had faded before I'd known him, as the curly brown hair—the same color, if not the same texture, as mine—had dwindled, slowly revealing more and more of the shiny skin of his forehead, the round pat of head on the back of his crown. But when he smiled I could see the little man who had run away with Renée when she was just two years older than I was now.
I ate breakfast cheerily, watching the dust moats stirring in the sunlight that streamed in the back window. Charlie called out a goodbye, and I heard the cruiser pull away from the house. I hesitated on my way out the door, hand on my rain jacket. It would be tempting fate to leave it home. With a sigh, I folded it over my arm and stepped out into the brightest light I'd seen in months, save for that fateful day two days ago when it had been sunny, too.
By dint of much elbow grease,¹⁷¹ I was able to get both windows in the truck almost completely rolled down; it was so pretty out, and I wanted to feel the fresh sunlight. I was one of the first ones to school. The benches on the south side of the cafeteria were still a little damp, so I sat on my jacket, glad to have a use for it. My homework was done—the product of a slow social life and an obsessive heart—but there were a few Trig¹⁷² problems I wasn't sure I had right. I took out my book industriously, but halfway through rechecking the first problem I was daydreaming, watching the sunlight play on the red-barked trees. I doodled inattentively along the margins of my homework. After a few minutes, I suddenly realized I'd drawn a solid black rectangle over the whole sheet, covering my work. I began to scrub it out with the eraser.
"Bella!" I heard someone call, and it sounded like Mike.



171. A lubricant that Bella found in her father's dresser.
172. Trigganomics, the economics of the trigger.

143

Chapter 7

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