Seven.

Clarice glanced at herself in the window and smoothed her hair again before sneaking a gaze across the classroom. He was still sitting where he did every day, crouched over his desk and reading a book. It was a big book, too; much bigger than what everyone else was reading. Niko was Smart, though, so that was only right. Niko was smarter than anyone else.

He was also Quiet, and Mysterious, equally positive quantities. And the only boy who never looked at her.

Her mother said Clarice looked like a princess. Clarice thought so too. She had long wavy red hair like Ariel and big blue eyes (doe eyes, her father said, and kissed both her cheeks). All the other boys seemed to agree, and treated her in the customary manner – chasing her around the playground while shrieking like gulls, and presenting her with gifts ranging from small rocks to a bird's feather.

By now, she had all of them firmly under her dominion, and everyone else knew it too. Except for Niko.

Niko with his big books and Quiet and eyes as blue as hers (which made them perfect for each other, clearly).

She smoothed her hair again, glanced at the teacher looking the other way, and glowered at Louis until he got up and moved so she could sit down next to Niko. Clarice swished her hair regally and batted her eyelashes. "Hello," she said, in her Sophisticate voice (oh, she's so mature! cooed her mother), "Niko, I presume?"

He looked up and his blond hair slipped into his eyes a little. It was falling out of the loose ponytail he kept it in. She thought it was very handsome, even if the other boys called him a girl for it. He looked at her for a few moments and then said, "Hello," before going back to his reading.

Clarice sighed. Clearly he was going to be difficult. She chewed her lip and then stopped, remembering that princesses did not chew on their lips (at least, according to her father). "Niko Leandros," she said, with an air of declaiming a fact, "Will you be my boyfriend?"

Niko glanced up from his book and tucked his hair behind his ears. He regarded her solemnly. You could tell from his face that he was Smart, even though he didn't wear glasses. "No," he said, after several moments. "I'm sorry. I think Justin would be your boyfriend if you asked him, though."

Clarice knew what this was. This was being Coy, and her mother had explained it to her. (Boys like a little bit of a game, she said sagely. Be Coy. Flutter Your Eyelashes. Clarice had taken this advice to heart and fluttered her eyelashes at every opportunity, though really it just made her look like she was blinking very quickly.) "I am asking you," she said.

"I'm very busy," said Niko, politely. "I'm sure you'll find someone else." And he went back to his book.

Thirteen.

Today, Marisa told herself, I will be brave.

Really, it shouldn't have been so hard. Niko wasn't intimidating, not like other boys often were, and he didn't make fun of her for being shy. He was quiet and polite and smiled kindly at her. And yet no matter how often she planned to talk to him properly, somehow it just never happened. He sat at his desk doing his work and she sat at her desk doing her work and she never quite got the courage to cross that barrier.

Who was she kidding? Niko wasn't loud or popular, but he was smart and handsome and athletic, and way out of her league. But he always made a point to say hello to her, and that meant something, didn't it?

Her older sister said it did. "Maybe he's just shy, like you, Mar," she said. "Maybe he's waiting for you to make a move."

"Or maybe he's already going out with someone and I just don't know about it," Marisa said glumly, but she knew that wasn't really the case. Had confirmed it with two or three people, and then a couple other people, just to be entirely sure.

And today she was going to be brave. At least she could try, right?

Hugging her bag to her chest, Marisa sidled into the classroom and sat down, looking at the empty desk next to her and feeling her stomach drop. What if he wasn't here today? All her plans would go to waste, and who knew when she would next be brave enough to try broaching a real conversation with him? Maybe not for months. Maybe never.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the door opened and Niko stepped through. He looked tired, his hair braided a little more messily than usual, and she could see what looked like a smudge of dirt or a bruise on his cheek. She felt immediately concerned and it helped her to lean over when he sat down. "Hey," she said, bravely. He glanced at her before reaching into his bag and pulling out a notebook.

"Hey, Marisa," he said, not smiling. He didn't smile very often, but she had seen him do it once.

She took a deep, brave breath, and said, "How are you?" It was a start, anyway. Niko seemed surprised and actually turned his head, looking straight at her. His eyes were a beautiful gray color, and Marisa could almost hear her breath hitch.

"I'm – okay," Niko said, and then added, "Cal's - sick, so I guess a little – tired."

Cal, Marisa remembered after a moment, was Niko's little brother. She'd only seen him once, and he'd struck her mostly as tiny, hair as black as Niko's was fair. "Oh," she said, "I'm sorry." She looked at her desk and cleared her throat. Niko looked at his and opened his notebook, pulling out a pen. She watched him test it for ink, and when he sighed realized that it must be out.

"I could lend you one," Marisa said hastily, and scrambled for her bag. "Here, let me-"

"No, it's okay," Niko said. "I've got another. Right here." He held it up, and actually smiled at her a little this time. "Thanks, though."

