doing it now, stone-cold sober, in the bright morning light, and it was exactly the same: stumbling out into a strange corridor, trying to find her way to the front door. The apartment was huge—Mary glimpsed a concert grand piano through one doorway and a kitchen table with a pitcher of grapefruit juice and an unfolded New York Times through another. Got to get out of here, got to get out of here, she was thinking over and over, her heartbeat clicking in her ears again as she propelled Scott’s heavy body toward the giant front door.

“Wait! Don’t leave!” Scott’s mother called out, from somewhere in the vastness of the apartment. Mary froze, cringing. She could hear the basketball-court sounds of Mrs. Sanders approaching. Frantically, she started fiddling with the brass knob on the front door. “Scottie, wait!”

Mary finally got the door open as Mrs. Sanders appeared behind her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she said, holding out Scott’s red backpack—Mary noticed its familiar Harry Potter and Dandy Warhols stickers. “You’re not going anywhere without this.”

Mary tried to speak, but couldn’t quite get herself to make any coherent sound. She reached out and took Scott’s book bag—it felt much heavier than she’d expected—and catapulted herself out of the Sanders apartment, pulling the heavy door closed behind her as fast as she could.

LEANING AGAINST THE SMOOTH mahogany walls of the descending elevator, ears popping as chimes indicated the floors, Mary wondered if she had lost her mind. All her thoughts were going in tight little circles, faster and faster, as the elevator dropped toward the ground. It was obvious that she wasn’t dead; she had already figured that out, but she was beginning to accept that she had gone crazy somewhere along the way. Somebody help me, she thought, pressing her sweat-covered forehead against the glossy wood wall. It was all so real: she could smell the lemon in the polish that somebody had used not that long ago to bring out the expensive mahogany glow, which right now showed Scott’s fat, reddened face, reflected back at her from inches away. Help me, help me; I want to wake up.

The elevator suddenly stopped and a quivering jolt shook her bones. Another chime rang out as the big wooden door rolled open. If she was dreaming, the dream was amazingly realistic—impossibly realistic.

“All right, my man Scott,” a loud male voice called out—Mary saw what looked like a United States Marine in a crisp uniform and cap but was actually just a sallow-faced Manhattan doorman. Stumbling out of the elevator, she noticed a red shaving nick on his pale chin, above the starched white broadcloth collar. “What’s the matter—tough day ahead?”

(Tough day)

What was it about that phrase? It reminded Mary of something. The memory seemed very recent; it flashed into her head all at once, vividly: she could feel a pain in her shoulder and fatigue through her body—she remembered standing in a cold, brightly lit reception room talking to a woman with a headset, a woman she knew.

(Tough day)

“TOUGH DAY?”

“You have no idea,” Scott agreed.

Two weeks ago, Scott was coated in dried sweat (not an unusual sensation for Scott, unfortunately and lamentably), facing Sheila, the receptionist at McDougall Sanders Construction’s worldwide headquarters on the forty-fourth floor of the Blakeman building on Sixth Avenue. Expensive air-conditioning chilled the sweat in his hair and on his arms and back.

“What are you carrying?” Sheila asked, squinting critically at him while reaching for the phone headset. It must have been easy to see why Scott was covered in sweat: his book bag was stuffed. As it happened, he was carrying two complete loads of books—his own and somebody else’s. The book bag’s straps were cutting into his shoulders like knives. The pain was exquisite; Sheila could see it in his face.

“Don’t ask,” Scott had told her. Sheila laughed politely.

Because I can’t explain, he had finished, privately. He never could explain, ever. It was the curse of his divided life. His experiences were unique.

To Scott’s friends (using the word lightly; Scott thought of them as “the math guys” or “the sci-fi guys” or “the comic-book guys,” manfully weathering the inevitable Simpsons reference), Scott was a good gamer, a fair comic collector and a way-cool Star Wars fan (not to mention the builder and owner of an airplane fleet to fill a modeler’s heart with lust), but he had done something heroic, something amazing, something they all worshipped him for.

He’d become friends with Mary Shayne.

