Chapter 1 – Confessions

•••

There were police cars waiting in the front circle—four of them.

Conor swore as he ducked back behind the corner of the cafeteria, then swore again as his brain caught up. Oh, nothing suspicious here, officer, just playing hide and seek—

Slowly, carefully, he eased back around the corner, slipping behind one of the squat holly bushes planted along the front of the building. No one had noticed him—or at least, no one was looking or walking his way—and after a moment he relaxed.

Like the library opposite, the cafeteria extended out well beyond the rest of the school—almost a third of the way out into the parking lot, the two buildings cradling the courtyard and the front circle between them. Conor had come around the back, where the blocky structure butted up against the school’s outer wall, avoiding the crowded interior. Now, he stood on the outside, looking in, peering past the parked cars in the staff lot toward the main entrance.

So much for blending in.

In the circle, where there should have been a double row of parents dropping off the car riders, a single line of traffic crawled past a broken wall of patrol cars. There were officers standing in each of the three gaps, funneling the arriving students between them. Every now and then, they pulled one aside for a few moments before letting him—it was always a boy—move forward.

Conor sucked in a breath, adrenaline once again frosting his blood. He shrank deeper behind the bush, pulling his arms into the sleeves of his sweatshirt to make the pale skin of his hands less visible.

They were looking for Ashleigh, obviously. But for there to be four police cars…

No one knew about the bag, or the Gap. Which meant that this was about Guyler. Something the other boy had said, upon waking, or else…

(Conor swallowed.)

Or else he hadn’t woken up at all.

Stop, Conor thought. Slow down.

(Because his heart was, in fact, racing, the blood pounding in his ears.)

For the hundredth time that morning, the thousandth time since the night before, Conor found himself wishing that Ashleigh were there beside him, that they weren’t each facing all of this alone.

So go find him, retard.

Conor peered out between the branches once more.

If they were looking for Ashleigh here, it meant he wasn’t at home.

(Which also meant he wasn’t grounded, as Conor had assumed—that it wasn’t his mom who was keeping him from answering his phone.)

Conor’s eyes traced over the cordon, weighing.

He’ll see that a mile away.

Ashleigh would see it, and then he would do…what? Would go where?

Conor wasn’t sure. But the first place to check…

Slipping back out from behind the bush, he turned the corner and began retracing his steps, ducking into the long, narrow alley between the cafeteria and the outer wall, dropping to a crab walk as he passed each of the wide, grimy windows. Now that he’d staved off panic, he was fairly sure they would have let him through. But there were other ways to get to the courtyard, and there was no point in taking the risk.

(Rule number one was protect yourself. Confidence wasn’t the same thing as certainty, and he couldn’t know until too late which of his assumptions might be wrong.)

(If Ashleigh’s mom hadn’t confiscated his phone, then…)

Conor gritted his teeth.

Ask him when you find him.

•••

There were hundreds of high schoolers waiting in the main quad, sprawled across the grass in knots and clumps, reviving half-remembered rituals with half-forgotten friends. The ones nearest to Conor, as he came around the corner of the eighth grade wing, were all frighteningly large—juniors and seniors, some of them half again his height and more than double his weight. He pushed in among them, dodging high-fives and hacky sacks, ignoring cries of “Go, Diego, go!” and “Watch it, fun size,” as he threaded his way toward the library.

The voices followed him, but nothing else. There was an art to moving through a crowd, and Conor had the knack—head up, eyes down, bag tight on both shoulders, and above all keep moving, even if it meant turning sideways or doubling back. It would have been easier to walk all the way around, hugging the outer wall. But the press of bodies made for good cover, and besides, the outer alleyways were dangerous—prime real estate for drug deals and shakedowns.

At not-even-eight-AM on a Tuesday?

Shhh.

It was an odd feeling, the need to avoid notice. Conor was no stranger to furtiveness—had run from neighbors and teachers and construction site managers, had hidden from security guards while playing soldier at night on the grounds of the old folks’ home. But always before, the wariness had been part of the game, had vanished as soon as he stopped playing. This was different—a sort of lingering paranoia, as though he still carried the bag in his belt and Guyler’s blood on his shirt. He felt unclean, and was glad when he passed between the library and the office and out into the courtyard, where he was officially allowed to be.

The crowds on the middle school side were thinner, and other students began to call and wave, kids he knew from the halls and from last year’s classes. He nodded back, not slowing as he made a beeline toward the usual spot. There were just a few minutes left before first bell—if Ashleigh was there, they wouldn’t have much time to talk.

