As Nico fled down the hall toward English, he turned around to see Sophie disappear into the orchestra room as Ms. Somers shut the door behind her. Huh. That was weird. Usually, after they’d said goodbye, Sophie would kiss her fingers and then wave them at him, and then he’d do the same thing. That was, like, their thing.

She was being weird today. Nico had told her not to eat the hot lunch at school. He was pretty sure that there were mood-altering chemicals in there, maybe added in by the government, to try to keep the youth population docile. And the way Sophie was acting? Well, it was basically solid proof. But Sophie had a weakness for the crispy chicken sandwich in the cafeteria, no matter how much Nico warned her about what might be in there.

“Move it, Osterman!” Jess Howard barked as she stalked down the hall. Nico slid out of her way.

“Hey, Jess,” he said. “Did you hear about Teddy and Kim—”

“Yeah, I heard,” Jess snapped, cutting him off. “I can’t believe it. Well, I can believe it. I just can’t believe him. How could he do this to her?” Jess said that last part more like she was talking to herself, but Nico heard it anyway.

“Well, sometimes people have to do things.”

“People don’t have to do things.” Jess Howard was glaring at him so fiercely that Nico quickly abandoned what he was going to say, which was that it wasn’t exactly Teddy’s fault that his family was moving to Firenze. “It’s called free will, Osterman. It’s called choice. Aren’t you supposed to be in English right now?”

How did everyone know he was supposed to be in English? He watched Jess as she continued her march down the hall. Man, Nico would not want to be Teddy Lin right now.