Scott Sanders had actually managed to score a friendship with the most jaw-droppingly, smokingly, sickeningly, desperately hot girl at school; the one who you tried not to stare at … honestly, how hard you tried … but it was impossible. She was Megan Fox. She was Aeon Flux. She was Angelina Jolie (back when Angelina was young and wild). She was Wonder Woman. She was all of them at once, and she was real, right in front of you during physics class, every day; you could talk to her (if you dared); she breathed the same air as you. It was insane, unbelievable; there was just no way to handle it. She was the heroine in whatever book you were reading in English, when the teacher was droning on about the Romantic Age in literature and reciting Shelley or Keats.

She’s just normal, Scott would tell his friends, to their constant frustration. It’s just like talking to anyone else. And no. I certainly won’t introduce you, like, ever, so stop asking.

And that was why nobody understood. Spending those fleeting moments with Mary was bliss, was ecstasy, not because she behaved like a “babe”—whatever that meant—but because she was a normal person. The eye candy was unbelievable, nearly religious, to be sure; but, in the end, they were friends.

What Scott wanted more than anything else was to be real friends with Mary—to be part of that crowd, that living, breathing Abercrombie & Fitch ad that surrounded her like drone planes around an aircraft carrier. He knew he didn’t fit in; he didn’t have the look you needed in order to become part of that particular club, the one everyone at Chadwick hated and disdained and desperately wanted to be part of. Scott didn’t care about clothes or gossip or sports or any of that, but he still thought his friendship with Mary might be the entry ticket he needed. If he kept getting closer to her, then he figured he would start being accepted by her crowd.

Dude, you do her fucking homework, Brian Anderson had sniped, when Scott had shyly admitted his ambitions. Don’t kid yourself—you’re part of her pit crew, nothing more than that. In three months you’ll never see her again. But Brian was just jealous; that was obvious. Mary was a good friend.

Mary’s personality wasn’t bad either, was the thing. It wasn’t spectacular; she was no Rachel Maddow, that was for sure. And she obviously had no patience at all; everything had to be done for her. But she was funny. She could be clever. And she said interesting things, sometimes, when she wasn’t so busy playing the starring role in her opera. (Scott figured that Mary’s life was too grand for soap opera—he’d long ago decided that she was the epicenter of a full-on opera, with expensive sopranos and tenors and the kind of thousand-dollar ticket that his dad gave his mom for Christmas.) It was exactly like what happened with movie stars: if you knew who they were, then you knew whom they dated, who broke up with them, whom they’d gone home with, accepted, toyed with, refused, pined after, dumped. You knew it all. You couldn’t help it; even if you didn’t want to follow the story, you had to, because they did it all in front of you. The more attractive and popular the kids were, the more they played out their biggest scenes in plain sight, right in front of you when you were at your locker or trying to get by. It was the world as a stage.

But Scott couldn’t blame Mary for that, either. So she was the star of the show. Who wouldn’t want to be the star? It’s always the best role: you get to laugh and cry and fight and kiss and everyone’s on your side; they’ve all got your back.

And Mary was a great star. She played it to the hilt. She didn’t solve her problems—she experienced them; she reacted to them, grandly. If life was a Broadway show, Mary would get all the big numbers—the Tony-winning songs people wanted played at their weddings. Mary’s problems were epic. They became global projects everyone was encouraged to participate in.

Which was why Scott was carrying a two-ton book bag that day.

Scott had agreed to come down here, to West Fifty-second Street, walking the whole way, because it was part of the deal to keep Dad happy. He had to walk because his father wanted him to “observe” the buildings that flanked the wide avenues on his way down, noticing their facades, their “footprints,” their “zoning envelopes”—all the perfectly boring details of the Manhattan real estate market that his father insisted he pay attention to. He’d tried to get out of it, once or twice taking the subway rather than walking, but he’d never gotten away with it. His dad would always quiz him about the buildings he’d observed on the way, and he just couldn’t bring himself to fake it. Today, even with a two-ton book bag, he’d walked the full thirty-six blocks—and here he was, dutifully pushing the heavy glass door that opened into the enormous mahogany-faced conference room where Dad was about to present to a client. Scott had agreed to assist, but he wished he could be anywhere else. And, of course, “anywhere else” just meant one place—the real destination he was headed, after this meeting—Mary Shayne’s Upper West Side apartment.

