ABEL GAZED OUT THE WINDOW past Lu as they flew over Drakopolis. The spires on top of skyscrapers blinked with warning lights so that passing dragons didn’t crash into them, and Abel saw the shadows of other school buses gliding lazily on the high winds. Military wyverns and police Reapers flew in and around and above the traffic, and others steered as far away from those dragons as they could.

In Drakopolis, most people viewed the military like the inside of a dragon’s mouth: best avoided if you had a choice. Also, most people who found themselves inside didn’t come out the way they’d gone in. Silas definitely hadn’t. Before the Academy, he wasn’t a bad big brother.

But that was a long time ago.

With a tight spiraling drop, the bus descended from the clouds, flapping between skyscrapers toward the landing platform at Roa’s apartment building.

Abel sat up straighter and watched out the window. They flew past gleaming towers in colorful patterns of expensive dragon glass, then tall apartment blocks of yellow and red brick, then the gray cinder blocks and heavy steel of the cheaper buildings.

They were all tagged with huge amounts of graffiti, all sorts of colorful names and pictures and code words you probably had to live there to understand. There were beautiful murals of dragons and riders, odes to girlfriends and boyfriends, and murals of heroes and cartoon characters and even beloved teachers.

Abel’s neighborhood graffiti mostly celebrated money and violence. And curse words. His neighborhood was controlled by the Red Talons, who loved power and wealth above all, while Roa’s neighborhood was controlled by the Thunder Wings, who loved knowledge and science above all. Their values showed up in their vandalism.

In Roa’s neighborhood, the Thunder Wings symbol was stenciled on walls and billboards and the metal grates over store windows: a lightning bolt with a dragon’s head. The symbol made him tense. He was no fan of the Thunder Wings, and they were no fans of his. They’d taught Abel to ride Karak, and in return, he beat them in battle and set Karak free. They’d have happily fed him to one of their other dragons.

They loved knowledge, sure, but they used that knowledge to be better thieves and criminals. The Thunder Wings designed and sold most of the weapons systems that the kins used and trained most of the unlicensed dragon veterinarians. If someone was messing with dragon DNA, it was probably the Thunder Wings.

When the bus came to a hover just over the pickup platform, Abel kept his eyes on the boarding ramp, hoping to warn his friend about the wedgies.

When Roa got on, though, Topher was with them. He hadn’t known Topher slept at Roa’s or that they were hanging out without him.

Abel knew he shouldn’t take it personally that his friends had arrived together, but for some reason, it irked him. He really liked the word “irked” because it sounded like what it meant, like an annoying noise from a neighbor’s apartment when you were trying to sleep or like that one piece of your boxer shorts you couldn’t quite pick out after a wedgie. Irk.

He felt irked.

His friends finding seats together without him? That irked him.

Topher lived way out in a distant neighborhood, and his family situation wasn’t great. They weren’t likely to help him get to the bus platform for the first day of school, so he’d probably stayed over at Roa’s after the chaos at the racetrack. It made sense for him go to Roa’s instead of to Abel’s. Topher’s neighborhood was also a Thunder Wings neighborhood, and in Drakopolis, you had to be careful about which neighborhoods you went to after dark, even if you weren’t in a kin yourself. While the police enforced the laws of the city, it was the kins who enforced the way people lived.

They still could’ve told me, Abel thought.

Roa glanced his way from their seat and gave him a smile, but before they could even say “Hey,” the Dragon Safety Officer was yelling at them to sit down and stay quiet.

“This is a school bus, not a social club!” he shouted. “My name is Officer Grallup, and I am the Kin Intervention Safety Specialist assigned to your school. My job is to monitor for kin activity and divert troubled students from a life of crime and despair.” He sounded like he was reciting an employee handbook. “I am here to keep you safe, and I urge you to report any signs of kinship to me immediately.”

Topher cleared his throat loudly. “Excuse me, sir?” he dared.

Abel willed his friend to keep his mouth shut but was also curious where this was headed. Topher had a way of irking adults like no one else could. It was a talent. “What are the signs of kinship?”

“What?” Officer Grallup snapped, rising from his seat.

“You said to ‘report any signs of kinship’ to you?” Topher made air quotes with his fingers. “What are the signs?”

“The wearing of kin colors or emblems,” Officer Grallup said, glaring at Abel in his colorful jacket. “An interest in dragon battling or racing.” He was still glaring at Abel. “A history of known kin activity.” His face was turning red he was glaring so hard. “Any delinquent behavior,” he added back to Topher. “If I catch it, I stomp it out!”

“Delinquent behavior like, um …” Topher mimed thinking hard. “For example … um …”

Roa glanced over their shoulder at Abel with a can-you-believe-this-guy? look.

