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Alex takes a deep breath, lips working as she searches for words. Finally a calm settles, one that radiates from her eyes and flows outward from there until she’s not a panicked animal anymore. She’s a frozen statue of my girlfriend, and as she starts to talk, I’m the one who wants to run.

“Jack,” she says calmly. “I have reactions to my environment that others wouldn’t understand. I follow through on them because I believe in instinct.”

I hear a siren, a high-pitched wail as the ambulance comes screaming from town. It digs into my ears, the miles separating me from it turned into nothing by the cold winter air. The fire truck comes next, the one engine that the town owns ripping through the calm that I’d hated only a few minutes ago.

“What are you saying?” I watch her intently, too scared to move, afraid she might bolt if I startle her.

“The other night you asked me about college.”

“You said it’s better if you don’t go.”

“Better for other people, Jack,” she corrects me. “I feel too much.” Her face crumples a little, a thaw creeping in.

“I shouldn’t be out,” she says, her voice breaking. “It’s not safe.”

“Alex.” I say her name quietly, in between siren pulses. “Alex, what did you do?”

She closes her eyes and exhales, the warmth of her breath pluming all around her. “If I don’t let my feelings guide me in my actions, it’s the same as not having them at all,” she says. Her eyes open and she’s scared again, the momentary calm shattered by the noise. “I might as well not exist.”

“You exist,” I say, and she comes to me, fresh tears filling the tracks left behind by frozen ones. She’s in my arms in a moment, but pulls back for one second to lock eyes with me.

“I love you, too,” she says.

And my heart slams up into my throat at the same time that my stomach drops into my knees.

Because Alex loves me.

And she smells like smoke.

43. PEEKAY

Alex is broken, and it’s painful to see.

We had this dog at the shelter once, an Irish wolfhound. Big-ass dog, gorgeous in her own way. We named her Brigit—a good Irish name—cleaned her up and put her on the shelter’s Facebook page while we waited to borrow the one scanner all the surrounding counties use to check strays for microchips.

The response was immediate—everyone basically said What the hell is that?

People around here have golden retrievers and German shepherds, dogs that make sense, practical pets that others can identify and congratulate you on. There was interest, don’t get me wrong. Lots of people stopped by just to see Brigit in the flesh, walk her out of the pity in their hearts and then plop her back in the cage and take home a beagle, saying, “I think we’re looking for something a little more . . . normal.”

And Brigit, with her long face and distinctive bearing, would curl up in her cage, pride emanating from every muscle. But you could see in her eyes she was hurt. When our turn came to use the scanner I did Brigit myself, my heart skipping a beat when I got a beep and a phone number to call. Her family was from New York, which isn’t actually all that far from us if you think about it, but everyone around the shelter was so stunned they kept repeating it, as if we found out she was actually from Ireland.

Her family came to get her, and not a day too late. Brigit’s head had begun to hang, her food dish not emptying at a healthy rate. When she heard their voices in the waiting room, I don’t think she believed it. I thought she might go ballistic, tear down the hall dragging me by the leash like a lot of dogs do when they find their people again. But Brigit just looked at me when I clipped her leash on and opened the door, like she suspected this was another opportunity to be dragged out into public to have someone look at her skeptically again.

If that dog had middle fingers I guarantee you she would have flipped off this entire county as she headed home in her family’s Hummer.

Someone finally got Alex. Someone finally realized that here amid all the regular people and normal lives there was a truly remarkable person, a girl who doesn’t look like everyone else or even think like us. Alex is a different breed altogether, but here we just want variations of the same. The safe. The known. Someone finally saw past all that.

Unfortunately that someone was Jack Fisher, and he’s the type who takes all the dogs home for an overnight but never actually adopts any.

It’s been two weeks since they stopped talking. Two weeks of snow and bitter cold, ice hanging from our windows and freezing up our cars. It’s dark when we wake up and getting dark when we head home from school. Some days it’s been so cold just going outside can almost kill you. When we do have school, the wind cuts right through us as we walk toward the building, me hunched against it, Alex standing tall, not seeming to care.

Her eyes have been blank, her mouth forming the right words to constitute a response, but there’s nothing behind them, no feeling. I’ve had her over a few times, casually mentioned the names of some boys that I’ve caught checking her out (because let’s face it, once one person tries Irish wolfhound, the others get curious). But she shakes her head, says she’s not interested.

She never misses her hours at the shelter and does all her homework, maintaining her path to valedictorian. She moves through all the scheduled events as if each day is a job, and anything more is considered overtime. I position myself in the right place at school, shielding her from Jack as he walks by, hoping my body blunts the chaotic knife of Branley’s laughter as she hangs from his arm. But if she’s laughing it’s not because he said something funny.

Park says Jack doesn’t make jokes anymore. We’ve tried to ask questions, me to Alex, Park to Jack, our words chosen carefully, not like we’re digging to figure out why they broke up.

The boys say it’s because she wouldn’t put out.