Mary had been absent from school that day. Scott had noticed immediately; he caught himself strolling down the fifth-floor hallway where Mary’s homeroom was, casually glancing at the crowd flocking out of the room as the bell rang, and not seeing her. When Scott’s cell phone blasted “Femme Fatale” that noon, he rejoiced, forcing himself to be cool and to nonchalantly answer on the second ring. Mary had sounded awful—the hoarseness of her voice created an alarmingly sexy effect that he almost complimented her on, before getting a grip on himself. Mary outlined her request—she needed him to get several of her books out of her locker (Scott wrote down their titles and her locker combination number, straining to hear over the crowds in the Chadwick corridor) and bring them to her house after school. Could he do that?

Scott could. And finally, two hours after the meeting with his dad, here he was, feet aching, heart pounding, shoulders screaming in pain as he entered the Shaynes’ apartment building.

I’m here again, Scott thought excitedly as the elevator rose to the fifth floor. It didn’t matter that the fake wood paneling was peeling off the elevator walls: this was Mary Shayne’s building, and that made it a palace. When he alighted from the elevator and rang the Shaynes’ doorbell, he felt like he was walking on a cloud. Maybe she’s feverish, he thought, standing nervously in front of the scuffed metal door and trying to compose his features into the correct expression. Maybe she’s weak and feverish and lying in bed in a gauzy nightgown, and she’ll need me to bring a glass of water to her lips.

Then the door latch snapped over and the door swung open and Scott realized that he wasn’t going to be bringing any glasses of water to anyone’s lips.

Mary was holding her phone with one hand, pressing it against her ear, while she pulled the door open with her other hand. She was smiling, dazzlingly. She wasn’t even remotely sick—Scott had never seen a healthier girl in his life.

“No, Trick’s not coming until seven; if we get carded we’ll just go somewhere else. Hang on—someone’s here,” Mary said into the phone. “I’ll call you back.” Scott was trying not to stare at Mary’s flat bare stomach as she beamed at him, raising her lovely eyebrows. She was obviously dressed to go out: she wore tight leather pants and a scanty sequined top that covered her chest and shoulders while exposing her midriff. He could smell some kind of seductive perfume wafting from her. “Scottie!” Mary sang out happily, beaming at him. “You gorgeous guy, you—thanks so much for coming!”

“Um—” Scott couldn’t think of anything to say. Mary looked so beautiful that he could barely breathe. It was like she had stepped off the cover of a magazine and into this dingy Upper West Side apartment, right in front of him. “I brought all your books.”

Aching at the effort, Scott swung his book bag around and dropped it between them on the floor. Mary stood waiting as he fumbled with the straps, extracting her books. She’s not sick, Scott marveled. She’s going out—she’s about to go out. He wasn’t angry—not exactly. He just couldn’t find the anger inside himself, not while Mary was standing there, arms crossed, the perfect pale skin of her abdomen visibly expanding and contracting as she breathed.

“That’s the lot,” Scott said, rising to his feet—he had produced a big stack of schoolbooks. “You’re all set.”

Mary looked delighted. It was a good look for her. “Scottie—thank you,” she sighed, staring yearningly at him. She leaned toward him, her soft black hair brushing against his cheek as she gave him a kiss that almost touched his lips. Scott trembled; it felt like he’d just brushed against an electrical cable. “Thank you so much. Listen, I’d say come in, but I’m actually about to go somewhere.”

“Go somewhere?” Scott repeated weakly. His cheek was still tingling from Mary’s kiss. She’s not going to invite me along. Of course she’s not.

“Alas.” Mary raised her eyebrows prettily—and Scott realized that that was his cue. “Thanks again, Scottie. I really don’t know what I’d do without you.”

You’d find someone else to deliver your books, he thought bitterly. You’d find another sucker.

“Please—it’s nothing,” Scott said magnanimously, shouldering his book bag, now a much more manageable weight. “I’m happy to be of service.”

Mary smiled again and then swung the door shut, and Scott turned away, toward the elevator. He could hear Mary resuming the conversation he’d interrupted.