Rounding the corner, Conor angled for the side entrance, a long, wide passageway sandwiched between the library and the outer wall, shaded by another breezeway roof. Not many kids chose to wait this far out—it was comfortable enough, with benches aplenty, but the library doors stayed locked until after homeroom, which meant you had to walk all the way across the courtyard when the bell rang, trailing along behind everybody else. He and Ashleigh had spent the previous year haunting a corner all the way at the very end, as out-of-the-way as it was possible to be—

Conor blinked.

The corner was occupied, but not by Ashleigh, nor by any of their other friends. Instead, there were three boys—small boys—boys Conor didn’t know, had never seen before—

Ah.

Right.

Sixth graders.

Between the climb, and the bag, and the police cordon, Conor had completely forgotten that two or three hundred new kids would be entering East Binder for the very first time that day, huddling together like sheep, getting lost on the way to electives. Looking around, he confirmed it—all of the other kids he’d brushed past on his way in were undersized, and two of them he recognized from elementary school. A voice floated up in memory, the drone of a teacher directing traffic, tuned out by reflex: “Sixth graders by the library, seventh graders by the flagpole, eighth graders by the cafeteria. Sixth graders by the library…”

Conor sighed. That meant that his spot was no longer his spot, and that Ashleigh could be anywhere, assuming he was anywhere at all. Frustrated, he turned to head back out into the courtyard—

He paused.

It was a sign of their naïveté that none of the other kids in the passageway had reacted to Conor’s presence. East Binder would cure them of that soon enough—one of the first things new students picked up was a radarlike awareness of older kids who weren’t where they should be.

But with less than an hour under their belts, and still accustomed to their former place at the top of the food chain, none of the newly minted sixth graders were on the lookout for trouble. They had paid no attention to Conor, and were now paying no attention to the three older boys swaggering in from the courtyard.

The middle one was familiar, a seventh grader—

No, eighth grader, now.

—named Craig Eichardt. He rode Conor’s bus, alternating between tormenting the smaller kids near the front and sucking up to the thugs at the back. Conor had had a few run-ins with him the year before. He didn’t know the names of the other two boys, but he knew the type, could read the precursors of cruelty in their faces.

Rule five—

No.

No. Not his problem. Not today.

Conor began walking slowly back toward the exit, head down, radiating insignificance, tracking the bullies out of the corner of his eye as he drifted to the opposite side of the passageway. They had zeroed in on a cluster of sixth graders and were looming, now, laughing, pressing the smaller boys back against the brick wall of the building. One of the thugs reached out and snatched the hat off a kid’s head. In response, another dropped his bookbag and pushed to the front, hands clenched into fists.

Not. Your. Problem.

He drifted even further to the side, hoping—and hating himself for it—that he would be able to slip past unnoticed.

(It wasn’t like there was anything he could actually do. The bullies weren’t looking for trouble—just the opposite, in fact. They would call some names, push the little kids around a bit, establish the pecking order and then slouch away before any grownups could show up. The worst thing anybody could do was give them something to push against. As long as nobody did anything stupid, it would all be over in another thirty seconds.)

He was almost past them, just a few steps away from the courtyard proper, when three things happened in quick succession:

Eichardt reached out and shoved the kid with the fists, who staggered backward into the wall behind him.

The kid rebounded, shouting in fury, and as Conor heard his voice and looked squarely at him for the first time, he felt his jaw drop.

And as Eichardt turned to laugh with his cronies, Timothy Falhanner dealt him a savage kick that landed audibly in the center of the older boy’s left shin.

Timothy—Ashleigh’s little brother.

Shit.

Eichardt went down, hard, and before the other two eighth graders could react, Timothy had snatched back his friend’s hat and darted away, the rest of his group scattering. One of the bullies gave chase; the other leaned over to help a fuming, cursing Eichardt back to his feet.

“The fuck you looking at, faggot?”

Conor took a step back, ducking his head meekly, raising his hands in silent answer. Mollified, the red-faced eighth grader snorted and turned away, taking short, shuffling steps as he and his friend made their own way out into the courtyard.

And just like that, it was over. It had all happened so quickly that Conor had not even had time to form a coherent thought. The other kids around him looked equally stunned, more than one mouth hanging open.

Yeah, you’re gonna need to get used to that sort of thing.

There was a bookbag lying on the ground where the confrontation had taken place—battered and familiar, the initials AMF written in faded sharpie on the front pouch.

Ashleigh’s old bookbag.

