In the dark and in the night, it made some kind of sense. There we were, two DJs, standing close together, sharing an evening where every song we touched felt golden. But in the harsh light of morning, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. He was nearly twenty, I was in high school. He was cool, I was not.

So why had he kissed me?

I got out of bed, threw on a pair of jeans and a plain T-shirt, and braided my hair so it would be out of the way. Before I went downstairs for breakfast, I opened up my laptop. I clicked away from the DJ program I’d been using the night before and opened up my Internet browser. Then I googled “Flash Tommy” and clicked over to his Web site.

It was filled with party photos. I saw boys smoking in bathrooms, girls pretending to take off their clothes, boys and girls making out in every combination. I saw lots of shots of Pippa: Pippa dancing with Vicky, Pippa downing a glass of wine, Pippa with her arms around Char. I quickly scrolled away from that last one.

And then I came across what I’d been looking for: a photo of me. It wasn’t one of those that Flash Tommy had taken when I first arrived last night. I hadn’t noticed him shooting this one. In the photo, I am standing alone in the DJ booth. I have my headphones half on, and I’m looking out just past the camera, smiling like I have a secret. The dress that Vicky helped me buy makes me look like a punk-rock ballerina, and my eyes look wider and bluer than I remembered them ever looking before.

I glanced toward my mirror, but I bore only a passing resemblance to the Elise in that photo on that Web site. My eyes were puffy, and the most punk-rock thing about me was that the cuffs of my jeans were frayed. But I was still smiling like I had a secret. Because I did.

I decided right then that Flash Tommy’s big fancy camera, no matter how much it had cost him, was worth every single penny.

I hummed my way through breakfast and the bus ride to school, all the way to my locker. I was working on my combination when my friends showed up. You know, Chava and Sally. Those friends.

“Just the people I wanted to see!” I said to them, and I wasn’t even being sarcastic for once. I have watched enough popular television to know that when a boy does something inexplicable, like kiss you out of nowhere, you are supposed to discuss it with your girls. Especially if your girls are people like Chava and Sally. There is nothing they love more than trying to explain the behavior of boys they don’t know.

Yet neither of them responded by saying, “Girlfriend! Spill the gossip!” which is how your girls are supposed to talk to you, according to popular television. Instead, Chava said to me, looking very serious, “Elise, Sally and I just want you to know that we are here for you. We are your friends and we are here for you,” she went on grimly. “Like, in your times of need.”

“Okay, that’s great.” I raised my eyebrows at her. I assumed she wasn’t talking about Char kissing me, since that wasn’t exactly a “time of need.”

“And you can tell us anything,” Sally added. “In fact, you should tell us anything. That’s what friends do.”

“You should tell us anything so that we can be supportive,” Chava said. “You know, of whatever it is that you tell us.”

“Plus, we tell you everything,” Sally added. “So it seems only fair.”

“I do tell you everything,” I said, which was not true. But I told them more than I told anyone else at school, so it seemed like a lot.

Sally said, “You didn’t tell us that you want to kill yourself.”

I heard a loud whoosh in my ears, and I felt dizzy, like the earth was suddenly rotating around me very, very fast. I pulled my sleeves down over my wrists in an instant, like a reflex.

“I don’t want to kill myself,” I said in a shaky voice.

“You see, she doesn’t tell us anything,” Sally complained to Chava.

“Who said I wanted to kill myself?”

“You did,” Sally said.

“You just claimed that I never tell you anything!” I slammed my fist against my locker, and Sally and Chava exchanged a look of concern.

“We read it in your blog,” Chava said.

“I don’t keep a blog.”

“Okay, your ‘online journal,’ then,” Sally said with a sigh.

“I don’t keep one of those either.”

“Elise, you can trust us,” Chava said gently.

“Then can I trust you to tell me who claims that I have a goddamn blog about my suicidal tendencies?”

Sally wrinkled up her nose. Predictably, Sally’s parents do not allow her to swear. She was probably supposed to put a quarter in a jar just for listening to me.

“Everyone,” Chava said, blinking hard, like she was trying to hold back tears. “Everyone has read it.”

I shoved past them and ran down the hall to the computer lab. I sat down and typed in “Elise Dembowski” to Google. The first option that popped up was “Elise Dembowski, MD.” The second was “Elise Dembowski Tampa Florida school superintendent.” But the third line read, “Elise Dembowski suicide.”