So much for my Tour of Midtown Manhattan and Points West, Scott thought. He was trying to be cavalier, whistling as he exited Mary’s building. But by the time he was collapsed exhausted, defeated, in the rearmost seat of a crosstown bus (while Mary, no doubt, was zooming downtown in a taxicab), he was starting to feel sick—sick like he wanted to get into bed and hide under the covers and not move until he finally fell asleep. Then the morning would come and his mother would bring him Pop-Tarts and he wouldn’t feel so bad; he’d go back to Chadwick, and count the minutes until he saw her again.

Tough day.

“—HEAR ME? I ASKED if you’ve got a tough day coming, Scottie.”

Mary stood there, blinking, confused. What the hell?

An entire, detailed memory had come into her head right then, just as the doorman had used that phrase. She’d been reminded of something that happened and suddenly the entire experience was recalled to her, all at once.

But that was Scott’s memory.

The sensation was bizarre, almost hallucinogenic: a piece of Scott’s past had just dropped into her brain, as easily and seamlessly as if it were her own. It’s because I’m Scott, she realized with growing wonder. I’m not just in his body—I’m experiencing his memories, too.

No time had passed at all. Mary was still standing in the same spot, facing Scott’s doorman. That whole thing just occurred in a millisecond. Just like in real life (as opposed to this insane dream or hallucination or whatever it was), memories didn’t take up any time; they just appeared in your mind when prompted—even when they were somebody else’s memories.

The doorman was still right behind her, gold buttons gleaming, watching her stand there like a chess piece waiting to be moved. What should she do? Go back upstairs? Stay here? The fear made it difficult to think.

She remembered the phone call—the one she’d been on both ends of, without realizing it. She remembered the beginning of the day, making the call and hearing herself—

Hearing what I just said, she realized. What I said just now.

Maybe I can stop it, she thought suddenly. Maybe I can change what happened.

I’ve got to get there—I’ve got to get to school.

Pulling up the slipping strap of Scott’s book bag, Mary blundered outside, the seven A.M. overcast light gleaming in her eyes as her feet hit the sidewalk. The building’s awning had a round convex mirror bolted beneath it, and Mary saw her own reflection moving—saw a fish-eye view of Scott Sanders in an unusually rumpled sweatshirt, blinking comically.

Where the hell am I?

Mary gazed up at the white morning sky. She didn’t remember where Scott lived. It was embarrassing to realize: she knew Scott had told her, more than once, but she was drawing a blank. In the distance, the MetLife Building gleamed in the morning haze. East Side—somewhere in the fifties, she realized. That seemed correct: she vaguely remembered that Scott took the Lexington Avenue subway to school.

Don’t think—just move, Mary told herself doggedly. It was starting to feel like she would genuinely lose her mind if she kept thinking. Even if you’re dreaming, just follow the dream—follow it wherever it goes.

Like she had a choice. Mary pulled the slipping straps of Scott’s JanSport book bag up higher on her—his—soft, sloping shoulders. Walking north—still trying not to lose her footing as she propelled herself on Scott’s short, overweight legs—she crossed East Fifty-eighth Street (nearly getting sideswiped by a loudly honking taxicab whose driver cursed at her furiously in a Middle Eastern language) and ran away from the grinning doorman and the fun-house mirror, hurrying toward the Chadwick School.

IT WAS ALL SO real, but it moved like a dream. She was not herself—literally not herself—painfully biting her cheeks with Scott’s large teeth, stumbling over the cuffs of his rumpled sweatpants, feeling his soft, doughy stomach quivering as she walked, rather than her own tight abdomen (and the narrow band of skin she made sure was occasionally visible), or the cold air on the bare back of her neck rather than the cascade of jet-black hair that was supposed to be there. It was like wearing a heavy Halloween costume, but vastly stranger.

There was something else, too: there was something wrong with the pedestrians around her. She’d been noticing it since she stepped onto the street. She couldn’t put her finger on it; it was like one of those body snatcher or zombie movies where the ordinary people in the crowd were not what they seemed. But, crossing Sixtieth Street, she suddenly figured it out.

Nobody’s looking at me.

It was true. The difference was subtle, but she noticed it. Businessmen and kids and mothers and random passersby: nobody was looking. What did it mean? Am I a ghost? But that was ridiculous; Mrs. Sanders and Scott’s doorman had seen her, reacted to her.