Conor looked around, feeling helpless. None of Timothy’s friends remained anywhere in sight, and he doubted he’d be able to find the younger boy in the courtyard with only a couple of minutes left before the bell—

“Conor?”

Turning, Conor saw a man standing in the doorway of the side entrance, head and shoulders leaning out past the glass. It was his math teacher from the previous year, one he’d gotten along reasonably well with.

“Hi, Mr. Marowitz.”

“What are you doing here? Seventh graders should be out in front of the office.”

“Yeah, I…” he hesitated. “I was, uh. Trying to give Timothy his bag. Um. Ashleigh’s little brother. He forgot it…”

Conor trailed off. Mr. Marowitz looked down at the bag, then back out into the courtyard, where the two eighth graders were still visible, limping away. His eyes narrowed.

“I didn’t take it,” Conor said hastily. “That was—there were some kids giving him a hard time and he…uh…dropped it.”

“I see,” said the teacher, nodding slowly.

(He didn’t ask any questions. They never did, the teachers. They knew the students couldn’t afford to answer honestly.)

“He’s actually in my homeroom,” Mr. Marowitz said. “Give it to me, I’ll get it to him.”

Conor handed it over.

“They want you in the office, by the way.”

Conor’s stomach lurched. “They do?”

“Yes, they were calling for you a couple of minutes ago. Shall we?”

Turning, the grownup gestured, and Conor followed him through the doors of the side entrance and into the hallway that ran past the library.

So. They’re looking for you after all.

How about that.

A part of Conor tried to panic again, but by this point there was nothing left, only a tired, defeated sort of feeling.

“Ready for seventh grade?” Mr. Marowitz asked, as they turned the corner and walked past the entrance to the electives building.

(Conor’s eyes tried to look up, and he stopped them.)

“Guess so,” he answered vaguely.

“Sad that summer’s over?”

Ha. “I kind of like fall.”

His former teacher nodded, and fell silent. They turned the final corner just as the first bell rang, the double doors swinging open before the flood of students pouring in from the courtyard. Mr. Marowitz led him through the crush, the students parting around him like fish around a shark. They stopped at the doors of the front office, and the teacher hesitated briefly.

“Well,” he said. “Good luck.”

And he turned to walk back the way they’d come.

Gnawing at his lip, Conor entered the office, unable to stop himself from scanning the room for Ashleigh, who wasn’t there (of course). There were six or seven other kids waiting in the chairs around the edges of the room, and a handful of teachers and parents vying for the attention of the lone secretary. Conor sat, picking at the scabs on his wrist as he waited. Several minutes passed before his turn, at which point the secretary ushered him down a short hallway and into a small, deserted lounge. Depositing him on a couch, she knocked sharply on a door marked Asst. Principal, told him to wait until called for, and disappeared just as the tardy bell rang, leaving him alone.

Conor put his head in his hands.

Ready for seventh grade?

Not really, no.

Mr. Marowitz didn’t know—hadn’t heard, or he wouldn’t have asked, so casually, so normally. The lounge was quiet, and the second hand of the clock thundered in the silence as Conor pressed his palms against his eyelids, feeling his heartbeat in his forehead.

Too much. It was all too much—the weed, the jump, the fight, the ambulance. Ashleigh’s disappearance. The bag, the cops. And now Timothy and Eichardt, of all things—

It felt like he’d spent days off-balance, reacting and reacting, unable to catch his breath. He wasn’t ready for school to begin again, wasn’t ready for the onerous task of figuring out seven new grownups, seven new sets of arbitrary, incomprehensible rules—of forcing himself to stay awake through seven hours of pointless busywork while everything else crumbled around him. He could barely hold the events of the past day together in his mind—if he had to calculate the distance between Train A and Train B, or write five paragraphs on the legacy of slavery, he was pretty sure he would lose his shit entirely.

Hey, remember when Conor went nuts and started eating his textbook?

But that was the thing about being twelve—you just had to put up with it. There was no escape hatch, no opting out. As if eight hours of school followed by two hours of homework and an hour of sports and then video games until bed was just…just…just how the world worked, the natural order, the only way for things to be—

There was a sharp click, and an unfamiliar voice filled the room.

“Good morning, students and staff,” it said. “Welcome back to another year at East Binder Secondary School. My name is Everett Sykes, and I will be joining you as your new assistant principal.”

Conor’s eyes flickered toward the closed door.

Mr. Benson quit…?

