Ten

AT THE START of second period, the intercom gives a burst of nasal kazoo buzzes, like they’ve got a gigantic fly stuck on a pest strip in the office—“Assembly,” Mr. Spille translates—and it’s Friday, so the herd is rabid. None of the teachers brought their cattle prods; they’re shouting, drowning in the rush, soon to be trampled into unrecognizable smears that the custodians will have to sort out later, a pocket protector here, a shard of bridgework there. I’m slammed and bumped so many times between history and the gym that I fight for sheer survival, scraping shins with my heel, stabbing my elbows indiscriminately.

The wooden bleachers are swarming, but Bree, Sage, and I find one another like we’re magnetized, heads together, chatting hard and fast and snarling at anybody who steps on our fingers or drives their knees into our backs. At one point, I see Landon sitting up above, legs crossed, foot bobbing as she scans the crowd. I give a half wave, but she doesn’t seem to see.

Crackenback’s walk to the podium is achingly slow, like all the cartilage has worn from his joints; today, his carnation is white. He talks for nearly a minute, with us shouting, “What?” at him before someone realizes the mic is unplugged. Whine of feedback; then his dry, funeral-dirge voice: “—ever vandalized the boys’ bathroom to come forward to either myself or a teacher you trust. We want to get you the help you need.” Clears his throat. “We’ve had another trash-can fire on school grounds. Fortunately for you all, Ms. Hyde was swift with a bottle of Dasani and the school was saved. If you, or anyone you know . . .”

Someone nudges me, and a thick triangle of paper with Sage’s name scrawled on it is stuffed into my hand. I pass it to her, and she unfolds it in her lap, below the line of teachers’ vision, a full sheet of notebook paper with only two words written on it that I can see: Song’s run. Sage smiles, folds the note away.

Crackenback stands, head bent over the podium, before stiffening back to life. “Now, my cherubs, if you could give Mr. Mac your undivided attention, he has a few reminders about homecoming weekend”—bellows and whoops—“which is almost upon us.”

I think I misheard the name until a beefy middle-aged guy with short-buzzed hair, wire-framed glasses, and a casual-Friday outfit of polo shirt, wind pants, and squeaky-clean running shoes gets up from the front bleacher. I can totally see him being married to Mrs. Mac. I can also see him playing gin rummy for toothpicks and keeping issues of Reader’s Digest on the back of his toilet. He has actual notes, which he taps against the surface of the podium until they’re nicely edged. “First of all, I’d like to say”—he pauses, his voice quiet—“rage on, Elks.”

Dull, pin-drop silence. Then somebody—sounds like Trace—roars, “Yeeeaahh!” and stomps the bleachers. Everybody joins in, making our own stampede until the response is deafening. Sage, Bree, and I lean together, laughing, covering our ears.

When the storm breaks, Mr. Mac is flushed, warily pleased. “Right. Good. Thanks. So, we’ll be hosting the Brewer Witches this weekend, and I hope you’ll all turn out to watch our Lady Elks beat the tapioca out of them on the soccer field Saturday.” Another pause. “Oh, yeah. And the football game, too.”

Silence. Poor Mr. Mac. Rode the high of his opener a little too close to the sun.

“But”—shuffle, shuffle, flush deepening, brows drawn—“speaking not just as an assistant coach, but as a member of the PTA and the neighborhood watch committee, some stuff has happened at past homecoming games that we don’t want to see again. No alcohol or controlled substances on school grounds. Park your cars only in the provided spaces at the athletic fields or here in the student lot. No foul language or fighting in the stands. I’ll be there, of course, but so will other volunteers from neighborhood watch, and they will be paying attention. Okay? We love you guys, and we want you to be safe.”

Trace’s voice from somewhere, low and crooning: “Wuv ooo tooo . . .”

Mr. Mac collects his notes and returns to the bleachers, applauded only by the soft friction of his pant legs. I spot Mrs. Mac in the corner of the room, shooting him an enthusiastic double thumbs-up.

Crackenback reclaims the floor. “Allow me to second Mr. Mac. Please try your darnedest to be the soul of courtesy and good sportsmanship as we host the Witches. Not like last year. Or the year before that. Or any in memory.” Finally, he raises his eyes to us, a nearsighted gaze that somehow manages to be penetrating. Sage’s fingers go to her jeans pocket where the note is, her expression kept carefully blank as she looks back at him. “That’s all. Back to class.”