But nobody’s looking.

It wasn’t just that nobody was checking her out—nobody was noticing her at all.

It made her feel invisible; it was somehow more unreal and unsettling than being transported back to the beginning of the day. No girls were whispering about her as she went past, furtively scoping the brand names on her clothes; no men were trying to sneak a look at her chest or her ass while she went by. Nobody cared.

Because I’m Scott.

Mary had never experienced anything like that. She was used to avoiding people’s glances, never returning the leers and stares of men she passed in the street—even if you wanted to look, you couldn’t, in case they got the wrong idea. She was so used to that rule, she obeyed it without thinking. Now she found herself trying to make eye contact, but it was impossible. It reminded her of the memory she’d just experienced—Scott’s memory. Is that really what happened? she thought. She remembered that night, of course; she’d faked being sick and made plans to go clubbing with Amy and Trick—and she remembered how sweet Scott was for bringing her books over.

But she’d never thought about what it had been like for Scott. She’d never considered the effort he’d put into helping her, or the sacrifices he’d had to make just to bring her the books she was too lazy (or too much of a truant) to get herself.

And there’s more to it, isn’t there? Mary had to face the fact that there was.

Have I been taking advantage of Scott?

It was a brand-new thought. She’d always assumed that Scott did what he did—helped her—out of kindness, because he was, well, such a sweet guy. It never occurred to her that Scott might have ulterior motives. Like, say, an enormous crush on her. She’d never dreamed that she was asking a lovesick boy to perform menial tasks and leveraging his crush to get what she wanted.

But that’s not really true, is it?

Mary had to admit that it wasn’t.

Because who was she kidding? Of course she knew Scott had a crush on her. She’d seen his eyes skate over her body many times (not just that night two weeks ago when he’d appeared at her apartment door with her books). If she wasn’t aware of Scott’s attraction, then why did she flirt with him? Why did she play it up the way she did, getting close to him, calling him sweetie and honey, touching his shoulder, kissing his cheek? (The memory of how that had felt for Scott—that desperate, mournful cocktail of fear and desire and frustration and loneliness—was completely vivid.) She’d been taking advantage of Scott for a long time; really, as long as she’d known him.

How often have I done that? Just demand that the people around her help her? As far as Scott was concerned, she had to admit that she couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t leaning on him. Didn’t I introduce myself just to get the notes for a math quiz? she thought uncomfortably. I did, didn’t I?

It was even worse than that. Scott knew it. He could see it in her eyes. Mary thought she was fooling Scott, but she wasn’t.

And yet he does it all anyway, she marveled. He knows what I’m doing—he knows the score—and yet he doesn’t stop; he still does what I ask.

Mary was fascinated, engrossed with what she’d realized. She kept propelling Scott’s soft body forward, her mind overwhelmed by these new revelations. I take advantage of Scott, she admitted. I totally take advantage of him—and he suffers, because of me. She thought about Scott’s memory of hauling her books all over Manhattan and nearly felt sick. I’m sorry, Scott. I’m so sorry.

THE FIFTY-NINTH STREET subway station was much more confusing than Mary had realized—she hurried onto a departing train, jamming Scott’s thick body in among a harried crowd of late-morning commuters, only to realize, four stops later, that she was going in the wrong direction. She pushed through the irritated crowd, escaping, only to realize that she’d disembarked at a local station and would have to climb to the street to catch the train headed back the other direction.

By the time she got to Chadwick, Mary’s body—Scott’s body—was covered in sweat, and she was panting hoarsely as her heartbeat thumped dangerously. Heart attack; Jesus Christ, I’m going to have a heart attack, she thought dazedly as she collapsed against the cast-iron mailbox on the corner of Eighty-second Street. Her lungs were on fire; she felt like she’d smoked an entire pack of Trick’s Dunhills in one night. She gasped, burping slightly (and tasting blueberry), and had a single, horrifying moment when her vision darkened and she was sure, absolutely positive, that she was about to vomit, but she waited, the taste of blueberry Pop-Tarts replaying through her mouth as she coughed up spit, and then she felt all right; she could see and breathe again.

This morning, she thought again, incredulously. It was beyond real—the overcast sky, the crowds of students in front of the school, the cell-phone calls and blaring headphones and endless screeching of the younger children; Mary took it all in, through the haze of pain.

