1642734778_punk-57-pdf

He pulls off his headphones. “Are you okay?”
I know he was probably concerned about leaving me at school around
Trey and Lyla without him. I nod.
I’m tempted to tell him about my day. Trey’s threats, Manny in the
bathroom, J.D. and Ten at lunch. But no more distractions.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Annie?” I ask him.
His expression turns somber, and he slowly sits up. I move off him,
sliding onto the bed and sitting at his side.
“I would’ve,” he says, avoiding my eyes as he turns off his iPod. “I was
just waiting for us to calm down.”
I can understand that, but I’m not talking about when he came here as
Masen. I’m talking about in his letters.
“I heard about it and saw the name online,” I tell him, “but…why did
you tell me your last name was Lare?”
When I heard about the seventeen-year-old girl who died on Old Pointe
Road from a heart attack, I’d read her name was Anastasia Grayson.
Annie, I gather, is short for Anastasia, but Misha never told me his real
last name?
“Lare is my middle name,” he replies. “A family name. Everyone in
Thunder Bay knows the Graysons, and my grandfather is important. There’s
always been pressure to be and act a certain way. It was so aggravating as a
kid, and when I started writing you, I saw it as an opportunity to kind of be
free. Not really thinking that a kid our age probably wouldn’t know who
Senator Grayson was anyway.” He gives a weak laugh. “I legally changed it
to Lare when I turned eighteen, though. It suits me a lot better.”
So I guess I wasn’t the only one pretending to be someone else.
“She was an honor student,” he explains, “an athlete, and she was
always picture perfect. I wondered how she did it—how she found the time