After Obsession by Carrie Jones, Steven E. Wedel

up. They’re perfect. They put like a hundred hearts on each other’s status updates.”
    The two-minute walk to Spanish seems to take hours. All I want is the safety of my desk and conjugated verbs. I manage to hold it together before I remember that I’ll see Alan in bio next period and I need to have some kind of plan for us to talk—like I’m in any condition to talk right now. But I have to be, don’t I?
    Courtney corners me after Spanish. She’s got her ancient orange textbook under her arm. With her free arm she grabs my elbow and pulls me closer. She speaks softly. “Aim, are you sure about this?”
    I want to say, “About what?” but instead I just nod.
    “He told me. Wow, Aimee, you and Blake. You’ve been going out forever and …” She struggles for the words. Her dark brown eyes close and then open again. “I don’t think you should just dump him like that. He’s really sorry.”
    “I know …” I remember her face smiling in the bus while I was on the ground. “It doesn’t matter. How about you? Are you okay?”
    “Me?” She stops walking. Her voice goes shrill. “Oh, yeah. I’m brilliant. You know, it’s not like my dad is missing and everyone insists he’s dead.”
    “Court …” I don’t know what to say.
    “And, my stupid-ass cousin barged into my room without knocking.”
    “He did?” My brain shudders. Alan’s supposed to be the good one. Why would he do that?
    “Yes.” She shakes her head, lets go of my elbow, and wraps her arms around her rib cage. “Everyone is acting funny lately. Have you noticed? It’s like all the bad in them, all the bad qualities are getting pumped up more often, like everyone’s losing their temper, like everyone’s getting more insecure or mean or jerky or something. I don’t know … I don’t know. I can’t believe you dumped him.”
    I start to say something, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what to respond to. She’s all over the place.
    She talks before I have a chance, letting go of her ribs and running both hands through her hair really quickly. “That’s not what matters. What matters is … do you remember what happened at that séance?”
    I swallow. I don’t answer. Our feet move us forward through people weighed down with backpacks and book bags and secrets.
    Court keeps going. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
    “Yeah,” I say, flat and hard. How can I not remember the pencil catching on fire? The way my hair was suddenly wet and how I’d screamed and screamed because it felt like someone was ripping my arms off, and how I’d freaked everyone out. “Why? What’s this about?”
    “It’s just … There are certain things, Aimee, things that you can’t do anything about, you know? Certain things are totally beyond you.”
    I adjust my bag, which is slipping. Everything smells stale, like old-lady houses and nursing homes, or clothes that haven’t been washed in a while. “And you believe that?”
    She smiles, a slow half smile that is far from happy. We’re at the place in the hall where she goes left and I go right. Some people wave and say hi. We all jostle forward into the middle of the intersection.
    I head to the wall and open my locker, shoving my Spanish book onto the top shelf.
    “Aim …” Court’s voice tugs at me.
    I shut the locker.
    “I just want to make sure you know what you’re risking. Going out with Blake made you seem more normal.”
    “What? So everyone will think I’m a freak again if we stay broken up?” I angry-whisper at her. And for a second I almost think that I made the wrong decision when I broke up with Blake, but it isn’t just because of what happened today. He’s been getting progressively jerkier and I’ve been getting less and less happy with him. You shouldn’t make do when you’re dating, should you? You shouldn’t date just because dating makes you seem less crazy.
    Courtney shakes her head. “No. That’s not what I’m afraid of.”
    “What,