The Six Rules of Maybe

it, Scarlet Ellis? You are a life-watcher. You take it in, all of it.”
    I willed myself not to blush. “I gotta run,” I said. I rinsed my bowl, jammed it into the dishwasher.
    “Look both ways and don’t talk to strangers,” he said.
    “Okay, Dad,” I said.
    I waited outside for Derek. The day was sunny and you couldsmell flowers blooming. I swear I could smell the orange red of Ally Peet-Robbins’s bed of primroses. I had that big, big feeling that sat right next to giddy . Where you feel like you could build a building or stop warring nations or create a masterpiece, and you want to start right then. I life-watched; I took it all in, it was true. That was me. That’s who I was. That’s who I was exactly.
    Usually you could hear Derek Nakasani’s car before you could see it. The Camaro made the sound a large animal might make in the back of its throat when provoked. I once made the mistake of making Derek wait because I was late, or should I say making Derek not wait. So I tried to be early and stood in front of our house with my backpack at my feet. The cars still sat in Clive Weaver’s driveway, quiet with importance.
    My eye caught on something on the sidewalk in front of Goth Girl’s house. Something pink. A new design started already? I crossed the street to get a better look.
    A new design, yes, but it was nothing like anything she’d ever drawn before. It was simple. The sparest message. No hints of famous paintings, no family members in punishing poses. No vampires with fangs and blood. Just a red Volkswagen. A tuxedo. A dress, one that a princess might wear—pink, with a full skirt. Underneath it were the words Prom dress . A pair of shoes, and the words under that: Prom shoes .
    Every bad thought I’d had the night before about helping people, about being a good person—they vanished, just like that. This was why you helped people. This was why you did the right thing. Because you could make a difference when no one else could. Because you were actually needed . You watched life, you took it all in, and then you did something about it. Goth Girl wastalking to me. Goth Girl was telling me her deepest secret.
    Goth Girl wanted to go to the prom.
    “Are you ignoring me? Because I have the feeling you’re ignoring me.” When I shut my locker door and turned around, I found Reilly Ogden standing there.
    “Jesus, Reilly, you scared me.” Reilly had a way of appearing out of nowhere. That day, he wore a black dress shirt open to his chest, a traveling salesman stuck in the seventies, ready to pick up foxy chicks in a hotel bar. His hair had something slippery on it; it was stuck up in some punk-cool, circa 1980. His tennis shoes were high-tech millennium cool. Who knew what year the actual Reilly Ogden was inside.
    I had seen Reilly’s house once, the night I made the mistake of going to the dance with him. It was one of those flat fifties houses with small windows and that white stuff that looks like Grape-Nuts sprayed onto the low ceiling. There was a BMW out front, his parents’ car. Inside, the living room smelled like someone had just cooked bacon. It had a sort of creepy basement. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m really only about sixty-eight percent okay with basements.
    “Scarlet, what’s wrong? Things haven’t been the same between us.”
    “Look, Reilly,” I said. “I’m just not ready to get involved with anyone, okay? Don’t take it personal.” Which you only said, of course, when something was very personal.
    “We’re already involved . You came to my house … ,” he whined.
    I shoved past him, remembering the cold sweat on his palm that night at the dance when he had tried to hold my hand. I headed forMs. Cassaday’s AP English. I sat in that hard plastic seat and tried to concentrate on Tess of the d’Urbervilles . My mind couldn’t be still, and that rarely happened in Ms. Cassaday’s class. She was bold and important and never spoke about her personal life, even though we all knew she lived with Elaine Blackstone, who worked at the oyster beds. You wondered what their house looked like inside, and if, every morning, sitting on the edge of their bed, Elaine put her work boots on—the green rubber ones you saw her wearing at Johnny’s Market, her jeans tucked down inside.
    But that day I couldn’t be hooked in by Ms. Cassaday’s words. I was unfocused and gaze-y, staring out the classroom window which looked out over the baseball field,