My eyes lifted, covertly scanning the crowd.

She wasn’t waiting for me this morning.

I mean, of course she wasn’t, but still. Pretty sure I would’ve died, seeing her waiting on the corner of her block for me, but as much as I wished I didn’t know, I did.

She would never make anything easy.

Or maybe she couldn’t. Something kept bugging me about Friday night. Dropping her off at her house, I could hear it in her voice when she demanded I stop a couple houses down, instead of right in front of her driveaway. It was fear.

Almost like she was panicked.

I tied my tie, keeping it loose around my collar, and watched cars enter the gates, parents drop off their freshmen, and some students head through the parking lot on foot.

I was one of the first here this morning. Where the hell was she? Was she already inside?

“Same parties. Same girls,” Michael mumbled. “I’m fucking bored.”

“I know.” Kai let out a sigh. “I’m feeling it, too. I need something to happen.”

“Something to obsess over,” Michael added.

And then Damon chimed in. “We should kill someone.”

Michael snorted, Kai rolled his eyes, and I plucked the cigarette out of Damon’s mouth, taking a drag and shaking my head.

Michael whipped his uniform blazer at Damon. “I was thinking I needed the season to start, you fucking psycho.”

“Or maybe you need to fall for someone,” Kai told him, pulling his jacket out of his Jeep and slipping it on. “I’m ready to have my guts twisted into knots.”

But instead of looking at Damon or Michael when he said that, Kai met my eyes, a knowing smile playing behind them. I flipped him off, and he just laughed silently.

“Blood would be better,” Damon pointed out, plucking his cigarette back, taking a drag, blowing the smoke up to the sky, and then flicking the butt off somewhere. “Come on. We’ll pick someone. Someone who deserves it. Stalk her—or him—watch them, plan how we’re going to get away with it, dispose of the body…”

I shook my head, only half listening as I scanned the parking lot again for Em.

“And then watch this town lose their minds at the danger lurking right under their noses,” Damon said. “It’ll be fun.”

I heard someone breathe out a laugh again, but then silence fell, and no one said anything.

Because while no one was ready to do more than entertain the idea as a joke, not one of us doubted that Damon was somewhat serious.

He might even already have someone in mind.

“I’m so glad you’re on my side sometimes,” Michael told him.

But Damon just took out another cigarette and lit it, musing out loud. “We’d be bound together in the secret forever.”

“Yeah, well, there’s no one I want to kill,” Kai said.

Damon just stared up to the sky before bringing the cigarette toward his mouth again. “Lucky you,” he murmured.

I looked down at him, his gaze still on the clouds, and I couldn’t help this feeling in my gut.

Michael and Kai needed something to happen, and I… I already felt it coming.

The first bell rang, and we all headed indoors, students racing up the steps and trying to maneuver their way down the halls.

She’ll be in class. She never misses school.

After stopping at the lockers and dodging conversations the others got tangled in on the way down the hall, I finally dove into lit class with my book and binder, looking to see who she planted herself around, so I knew whose ass to move.

But as I looked, I only spotted Chase Deery and Morgan Rackham in the classroom. No one else.

I stopped for a moment, faltering. Fucking great. This was what I got for rushing and trying to pretend like I wasn’t rushing. Now I got to sit here like a dumbbell, and if she came in and sat far away, I couldn’t move, or else she’d know I was waiting for her.

And I didn’t want her to know I was waiting for her.

Continuing to a seat toward the windows, I took out my phone, pretending to look busy.

People drifted in, filling the seats, but I didn’t look up as Kai, Michael, and Damon surrounded me.

As the minutes passed, I barely registered the teacher talking, the papers shuffling, or the nudge on my shoulder to pass the new packets back.

There was only one thing I was aware of as I sat there.

She wasn’t here.

Maybe she was taking her time. She hated this class, after all.

But as the class wore on and she was nowhere to be seen, I barely heard a fucking word the whole time.

We started a new book. The teacher passed them out and finished his lecture, and something was due by the end of the week, but if it wasn’t tomorrow, then I didn’t care.

I didn’t give a shit. Where the hell was she?

The bell rang, and everyone rose from their seats, piling out of the classroom, but instead of turning left outside the classroom, toward my next class, I turned right.

“Hey, where are you going?” Michael asked.

He and I shared government and economics.

“I’ll be at practice,” I assured him.

And I spun around and headed toward the library.

Coach would make me run laps once he found out I’d skipped classes, but I’d run so many laps the past few years, I was kind of perfect at it.

I couldn’t sit in class right now. My head ached and heated up like a fuse, and I refused to look for her, because even though I told myself it would be just to make sure she was safe—make sure everything was okay—it was because I was pissed.

She really went to any length to avoid me, didn’t she?

Rushing into the library, I made my way through the tables of students working and jogged up the open stairwell all the way to the third floor. I tossed my binder and books onto a table and pulled the group phone out of my pocket, heading down the long aisle and turning right down the fifth row. I reached up to a line of books and pulled out a fat, navy blue text, titled Data Entry and Transcendental Curves of Non-Regular Polytopes, something we know no one on this planet would even be interested in touching.

Opening the cover, I punched in the combination to the lock box inside, stuck the phone in, and closed it, placing it back onto the shelf. The communal phone that recorded all of our pranks had to be hidden somewhere no one would look and all of us could have ready access to it. Not sure why, since I ended up being the one to fetch it and record most of the videos.

But then I heard someone’s voice. “That title makes no sense.”

I turned my head over my shoulder, seeing a glimpse of brown hair through the bookcases.

I clutched the disguised lock box in my hand, pausing. Had she’d seen what I put in here?

I let go, peering through the bookcase and seeing Emory lean against the back wall, her head down with her hair and glasses covering her face.

“You weren’t in class,” I said.

Her chest shook, and I thought I saw her lip tremble.

But then she cleared her throat. “Wasn’t I?” she snipped. “Wow, you’re outstanding. Maybe for your next trick you can make fire and draw stories in the dirt about those funny holes in the sky that let the light in.”

Huh? Holes in the sky?

Oh, stars. Was she calling me a caveman?

Little shit. I mean, I did do her literature assignment for her. Did she have any idea how hard it was to try to sound like an angry teenage girl with zero sense of humor?