Scott Sanders was not in shape—that much was obvious to anyone—but Mary had never stopped to realize how much it hurt when he tried to exert himself. Back in eighth grade when Scott had just barely missed the school bus that was leaving for Chadwick’s famous year-end day trip, all the students had laughed, pointing out the windows at his diminishing figure as he tried, and failed, to catch up. Mary had laughed just as loudly as the rest of them. She remembered it vividly, staring through the bus’s safety glass window at Super-Dork Scott running pathetically after them, finally collapsing against a parked SUV and—for the grand comic finale that Scott always managed to orchestrate back then—setting off its car alarm, which made the entire eighth-grade Chadwick class applaud in unison. The bus drove away and left Scott on the sidewalk, his anguished red face vanishing into the streetscape behind them. Mary had thought it was hilarious.

Now, with her lungs burning like twin blowtorches, she didn’t see what was so funny.

Trick …?

Her own voice, in the back of her head. Unusually vivid; it didn’t sound like a memory at all. Mary didn’t know what had made Trick’s name pop into her head, but—

“Come on.”

Trick’s voice, Mary realized instantly. It was hard to hear; difficult to pick out in the crowd. “Let’s walk.”

“Walk?”

Mary’s own voice again—also distant.

I’m not remembering, she realized suddenly. I’m hearing that.

That’s really me.

Mary craned her—Scott’s—neck, squinting as she strained to see. It wasn’t easy. Scott’s short body was getting battered around by the thickening crowd of Chadwick students as Mary pressed forward, trying to catch a glimpse of herself. She’d seen Trick’s golden curls, just for a second, but then her view was blocked again.

She hadn’t intended to scream—not at first. But the moment she saw herself—saw freshly showered Mary Shayne in her darling little FCUK T-shirt and her billowing trench coat and her blown-out hair—she was overcome with a frenzied need to protect herself from everything that was coming.

“Mary!” she screamed.

A clump of first graders in front of her turned toward her, their mouths and eyes wide open, like alarmed cartoon characters. As soon as she got her breath back, she screamed again. “Mary! Mary!”

The crowd was moving now, surging closer. Somebody’s hand slapped Mary in the face as another student pin-wheeled around, startled. The view through the crowd on the sidewalk was wide and deep, flickering with movement. She realized she was moving again, feeling Scott’s muffin-top fat rolling up and down as she stumbled forward. She couldn’t see Patrick or herself through the rest of the crowd, when—

There. Eye contact—Mary Shayne’s bright blue eyes, looking right at her.

“Mary, look out!” she screamed. “Look out, you’re in danger!”

Scott’s glasses tumbled from his face, dropping to the pavement—she heard their gold frames clattering and scraping against the cement. Blinded, she kept running through the blur.

But that’s me! she thought desperately. It’s still morning—I don’t have to do any of it! I’ve got time to get away.

“Mary, for Christ’s sake—” she screamed again. Her voice—Scott’s voice—was rasping so painfully that she had to start over. “Mary, you’ve got to listen—you’re in serious danger—”

It was like slamming into a tollbooth gate at high speed. The pain was incredible as Mary’s chest—Scott’s chest—slammed into some kind of horizontal immovable object, like a padded bar of cement.

“Hey, assface!”

Pete Schocken’s voice, from right up close. Mary couldn’t see a thing, but she suddenly smelled spearmint gum.

“What the hell, man?”

Definitely Pete. Mary was astonished. For years, Mary had thought of Pete as a buzz risk—a boy not to be around when he’d had a couple too many trips to the keg, because a drunk Pete Schocken would always manage to make the World’s Most Inept Pass at one of the girls (okay, at her) before the evening was over. He was basically harmless and he never remembered any of it by Monday morning, but pushing his hands away while trying not to spill a plastic cup of Belvedere vodka onto someone’s kitchen floor was not how Mary liked to spend her time when she went out.

But Pete’s so nice, she marveled. He had never seemed to have a mean bone in his body, as far back as she could remember. He was a teddy bear, a sweetheart, a boy who would always buy you another drink or call you a cab. Hearing him call anyone an assface—let alone her—was as shocking as hearing a nun say it.