“I have just a few brief announcements for you, before we all get down to business…”

The words were dry, clipped, and precise, wasting no time or energy. Conor hadn’t known they were getting a new AP, and wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad, all things considered—he’d met Mr. Benson on the first day of last year, when he and Ashleigh had been caught impersonating absent students to steal their locker combinations…

Hey, it’s not like we were going to do anything bad with them.

“…and for those new students who have still not purchased the school uniform, this is a reminder that you have until Friday to do so. After that, uniforms are strictly required for all classes and at all official school functions. Thank you for your attention, and go Bulldogs.”

The voice clicked off. Scarcely five seconds later, the door to the assistant principal’s office swung open, revealing a tall, grey-haired man wearing a dress shirt with a blue-and-gold tie.

“Hello, Mr. Moreton,” the man said, the same taut, formal voice that had come out of the intercom. “My name is Mr. Sykes. Please come in.”

Conor stood, following him into the small office. It was different than it had been the last time he’d seen it, with Mr. Benson’s picture frames and knick-knacks and piles of paper all gone, replaced by a single photo resting on the corner of a nearly empty desk, a landscape showing a rocky mountain over a mirrorlike lake.

“I’m sorry that our first meeting has to be across a desk,” Mr. Sykes said as they both sat down, “but I needed to check in with you as soon as possible about the events of yesterday.” His chair was identical to Conor’s, the same molded plastic that could be found at every desk and table in the school. “You’ll be happy to know that Mr. Stevens is recovering nicely, and neither his concussion nor the shock seem likely to cause him any lasting harm. The attending doctor particularly mentioned that the compress on his forehead probably saved him from needing a transfusion, and that you should be commended for acting so quickly.”

A tension that Conor had not even been aware of left his shoulders at this news, and he felt himself relax into his seat a little. “Will he be—uh—I mean, what about his face?”

“His nose was broken. It’s not clear how well that will heal. But the scar on his forehead should be quite thin once the stitches come out. At the moment, I’m told he’s having more pain from the fractured rib, which won’t be fully healed until November.”

Throughout this recitation, the AP had been studying Conor’s face intently, and now he leaned forward, clasping his hands together, his eyes sharp. “Were you in the tree with Mr. Stevens when he fell?”

So random, so unexpected was this question that Conor—who had come into the office fully prepared to lie on Ashleigh’s behalf—was caught completely off guard. “I—wait, what?”

The grey-haired man nodded, his lips tightening into a thin, bloodless line. “I thought as much. Let’s try another one: did you by any chance move Mr. Stevens before the EMTs arrived?”

Move him?

“Drag him, roll him, help him walk. No? Could he have moved himself? You told Officer Grimsley that you heard a shout, came over the outer wall, and found him by the sidewalk—is there any chance that he crawled there from somewhere else?”

“I…”

Conor was growing more confused by the second, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice warned him to be careful.

Rule two.

“This is very important, Mr. Moreton. Are you quite sure that the place where you found Mr. Stevens is the same place where he first collapsed?”

(A memory of Guyler falling, of Ashleigh vanishing around the corner.)

“Yes,” Conor said. “But—”

“How can you be sure?”

“I…” He hesitated. “The—the blood. There was blood on the sidewalk. Nothing on the grass. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

Mr. Sykes ignored the question. “It was Mr. Stevens who started the fight, wasn’t it?”

Conor froze. That was exactly the story he had planned to run with, the best he had been able to come up with without conferring with Ashleigh first. It was plausible, since half of the fights between them had been started by Guyler anyway, and it was the only way to draw sympathy for a kid who’d put his classmate in the hospital—that it had been self-defense.

(It might even be true.)

But the way Mr. Sykes had sprung the question—the intensity with which he was now staring at Conor—

“I don’t know,” he said, instinctively changing tactics.

“You don’t know who started the fight?”

“I don’t know anything about a fight.”

Mr. Sykes leaned back in his chair, still studying Conor’s face. “Last night, you told Officer Grimsley that you didn’t know what had happened to Mr. Stevens, that you found him that way, and that, quote, ‘Ashleigh is gone.’ Apparently you repeated that last part quite a few times.”

Conor kept his face carefully neutral. “Ashleigh was supposed to meet me in the park across the street.”

No, wait—too specific.

“I mean, he wasn’t supposed to. But I was—that’s where I was waiting for him. Looking for him, I mean. We meet there all the time.”

“But he wasn’t there yesterday?”

“I don’t know. He might’ve been. I left when I heard the shout.”

“So you didn’t see Mr. Falhanner at all?”

What is this?

Mr. Sykes was fishing, that much was clear. But why was he asking Conor, when Guyler was already awake?

“I don’t remember,” Conor said.