Marisa felt obscurely embarrassed. Of course he had another pen. She ducked her head.

Now, girl! Now or never, she heard her sister's voice in her head. The bell was about to ring, and she knew from experience that Niko was nothing but focus during class. She looked at his profile and opened her mouth.

Do you want to go out with me sometime?

What came out, though, was, "I hope your brother feels better soon."

Niko nodded a little, and rubbed his eye. "Yeah," he said quietly, "Me too."

Idiot! Marisa thought, You lost your chance. Maybe another day…

But some part of her knew she never would.

Sixteen.

Kaitlin's problem, her friends generally agreed, was that she was too friendly.

Kaitlin thought this was immensely funny. But then, there wasn't much that Kaitlin didn't find immensely funny.

Except for Niko. She was completely serious about that.

Not that she was the only one. It was generally agreed by most of the girls at Kennedy that Niko would be a catch indeed. For one thing, he wasn't a dick, which was sadly the exception to the rule, for the most part. For another, he was built. Not bodybuilder built, but strong. Abby swore that she'd heard he could bench 350, which Kaitlin was pretty sure was an exaggeration, but then again…

He was smart, too. Quiet, so no one really knew how smart, but straight A's was probably a good guess. And he was mysterious. Aside from his athleticism and his grades, no one really knew much about him. He never took friends home – in fact, he didn't really make friends. He had a younger brother – in eighth grade – who according to the word on the street was constantly on the verge of becoming a delinquent.

Nobody cared about the younger brother, though, except that he added mystique to Niko's overall draw.

And Kaitlin had pinned her hopes for Tolo on snagging herself a Leandros. (That was his last name. Greek, and exotic. Kaitlin liked that, too. Her family was so completely white-bread that even if Niko didn't look very Greek – it was more foreign flavor than in her own life.)

With the sanction of her friends, then, she set out on a crusade, well aware that no one thought she would succeed.

On the first day, she plopped herself down next to him in English and put her elbows on his desk. "Hey," she said, with her best smile – the one that showed all her teeth. "How're things, Mr. Leandros?"

Niko gave her a look that seemed somewhere between baffled and pitying, but Kaitlin was not thrown. "I…don't think we've met," he said. He had a good voice, too. The kind of voice that could actually whisper sweet nothings, and might.

"Kaitlin Smith," she said, "And no, I don't think we really have. But I know you." She smiled even more.

Niko's eyebrows looked like they wanted to quiver. Kaitlin wanted him to lift one. She'd never actually seen someone lift a single eyebrow, though she'd once spent an afternoon in front of a mirror trying. "Got it," Niko said, and then leaned away from her to fish through his backpack. Kaitlin watched him like a hawk.

"Is it true that you can bench 350 pounds?" She asked, smiling so he knew that she was just kidding, teasing. Niko glanced at her, and didn't crack a smile.

"I'm more about endurance, actually," he said, and she would have suspected a dirty joke if he hadn't sounded so serious. "Listen, I need to catch up on some of my notes, so could you give me a little space?"

Kaitlin moved, slightly, and opened her mouth to say something else, but he cut her off with a "thanks," body angled to block her out with one shoulder.

She could hear her friends snickering at the front of the classroom and glared at them. Karen mouthed 'subtle' at her, and Kaitlin flipped her off. Niko didn't seem aware of any of it, flipping through his notebook.

Kaitlin chewed on her pencil and revised her strategy.

She discovered rapidly, however, that nothing worked. She slipped him a couple notes, which he ignored. She invited him to eat lunch with her and her friends, which he declined. She seethed to Karen: "Who ever heard of a guy playing hard to get?"

"Maybe he's gay," was Karen's suggestion, to which Kaitlin scoffed.

"I'd know if he were gay," she said, defiantly. "I'd totally know."

Finally, she exploded. "Do you want to go to Tolo with me?" she said, with an air of command, the week before, and he looked at her for a long time and then looked a little like he was trying not to smile.

"Sorry," he said, "Maybe if you'd asked a week ago…"

Kaitlin fumed, but not as much as she did when she asked around and discovered that no one knew who Niko had been asked by. It was only when she didn't see him at the dance at all that Kaitlin figured out that she had been duped.

"Never trust a nice guy," she said to Karen.

"He's probably gay," agreed Karen.

And that was that.

Twenty.

Three years she'd dated Jared, and Tanya still couldn't quite believe that she was out. It'd been three weeks, and there were no more texts threatening, begging, pleading – and yet she still couldn't believe it.

It was a little too much like a miracle.

Her bruises had all faded, and she wasn't looking over her shoulder anymore (at least not around other people) and yet – and yet. She kept expecting this to be like a good dream, ending any time now. Probably soon.