Our exodus is the opposite of our arrival: molasses-slow, clotting around the double doors, barely moving, bodies pressed against bodies. Sage catches my elbow, whispering in my ear. “Feel like Chinese food?”

We run, frosty wind ripping back our hair. Five seconds to make the trees or somebody’ll see, Bree told me as we hid in an empty classroom close to the English wing exit, waiting for the hallways to clear out for first lunch.

Don’t trip, Sage said. If you fall, you’re a dead soldier, and we can’t stop for you. Sorry.

My pulse is cranked bass, my throat pounding with it as we fly over dead grass, the copse of yew trees ahead, the only cover from view of the classroom windows on this wing. So this is cutting. Never done it, wanted to ever since we spent three whole months learning how to hold a pencil in kindergarten. I’m scared, psyched, a million worries taking a backseat to how badly I want to be in on this, part of them, the third weird sister.

Bree makes the trees first. Sage and I tie for second, all of us flattening ourselves back against the trunks, breathing hard. “Kincaid won’t come,” Bree says. “I know it. We’ll get all the way down there, risk our asses, and he won’t show.”

Sage shakes her head, sucking wind. “That’s what you guys get. Falling in love with a ghost.”

Bree bolts. We race after her. I can’t help but take one backward glance at the school, the image bouncing with every step like the final scene in a found-footage horror movie.

Downtown. Song’s Banquet waits quietly, the lot mostly empty before the noontime rush. We pass beneath the gold dragon into synth waves flowing from a radio behind the unmanned counter. Smells of hot oil and soy sauce, walls decorated with silken embroidered hangings. It Will Be Our Pleasure to Seat You, the sign says, but nerves and guilt stretch two minutes into ten, so when the hostess doesn’t turn up, we go in search of the boys ourselves.

Trace and Moon are at a booth in back, Trace with his shoulder pressed against the wall, one bent arm shielding whatever he’s working on. Moon balances on the edge of his bench, using his phone while they talk. “Damn it,” Bree says under her breath: no Kincaid. Part of me settles back to earth, deflated, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing. He really got in my head last night. Looked around, rearranged things, left a closet door open behind him to let all the bad things in. I should be pissed at him, and I am, a little, but then I think of his hand, gripping his own wrist in place of mine, like he needed someone to hold on to that badly. Kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the Good Ship Resentment.

Bree and I slide in with Moon while Sage bounces in next to Trace, planting a kiss on his cheek, which he returns with quadruple enthusiasm, saying, “Anybody see you guys?”

“Just some random people downtown.” Sage sits back and takes a breath, grinning at me. “Clarabelle can really haul ass. And she didn’t even get lost.”

I laugh, flipping her off. Bree cuts in with, “Is this everybody who’s coming?” glancing back at the entrance.

Trace smiles, about to speak, when our waitress comes around the corner of the dining room and slides a few menus onto our tabletop. She has that uncanny flawless beauty reserved mostly for models in cosmetic ads; twentysomething, her long black hair pulled into a ponytail, her lips penciled red with laser precision. Her name tag reads Daisy. “It’s you.” She folds her arms, leveling a look at Trace.

“It is.”

“No school again, huh.”

He takes a menu. “Teachers’ conference.”

“They have a lot of those.”

“They certainly do.” The rest of us study the tabletop, the floor, the window, but Trace gazes back at her in his best impression of a plaster saint. “Hate to lose valuable class time, but it is what it is, Daze.”

She pulls her mouth to the side, nodding slowly. “You’re lucky I don’t give a shit about your ignorance.” She takes the menu out of his hand. “Buffet, I’m assuming.”

“Naturally. And some of your finest bubbly for my friends.” Trace teepees his fingers as she walks away.

Sage shakes her head. “If the crab Rangoon weren’t so amazing, no way would I let you come here to flirt with her.”

“Flirt? I’m covering our asses. Can’t hurt to be on good terms with the people who can turn you in, right? Right?” But Sage is going to load up at the buffet table. Raising his eyebrows, Trace follows her, and we slide out, too, letting Moon leave the booth, jamming to whatever’s in his earbuds.

“You coming?” Bree looks back at me.

“That’s okay. I’m good.” I start to slide into the booth.

“Don’t worry about the money.” Bree waits. “Seriously. You’re covered.”

She doesn’t elaborate. I have a hard time believing she has the cash to pay for us both, but I’m learning, with Bree, that if she says it, she means it. By the time we sit down with our lunch, Daisy’s back with our bubbly, soda in plastic pebbled glasses.