“Mary, please listen,” she tried again, panting as she shouted some more and her throat burned. The football players were surrounding her, pressing in, and she couldn’t see a thing. She had to assume that Real Mary was still within earshot. “You’ve got to get out of—”

It was like getting struck by lightning—her vision flashed white and her ears popped as she was smacked, powerfully, in the face. Her eyes were stinging; she was now truly blind—the pain spread across the skin of her cheeks like flame through paper.

“Chill out, you goddamned freak!”

That’s Silly Billy, she recognized distantly. Billy Nelson—another boy she’d never imagine raising a hand to hurt anybody—calling Scott Sanders a “goddamned freak,” his voice booming down like God yelling the Ten Commandments.

“Mary, run!” Mary screamed again. “Please listen—you’ve got to—Ow!”

A fist collided with her collarbone, hard. She’d never stopped to think about how hard a boy could hit you if he was really trying, if there was nothing to hold him back. She lost her balance, tipping over backward as she kicked with Scott’s short legs and felt her feet slip. Real Mary still hadn’t responded—she seemed to be getting further away. Scott’s book bag slipped from her rounded shoulders and thumped to the ground, its contents spilling out. She landed against somebody’s crumpling legs, and the sidewalk was pressed against her cheek, rough and cold. Between somebody’s running socks, she could just make out the diminishing figures of Patrick and Real Mary, walking farther down Eighty-second Street.

“Mary, run!” she screamed one final time. Real Mary didn’t pay any attention at all—she just kept walking away.

No, no, Mary thought weakly as she rolled painfully up from the ground, trying to pick out individual voices from the yelling and laughing all around her. Please, no more … I can’t take anymore.

Her face was swimming in a sea of red—Scott’s book bag, she realized, wiping tears and dirt from her eyes and face, staring at the red fabric as she gasped for breath. They had stopped hitting her; that was the important part. It meant she could—

Mary froze in place, on all fours on the crowded sidewalk, staring down at the contents of Scott’s bag, which had corkscrewed out along the sidewalk. Shama’s physics test, and an iPod, and a stack of notebooks—

—and a roll of silver gaffer’s tape.

The spool of tape rolled lazily across the cement, circling like a dropped coin. Mary stared at it, mesmerized—in her memory, Joon squealed and twisted and panicked in the slashing, freezing rain, the silver tape over her anguished mouth, blocking her screams.

Inside the book bag, Mary finally saw what she’d been carrying, why the bag had felt so heavy. Coils of thick white nylon rope—yards and yards of it—were stuffed inside, nearly filling the bag.

It was Scott, Mary thought dazedly. Oh my God—it was Scott!

Was that even possible? Could Scott have killed her?

The stampede of students had somehow missed what had happened; they kept moving, legs and hands colliding with her as she stared into the bag. There was something else in there, something she didn’t recognize at all—a folded sheet of silver cloth. She had no idea what it was, or why Scott had it.

Was sweet little Scott Sanders a murderer?

Another, even stranger possibility occurred to her right then—a new thought that made her feel a deep, arctic chill.

Have I come back as my own killer?

Was there some cult or religion in which that happened? The murder victim comes back as her own murderer? Mary didn’t know anything about cults or religions. It sounded more like The Twilight Zone than any kind of—what did you call it?—theology.

But I’m here, she told herself, staring at the tape. She was still sitting on the sidewalk. I’m here, and I’m Scott—and it looks like he killed me.

The woozy feeling was coming over her in earnest. Bright lights, bright sky—it was all very bright. Scott killed me, she thought again, but somehow the idea seemed harmless, meaningless—she was drifting, she realized, losing her bearings, returning to whatever strange white void she’d first encountered ninety minutes ago, when she woke up in Scott’s bedroom.

“You okay, Sanders?” A distant voice—she couldn’t recognize it. It was a voice from another planet, coming from far, far away.

Is this it? Mary wondered as the brightness from the chrome reflections and flecks of mica and the dazzling sky grew brighter and brighter. The whiteness engulfed her like the whitecaps of a coastal tide flooding a beach, like snow engulfing a landscape, covering all detail, blotting out all shapes and colors, washing the world away into an endlessly bright field of white.