She knew the emotional scars wouldn't be quick to fade, but there was still an urge to go out and date someone else, to prove that she could. Or even just to talk to a guy, to prove that she could. She was still working on repairing her relationships with her friends, crumbled and damaged by the enforced isolation, and here she was planning a date

Tanya figured she maybe deserved to be a little giddy. After all, that initial period had been taken from her by one awful, destructive relationship. It would just be comforting to see if she could find a decent guy this time.

She had one in mind, too.

He was in her Comparative Gov class, and while he kept his head down, he seemed to be a decent guy. Of course, she reminded herself, Jared had seemed to be a decent guy at first too.

But she thought her instincts might have improved a little. Hopefully. Even just a little. And the only things anyone said about Niko were good, if vague, where Jared had made her friends' skin crawl, no matter how charming he had been at the beginning.

No one disliked Niko. Of course, no one seemed to really like him either, but he didn't talk too much, so maybe that wasn't surprising.

When she asked him tentatively if he wanted to do coffee after class one evening, though, she was still surprised when he said yes, and even smiled. A little smile, but still a smile.

They ended up getting soup instead of coffee, and it was nice. They talked about class, for a while, and it was dark by the time they finished. Tanya cleared her throat bravely and said, "We should do this again. Sometime."

"Sure," Niko said, "Though you should probably know I don't – really date."

Tanya felt a little twinge of disappointment and relief at the same time, but managed a lofty, "Your loss," in spite of it that made Niko laugh.

Niko offered to walk her home, and she accepted. They started back toward the campus, and were about halfway there when Niko leaned down and murmured, "We're being followed."

Tanya felt a chill run all down her back and froze. Jared, she thought, and cringed. "Oh, god," she said, irrational fear filling her up, and she scrambled for her cell phone, only to realize she'd left it at home.

"Come on," Niko said, and lengthened his stride. She sensed something, a change in him, maybe, but she was too busy trying to look behind them. "I don't – maybe you should just go," she said, quickly. "I don't want you to get hurt, I'll be fine."

"I'm not going to do that," he said, quietly, and then stopped. "Here. Just…stand there. And don't move. I can handle this." His voice had dropped a couple notes, and she could feel the tension vibrating through him, and she was suddenly scared. Niko was slender – muscled, but slender, and Jared was – not small.

"Wait," she said, but then Niko was gone, and she realized that she couldn't see him, couldn't even hear him.

She could hear them fighting, though, and backed up against the hedge. The short yell she heard a moment later made her jump, and then Niko was back, taking her arm and starting them walking again. He didn't say a word.

She could feel the rigidity in his body, though. "You okay?" Tanya managed.

"Fine," Niko said, shortly. "I can't stand bullies."

He dropped her off at her dorm, and even kissed her cheek, and didn't say another word before ghosting off into the dark.

She heard the next day that Jared had shown up at the hospital with a broken nose, finger, and a concussion.

He was gone less than five minutes, Tanya thought, and knew who she was more afraid of.

Twenty-two.

Lauren checked her watch again. It still said the same time. 9:45 PM.

She'd agreed to meet Niko at 9:30.

A week, she thought, a week! Trying to get him to go out with her, and he had as good as said the only reason he agreed was because his brother had threatened to start bringing home hookers. Well, that wasn't how he'd put it. But she got the gist.

Guy sure knew how to make a girl feel wanted.

And now this. She paced back and forth, rolled her eyes, and tapped her foot on the sidewalk. This was all so humiliating, so unnecessary. It wasn't like she had to struggle to get a date, no. She was good looking, smart, outgoing – but she'd really thought this one was worth it.

What a bust.

She glanced at the bus stop. Maybe traffic was bad. Maybe… she hadn't been able to get a phone number out of him, but maybe one of her friends knew.

She called Carmen, who picked up on the first ring. "Hey," Lauren said, trying to keep the irritation on low so Carmen wouldn't think it was for her. "You know Niko's phone number? I've been waiting here for fifteen minutes and-"

"Oh, honey," said Carmen, "You didn't hear?"

Lauren's mouth went suddenly dry. "Didn't hear what?" she asked, pressing the phone more closely to her ear.

"There was a fire two days ago," Carmen said, "In some trailer – they released the dead woman's name about an hour ago. Sophia Leandros. Must've been his mother."

Lauren took a deep breath. "And – Niko and his brother?"

"No sign," Carmen said gently. "Best guess…"

Lauren didn't need Carmen to say it. She swallowed hard. "Thanks, Carmen," she managed. "I'd better go home. Bye." She stared numbly at the bus-stop, looking right through it. Tried to imagine Niko, quiet Niko with his head down and so fucking studious, lighting a trailer on fire. Him and his brother, must have done it together, and then booked it for the hills. A couple of arsonists and murderers.

It's always the quiet ones, Lauren thought, and shivered.