A flash of motion outside the window. I look up in time to watch Kincaid glide by the glass on the next wall, then push up the wheelchair ramp to the entrance. Bree squeezes my forearm under the table, almost painfully. Like I needed a signal. Seeing him is an adrenaline shot to the heart.

I’ll never get tired of the way he doesn’t fit into a room, his slow mosey accompanied with the jingle of his wallet chain on the rare occasions when he has his feet on the ground.

Kincaid drags a chair over—a couple old ladies stop eating their early-bird lunches to stare at him like he has horns and a spaded tail—and drops it backward at the foot of our booth, straddling it with his arms folded on top of the backrest, gazing in that unfocused, possibly stoned way of his while Daisy gives his board a look, saying after a pause, “I suppose you want something.”

He glances up, not obviously sucked in by the tractor beam of her hotness, which earns him points. “Can you bring some of that tea? That red tea, that comes in the pot?” He makes the pot shape with his hands.

Bree and I sneak a look at each other. Daisy studies the ceiling. “Tea in a pot. Let me see what we have.” Steps elaborately around his board as she goes.

Trace talks while shoveling. “I got questions for you, bud.” Waits as Daisy brings the tea, leaves again. “Dude. Eat, for chrissake,” he says to Kincaid. “You’re more than covered for an eight-ninety-nine buffet. Man cannot live on Fireball alone. You’ll get gut rot and die.”

Kincaid smiles, taking a sweet-and-sour wonton from Moon’s plate with his fingers. Still hasn’t looked at me, as if last night never happened. “Questions about what?”

Moon grabs the paper napkin by Trace’s elbow, holding it up. “Attack plan for tomorrow night.”

Trace swears, jerking his arm down, glancing over his shoulder at the old ladies. “It’s called discretion, man. Jesus. The Golden Girls over there probably live on Perfect.” Trace flattens the napkin, which serves as a canvas for a crude map drawn in ballpoint. Intersecting lines. A street grid. “You know in-town way better than I do.” He stabs his finger at one of the lines, a row of squares down either side, representing houses. “If you follow Perfect, you hit Oak, right? Where does Oak let out if you go east?”

“Anson Pond Road.” Kincaid sucks sauce off his thumb. “Takes you over the town line into Derby, if you keep going.”

Sage stares at the map. “What is this?”

“This”—Trace vibrates his hands above it—“is a siege. Of epic proportions.” Pastor voice, at low volume, high malice; if there was a congregation present, they’d be shaking: “Their day of disaster is near, and their doom rushes upon them.”

“Meaning?”

“Nuke the block.” Moon smiles, one earbud dangling.

Sage bites into a crab Rangoon, chewing with a slow and steady gaze. Trace releases a breath, tries again. “We need you guys. That’s why I wanted everybody in the war room today. Got a list for you.” Pulls a scrap of paper out of his pocket and tosses it to Bree. “Read it, know it, swallow the evidence.” Checks his phone. “Shit. Ten minutes.”

Bree looks at the list. “Why would we have these things?”

“You’re girls. You’re resourceful. If you don’t have it, you’ll find it.” He gestures to Kincaid and Moon. “We’re men. We don’t know shit.”

We girls look at one another. I say, “He’s totally been practicing that in front of a mirror.”

Bree eats her last bite of rice. “Sounds like a kiss-ass way to get us to do all the work.”

“Nope. We have our own list. Way more challenging.”

She flicks the note. “Jell-O. Really? Stick the girls in the kitchen, right, while you guys get to go out and do all the cool stuff?”

Trace glances at Moon, then back at Bree. “You want to come? Because we kinda figured—”

“If I’m making the artillery, I sure as hell want a chance to throw it.” Bree looks at us, and I nod, still not sure what I’m agreeing to. “What’s it gonna be? Are we in on your little siege or not?”

Trace’s grin grows by degrees. Drains his glass, bangs it down. “Okay, Pumpkin Stealer. Ground floor. But no wussing out. Anybody who chokes has to buy Song’s for the rest of the year, and I’ll never tell them anything again.”

Kincaid holds his hand out to Bree for the list. “What’s on there?”