I clicked on the link, then stuck my fist into my mouth and bit down while I waited for the page to load. When it came up, it was a design scheme of orange stars, with the heading “Elise Dembowski’s Super-Secret Diary,” and the sheer juxtaposition of my name and my least-favorite color was shocking to me.

I started reading.

May 6: i hate my life and i just want to die. nobody likes me, and i deserve it. why WOULD anyone ever want to be friends with me? i’m ugly and boring and stuck up. i wish i could kill myself, but ever since the last time i tried, my parents keep our medicine cabinet locked up and they hide our knives. i hate my parents—why won’t they just let me die? i’d be doing them a favor. xoxo elise dembowski

May 1: just think of all the attention i would get if i killed myself. i bet they would have a school assembly about me and people would have to say nice things about me, even if they didn’t mean them. maybe the paper would even run a feature on me! xoxo elise dembowski

April 27: confession time: no boy has EVER kissed me. actually i guess that’s not a surprising confession since i am so awkward and gross. i know that i will be alone for the rest of my life, so i just hope that the rest of my life is short. xoxo elise dembowski

April 21: today i made a list of everyone who i hate. my name is at the top of the list, obviously. amelia kindl is second. if only she hadn’t turned me in that first time i tried to commit suicide. then i could just be dead right now and wouldn’t have to keep living my pathetic, worthless life. but no. i told her, and she betrayed me. she puts on this ‘nice little girl’ act, but it’s just an act. i won’t ever forgive her. xoxo elise dembowski

I stopped reading not because I wanted to but because I couldn’t see the computer screen anymore. Black spots crowded across my vision, and I realized I hadn’t taken a breath since I started reading. I took my fist out of my mouth and exhaled, and my eyes got better, but nothing else did.

Somebody had taken my life, my identity, every negative thought I had ever had, and they had perverted them, twisted them into something grotesque. A version of me, but not me.

There was no question in my mind that this was what Amelia Kindl had been talking about during scoliosis testing when she spoke to me, for the first time all school year, to say, “And now there’s this.”

Who had done this, and why? Who would possibly expend the time and energy just to hurt me this much?

But the answer to that came to me instantly: lots of people. Jordan DiCecca and Chuck Boening had easily managed that iPod theft last year, so there was no reason why creating a fake Web site about me would be beyond their abilities, except for the fact that they may or may not know how to type in full sentences.

Lizzie Reardon, it seemed, had endless time to devote to bullying me. Writing a dozen blog posts over the past two weeks wouldn’t be nearly as hard for her to pull off as the time in seventh grade when she orchestrated a supposed date between me and Mike Rosen that wound up with me getting pelted with water balloons while waiting alone in front of the Baskin-Robbins, wearing my favorite lace dress.

Then there was that “Elise Dembowski: Let us give you a makeover!” ad that Emily Wallace and her friends had run in the eighth-grade yearbook. If they were each willing to chip in $25 to have a laugh at my expense, I felt sure they could get it together to create a free Web site that would give them an even bigger laugh.

It didn’t matter who had created this fake diary. In a way, that was the worst part about this: there were so many people who didn’t like me, I couldn’t even narrow down a list of suspects. It could have been anyone.

I logged out of the computer and went to class then, because I didn’t know where else to go. Amelia glared at me from her desk, and Mr. Hernandez gave me a demerit for being late. I sat at my desk, taking notes on autopilot, and writing affirmations in the notebook margins, like the psychiatrist had told me to. I am a good person. I like myself the way I am. Many people love and care about me. I have a purpose in life. I don’t want to kill myself.

I wrote over and over the words, pressing my pen down as hard as I could, until I broke through that sheet of paper and ink bled onto the page behind it.

As Mr. Hernandez lectured, I looked around the room and tried to figure out who had read my fake diary. Chava had said everyone. But what did that mean? Amelia had read it, that much was clear from the way her face scrunched up when she looked at me. Which meant that Amelia’s friend, the mummy documentary girl, must have read it, too, since she crossed her arms and glared at me when she noticed me looking at Amelia. A few rows ahead of me, two boys were whispering, and then I clearly heard one of them say “suicide girl.” Mr. Hernandez clapped his hands and said, “All right, folks, can I get some attention up here?” but I still felt the eyes on me.