WHEN I GOT THE full story later that night, I just about fell over. I knew what Stewart had done was wrong. But I also knew he’d been defending my honor, and it made me almost proud to have him in our family.

Mom and Leonard met with the principal the next day and told her everything that had happened leading up to the gym incident. Everything. I spoke to her, too. She was sympathetic, and she mentioned that they knew a lot about Jared’s bad behavior. She even promised that she’d personally keep an eye on him. But without any concrete proof, she couldn’t do much. And she wouldn’t lift Stewart’s weeklong suspension. She said what he’d done was still way out of line, and she had to set an example.

If I am one hundred percent totally honest, I was almost jealous of him. I would have loved an excuse to not go to school for a week, because it was no fun at all.

Tuesday was even worse than Monday. Wednesday stank, too.

But then, on Thursday, a weird thing happened. For every kid who ignored me, another kid made a point of talking to me. They weren’t, like, top-rung types, but I was grateful anyway.

At lunchtime on Thursday, I was sitting by myself in the cafeteria for the fourth day in a row when Claudia sat across from me. She was joined by Phoebe and Violet (ever since they helped us clean up on New Year’s Day, I’ve decided I should call them by their real names).

“We heard about what happened to your dad’s house,” Phoebe said.

“We’re really sorry. That’s awful,” Violet added.

I couldn’t believe it. They were being nice to me even though I had not been very nice to them.

Then Claudia said, “I think it’s so cool that your dad is gay. It’s so…twenty-first-century. Very cutting-edge.”

I smiled. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

A few more kids joined us, including some people Lauren and I had labeled as Tragics. There was Larry, who we’d nicknamed Lardy. One girl, I think her name was Melanie, told me, “I have two moms.”

A boy in tenth grade, Jeff, also joined us. I recognized him from home ec; he’s amazing with a sewing machine. He was joined by the kid who runs the LGBT club, Sam.

“You should come to an LGBT meeting sometime,” Sam said.

“But I’m not gay. Or lesbian, or bi, or transatlantic.”

Sam smirked. “I think you mean transgender.”

Melanie piped up. “It doesn’t matter. We open up meetings sometimes to kids with gay parents or siblings or friends, too, as a safe place to talk and ask questions.”

“Thanks.”

Then Phoebe said, “We need to talk about Stewart.”

And that was when I clued in. For Phoebe and Violet, at least, it was their loyalty to Stewart that had made them come sit with me. It was kind of a punch in the gut to realize that my sort-of-stepbrother—who’d only been at Borden for a few months—had better friends than me.

“We’re worried that Jared’s going to try to get revenge when Stewart comes back to school,” Phoebe said.

“So am I,” I admitted. “It took me a long time to figure out that he is not a nice person.”

“Yeah,” said Violet. “Longer than it should have.”

“He trips me in the hall all the time,” said Sam.

“He shouted ‘beached whale’ at me on a crowded bus one day,” said Larry. I shook my head in sympathy. Maybe I could find a nice way to lend him my copy of The South Beach Diet.

Everyone started to tell stories about how and when Jared had been a jerk to them. I even told them what he’d done to me on New Year’s Eve, minus the gorier details. It felt good to be able to talk about it.

“We all know this guy’s a creep. So why do we feel so powerless when there are so many of us, and only one of him?” Phoebe asked.

“Imagine if we could have protection squads,” Larry said. “Like some of the characters have on Game of Thrones.”

“That would be so cool,” said Sam wistfully.

Then the bell rang, and we all split up for afternoon classes.

But during math and home ec, my mind wandered.

Larry had given me an idea.