“Let’s drill a little deeper into your brains today,” Dr. Ginschlaugh begins our next torture session.

I can almost hear the whirring of a power tool.

“Let’s really plunge in,” he goes on with a grim sort of joy. “But first? I shall choose today’s victim … unless there’s a volunteer?”

A hand shoots up before we’ve gotten a chance to be terrified.

“Devon Crawford!” says Dr. Ginschlaugh. “You picked a peculiar time to stretch your arm …”

“I wasn’t stretching, Dr. Ginschlaugh,” he says.

“You want to volunteer?” asks the teacher.

Devon nods.

“Well. This is a momentous occurrence! Go ahead, Mr. Crawford. Why are you here with us?”

“I’m here with you because my friend Max had an accident in the cafeteria one day,” says Devon. “As you already know, since Ian can’t ever shut up about it for five minutes.”

A few bullies smirk and shoot looks my way. I try to ignore the burning feeling in my cheeks and smile back at Devon.

“Let’s be clear, Crawford,” the teacher says. “Saying it’s an accident implies that no one’s to blame, but—”

“I know, I know,” says Devon. “I fully accept responsibility for the whole peanut butter jam, Dr. Ginschlaugh.”

“Good.”

“I accept responsibility for everything that happened,” says Devon. “I’m used to taking responsibility. To not being able to depend on anyone else. Anyway, I know you all heard a version of the story that made me look like the worst bully of all time, but that’s not how it really went down. In real life, all I did was what I had to do to protect my friends.”

“Devon,” says Ginschlaugh. “That’s not an excuse.”

“Sure. Obviously there’s no excuse for bullying an innocent kid,” says Devon. “But here’s the thing …”

His eyes scan the room and the next word out of his mouth is full of controlled rage. I can almost hear each synapse firing inside his head, like a rifleman on a Civil War battlefield, as he goes on:

“Nobody is completely innocent,” says Devon. “All of us have been guilty at some point, and we all need a friend to stand up for us sometimes. Someone who isn’t afraid to step in when we’re in trouble—”

The teacher clears his throat. “Devon …”

“—even if that means being a little bit of a bad guy. You know what I mean, Dr. Ginschlaugh?”

Devon matches Ginschlaugh’s gaze. There’s a split-second pause and it seems like he and the doctor are battling on a whole other plane.

Like maybe there are invisible arcs of electricity all around us, and these two are testing the other’s defenses—and for the first time I think that maybe having a villain’s henchman in charge of this discipline is a pretty decent idea …

But then Devon laughs like it was all a joke. “Yeah,” he says, “I know you understand, Ginschlaugh. That’s one of the things I respect about you. You’re not afraid to be a bad guy, if it’s for a good reason.”

Ginschlaugh keeps his eyes on Devon. He smiles in a chilling way. “No. I am not afraid of being a bad guy.”

“Neither am I,” says Devon. He refuses to be the first to break eye contact. And in that one moment, the way I see Devon changes.

As we file out of the classroom, I get the feeling I am not the only one who sees him differently.

At lunch there’s a silence in the air—a danger.

The bullies around us are on edge, like animals before an earthquake, until suddenly a commotion breaks out a few feet away. I turn just in time to see a swarm of girls descending on my table. At the center of the group is Miranda. The biggest bully in the school looks at the four of us and smiles wide enough to swallow us whole.

“Hello, gentlemen!” She puts her tray down on our table. “Mind if we join you?”