Abel glanced back with a please-get-him-to-be-quiet look.

Roa shrugged. There was no shutting Topher up once he decided to annoy someone.

“Like not wearing your safety harness on a moving dragon?” Topher suggested cheerfully, adding a point of the finger at Officer Grallup, the only person in the bus’s passenger compartment not wearing his safety harness.

“You wyrm-tongued little wart!” The officer rushed at Topher, but at that moment, the bus began its rapid descent toward their school, diving nearly straight down. Officer Grallup fell off his feet and sprawled against the front wall of the bus compartment like a bug splattered on a windshield.

Everyone burst out laughing, which made Grallup’s face turn angry purple. As the bus swept in for a landing, he scrambled to his seat in the front and glared at Topher with fireball eyes. Then he glared at Abel again and shook his head, like he knew Topher was his friend and blamed Abel for it. Abel wondered if this bus ride was going to come back to haunt him.

Probably, he thought. Grumpy men’s grudges are like a sandwich left in the bottom of a backpack. They don’t get better with time.

Once the bus had landed, the kids jostled their way out. Abel joined the scrum, eager to catch up to his friends. Suddenly, he felt a breath on the back of his neck. He went rigid.

Lu was right behind him. There was nowhere to go in the crowded aisle.

“Relax,” she whispered. “I can’t snapdragon you twice on the same day … not until you put on new underwear.” She patted his shoulder, then elbowed past him.

“And tell your friends they’re next,” she added, winking at Roa and Topher. “They better bring extra underwear from now on.”

When Abel finally caught up with his friends on the landing platform outside school, Topher and Roa watched Lu saunter over to a pack of older kids.

“Who was that?” Topher asked. “And what did we ever do to her?”

“Her name’s Lu,” Abel said. “She’s a wannabe Red Talon. Expelled from the Academy.”

“What was that about my underwear?” Roa asked.

“There’s a bounty on our butts,” Abel explained. “Literally. Wedgies. Be warned.”

“You just make friends wherever you go, huh, Abel?” Topher slapped his back, which was a very Topher way of showing affection.

They hesitated together on the front steps of the school. The last time they were here, Topher was still the class bully, their favorite teacher was secretly a Thunder Wings dragon rider, and Lina had staged an elaborate and dangerous prank to get the school shut down for the rest of the year. It was weird to just return like nothing had happened.

“I think Lu’s the one,” Abel said at last.

“The one what?” Roa frowned.

“The one I’m going to challenge to a race,” he said. “If she’s trying to impress the Red Talons, then she’ll know about any secret dragon racing that goes on.”

“You’re really doing this?” Roa shook their head. “You’re really going to infiltrate an illegal racing ring to spy for the Dragon’s Eye?”

“It’s not for the Dragon’s Eye,” Abel explained. “It’s to help my sister get out of jail. And to prevent what happened to that orange Reaper from happening to any other dragon.”

“Yeah, but what if we get put in jail in the process?” Topher wondered.

“We?” Abel said.

“Duh,” Topher replied.

“Like we wouldn’t help?” Roa shook their head at Abel. “We’re your ground crew. Always.”

Abel smiled at his friends, grateful he didn’t even have to ask.

Silas had told him, if he got caught racing dragons, he was on his own. Abel could end up in jail by doing the job Silas had given him or by not doing it. It was a no-win situation, but at least he wasn’t in it alone. Like Dr. Drago said in Abel’s favorite comic, When you’re playing a game you can’t win, you’re gonna have to break the rules.

WW3D, Abel thought. If he were in my situation, what would Dr. Drago do?

“Get to class!” Officer Grallup shouted, snapping Abel’s attention back.

“I can’t believe they assigned our school a Kin Intervention Safety Specialist,” Roa whispered as they walked through the huge double doors into Municipal Junior High 1703. “They’re like cops without the training and counselors without the kindness.”

“Also their acronym is KISS,” Topher said. “Get it? Kin Intervention Safety Specialist. K-I-S-S?”

Roa and Abel looked at him like, So what?

“It’s just funny, is all,” he said. “I would not want to kiss that guy.”

“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” Abel told him.

They all laughed. Abel really missed when things were simpler, when he and Roa could spend recess joking around, daydreaming, avoiding Topher’s bullying, and playing with their DrakoTek cards. Now they spent their free time plotting crimes, Topher had become their friend, and the dragons they played with were way scarier than anything on DrakoTek cards. The stakes of the game were higher too.

Abel didn’t like the moral complications of being a thirteen-year-old criminal double-agent dragon rider, but he had to admit, it was kind of exciting.

When the first-period bell rang, Abel’s mind was already racing with thoughts of … well … racing.