Bree gives it over without a word. Trace watches with a smug, knowing look, and suddenly it’s way too hot in here, wedged into this booth side by side. Kincaid hands it back, laughing his rusty laugh. “Sounds messed up. I’m there.” When Bree folds the paper small and closes it in her palm, I know what she’s doing—transferring the warmth from his fingers to her skin.

“You’d better be,” Trace says. “We’re counting on you to bring the mud.”

Outside into the crisp, blinding day, puffy clouds surfing a sky so clear it looks chlorinated. Kincaid holds the door for us, arm hooked through the handle, hanging off it like a tire swing as he watches traffic. I think again of my closed closet door, the definite knowledge that it wasn’t right, what I was seeing; how that spooked feeling trailed me clear through my morning classes. Ma must’ve come in before my alarm went off for some reason and pushed it shut on her way out, I know that, but it’s a clear picture of where my head’s at these days, thanks to Kincaid: seeing closet monsters, boogeymen who punish bad kids for sneaking demon liquor and trying to cover it up with Trident.

I’m the last one out of Song’s. I don’t look at Kincaid as I pass him, but he brushes close by me as he releases the door handle, his lips near my ear—“Nice coat”—before reuniting his board with the sidewalk.

“Thanks?” It’s a bombardier jacket, fake brown leather with a fake shearling collar, a grommeted waist cinch I never fasten. Not something I get a lot of compliments on.

Still crunching his fortune cookie, Trace sticks his hands in his pockets as the breeze whips around us. He paid for everyone with crumpled ones and fives, yesterday’s booze money—I guess that’s what they meant by “covered”—leaving an untidy stack for Daisy before she even had a chance to bring the bill. “You coming with us?” he asks Kincaid.

“Nah.” Kincaid steps on his board and leaves without a goodbye, his head angled up like he’s watching the skies.

Bree whispers, “Think he’s going home?”

“Probably. Crap.” There’s never a good time for us to follow him.

Trace holds up his phone. “Tick-tock. We got three minutes.”

We run.

We cross back onto school grounds at a different place, cutting through the woods that separate it from the house next door, scaling a chain-link fence, and dashing across the field to a basement-level door. We’re already late—even using every trespassing shortcut they know, it’s still a five-minute run from Main Street up to school—and it’s now officially two minutes past the bell, class time trickling away, our seats conspicuously empty.

Trace fumbles in his pocket, pulls out a key, and jams it into the lock, letting us go ahead of him down the dim stairway into the basement before locking the door behind him. “Where’d you get that?” I whisper.

“Office. Took it when I was waiting to see Crack one time.”

As we cross the concrete floor, I keep expecting a custodian to spring to full height in front of us like one of those punching-bag clowns, but it’s just a big basement with a little daylight filtering through low windows, the air vibrating with the low-grade roar of a boiler. We go up another flight of stairs to a door, easing it open to peek out at the empty English wing hallway.

Trace takes the main hallway, heading back up the stairs toward the art room. Sage and Bree go toward Hyde’s English class, and I turn left, toward study hall, four sets of footsteps fading to mine, alone.

Klatts pins me with her gaze as I step into room twelve, people turning in their seats to stare. “Sorry.” I fumble the door shut behind me. “Had to go to the bathroom.” I feel like a complete idiot, but the girls said it was their best line. If they give you a hard time, start going into detail, Bree said. No teacher can argue with explosive diarrhea.

Klatts sniffs, nods, observes me through her triple-power bifocals as I sit and reach into my coat for A Clockwork Orange. Last time I read, Alex was home, enjoying classical music after an evening of beating and raping. I’ve only got about a hundred more pages to catch up on, but so what—I’ve got all study hall to read. Just an off-campus lunch. Not like I blew off actual English class or something. I picture myself trying to sell that line to Ma, and my stomach curdles. Precisely why I’ll make sure she never, ever finds out.

In my pocket, something crinkles against my fingers. A lump in a plastic wrapper. I pull it out partway and see a fortune cookie. Kincaid, brushing by me in the doorway of Song’s. He slipped me his cookie.

My smile takes over, the feeling of being chosen, made special, erasing any worry of people noticing the signs that I was out in the cold fresh air a minute ago, my hair windblown, my hands chapped. That I was tasting the real world instead of the stale gerbil pellets of this place all day.

Nobody looks twice. Nobody questions it.

Tearing the seal on a food wrapper in study hall is like using a can opener around a pack of hungry dogs. I wait until I’m at my locker, the door blocking people’s view as I break the cookie open and take the paper slip out.

Fortune favors the brave.