I knew that Silas would come banging on my door, so I double locked it. In high school, I’d left a window open. A lifeline. I’d hoped.

But I’m not hoping now. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I also knew that he knew I had no place else to go. No money, no means to travel far away. So I’d parked my car behind the restaurant, where he wouldn’t see it, and I’d hidden inside.

I read every one of his texts, each getting more and more worried. I didn’t want him to worry.

He lied. That should’ve been enough for me to hate him. But I didn’t hate him for that. In fact, I understood why he did it. He wanted me, and I’d always denied him. I’d been insufferable, all this time, driving him to near madness with my anger and attitude. I made him so crazy, he lied, just to be with me.

I left my window open for him.

The night of prom, I ran all the way home. It was only ten o’clock when I got back, my eyes all bloodshot from tears and the mascara I never wore running down my cheeks like prison bars. My parents held me and told me it would be okay as I sobbed. They told me they never knew what I saw in that boy, even though they’d both liked him when they’d met him.

When I went up to bed a half-hour later, I left my window open for him. I never did that. I thought if there was any night for him to appear like Romeo beneath my window and make everything better, it would be that night.

But he never showed.

And he didn’t try to call me, all weekend.

The following Monday, Abby cornered me as I was pulling my books out of my locker. I thought she just wanted to hear the scoop on my first prom. Instead, she said, “What happened to you?”

I sighed. “We got in a fight.”

“And?” She seemed to think there was more to the story.

I shrugged. I didn’t know what else to say. I’d see him at lunch, and I’d apologize first. Or maybe he would. Whatever. It didn’t matter. We’d be back to “skating” at the Roll-a-Rama on Friday. “When do we not fight?”

I slammed my locker door, and she pulled me aside, her eyes furtively scanning the hallway. “So you haven’t heard?”

I stared at her. I managed a look down the hall, and sure enough, a few eyes were focused on me. What for? If I wasn’t with Silas, I was usually invisible. “Heard what?”

“Okay. Don’t flip out. It might not be true. But it’s all over the school.” She gnawed on her lip.

“Spit it out, Abby.”

She leaned forward, and in the smallest of whispers, said, “Geni. It’s all over the school that Silas fucked Erica Lindley on prom night.”

My heart froze, shattered, and the broken pieces climbed into my throat, suffocating me. “What? Who told you that?”

“A bunch of people. I didn’t believe it, of course,” she said. “But then . . .”

“Then?”

It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s just a rumor, I kept repeating to myself, as she came back with the answer that deadened my heart completely. “They were making out in the science wing hallway earlier. I saw them.”

Until then, I’d won the perfect attendance award every year. But I left school before that period, without an excuse. Without guilt. And also, without a heart.

He’d never talked to me again, after that. Not even a word. For the last week of school, I’d see Silas in the hallway, and I’d look the other way. I’d see him with Erica, the envy of most girls in school, and even I had to admit, they looked good together. Of course, I couldn’t look for long.

I didn’t have a heart, anymore, but it still hurt.

His relationship with Erica didn’t go anywhere. It probably ended over the summer, when he went to UCLA and she started school at Penn State, but I’d buried my head in the sand. I threw myself into college applications and SAT prep. I lived and breathed schoolwork. Eventually, I could carry on without thinking of him every second of every day.

So as I lie in my bed now, crying my eyes out, I think that as hard as it was, I can do that again. I will. When he’d been here, with me, I’d thought that maybe I hadn’t lost my heart forever. I could feel it inside me, beating again.

Funny, it doesn’t hurt any less when it’s broken a second time.

No, he didn’t cheat on me. But he’d deceived me by telling me that his life in football was over. He knows that if I knew he had any chance of playing again, I would tell him to get out, to go for it. And part of me is happy that he’ll be back, doing what he loves. It’s what is meant to be. Us? We weren’t meant to be.

The following morning, he’s at my apartment, banging on the door again, at barely seven. “Genevieve!” he shouts, banging on the door so loud that the glass inside rattles and Mr. Chen, downstairs, comes out with his broom, chasing him away. I hide in my bedroom until I see his truck speed away. He knows I am in here, knows I don’t have anywhere else to go, and it’s just a matter of time before he finds me. I can’t hide in a town this small. I’m trapped.

So that afternoon, I write out twenty letters of inquiry to newspapers across the country. I print out copies of my best articles that I’d written at UPenn, and fold them into envelopes. I post them all in the mailbox on the corner, then scurry back upstairs, and go to bed.

When I wake up on Sunday, there are more texts from Silas. The last one: I’m sorry. I’m getting the surgery tomorrow, leaving for Philly at 6 a.m. I’ll be outside your door then if you want to come with me.

I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. I’m happy, because he’s getting the surgery. He’s doing what he’s meant to do in life. That was the reason I let him go the first time, and the real purpose of his life, because here would have just been a dead end.

But going to Philly with him would only be prolonging the inevitable. We are from two different worlds, and it’s not going to work.