The grownup’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember?”

Conor said nothing. They sat in silence for a long moment.

Slowly, Mr. Sykes’s expression softened. “He’s your friend, isn’t he? Mr. Falhanner, I mean.”

Conor nodded.

“And you want to help him out of this, don’t you?”

Help me out of what, exactly?

“And you’re trying very hard not to say anything that will get him into trouble, aren’t you?”

Conor still didn’t answer, and the grey-haired man sighed. “Listen, Mr. Moreton. I’m not here to interrogate you, or to trick you into betraying your friend. As it happens, you’ve already cleared up the major issue for me, and there’s no need to drag this out if you plan on being stubborn. If you want, I can write you a pass to homeroom right now.”

He paused briefly, as if to give Conor a chance to take him up on the invitation, then continued. “But there are still a few things that aren’t making sense to me yet, and I’d appreciate it if you were a little more…open, than you seem to be right now.”

“Why don’t you ask Guyler?”

“I’m interested in what you have to say.”

Conor’s heart began to race.

He really doesn’t know.

Why? It made no sense at all—Guyler and Ashleigh had been enemies for a full year, and neither had ever hesitated to spill the beans on the other. The teachers had gotten involved when Guyler stole Ashleigh’s shoes in gym class and filled the toes with yogurt, and when Ashleigh had put Guyler’s research paper in the shredder, and they’d never found out about the frozen piss thing but if they had—

Holy shit.

Maybe the other boy couldn’t remember.

Mr. Sykes cleared his throat, and Conor twitched.

Say nothing.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sykes. Like I said, I don’t know what happened. I heard a shout, came over the wall, and called 911. That’s—that’s all I know.”

The assistant principal’s face darkened. There was another long pause, and when he finally spoke, there was a new edge of sharpness in his dry, serious voice.

“Let me tell you a story, Mr. Moreton,” he said, leaning forward and fixing Conor with a cold stare. “I came here from Central High. Do you know where that is?”

Conor nodded.

“We have our fair share of problems at Central. Gangs and so forth—I’m sure you’ve heard stories. Enough that Officer Grimsley and I have become quite close, over the years. I wouldn’t be shocked to see five fights in a single week, and those would be just the ones we managed to find out about. Most of them never make it to the office.”

He smiled, but there was no mirth in it. “So there I am, last night, getting ready for my first day at this new school, this good school, where there are only a couple of fights a month and they only bring the drug dogs around once a quarter, and I get a call from Mike, and he says Everett, I know this isn’t really your problem, it still being summer and all, but I thought you’d want to know that we just responded to a 911 call from a kid about another kid who got his face pasted on a sidewalk at East Binder.

“And so I ask, did the caller see anything? And Mike tells me no, the kid is in shock and isn’t making much sense, but he’ll stop by the hospital once things have calmed down, and interview the victim. And I say thanks, Mike, I appreciate it.”

Conor felt himself beginning to sweat. Nothing good could come from whatever it was Mr. Sykes was trying to do—intimidate him? Trick him?

“After an hour, Mike calls me back. You’ll never believe it, he says. Kid claims he fell out of a tree. And I ask Mike what’s wrong with that story, and he says that for one thing, this kid, Guyler Stevens, he doesn’t have any mud or bark in any of his cuts. None. Plenty on his hands and clothes, but none in his cuts. For another thing, Mr. Stevens was found on a covered sidewalk, and the closest tree was thirty feet away.”

Conor could see it clearly in his mind’s eye—the wet splatter on the speckled concrete, the distant trunk of the old magnolia. He hadn’t registered the bark on Guyler’s hands and clothes, but suddenly the point of Mr. Sykes’s opening questions became clear.

Wait, though—does that mean Guyler was in the tree at some point? Why—

“Now, Mike and I have both been in this game for a long time,” Mr. Sykes continued. “So before I can even ask, he tells me that he already checked the caller for busted up knuckles and came up empty. At this point, all he has to go on is another kid that the caller mentioned, a girl named Ashleigh. I offer to look into it, and soon enough I find that it isn’t a girl, it’s a boy, and furthermore that this boy has a long history of getting into fights with our very own Mr. Stevens. I give Mike the phone number and address, and I hang up.

“So now things are fairly clear. Mr. Falhanner is our suspect, Mr. Stevens is our victim, and you, Mr. Moreton, are our witness, but nobody’s going to talk, because snitches get stitches, yes? I figure we’ll do things the hard way, since our defendant has no alibi and probably has split knuckles and that’s usually enough for the judge. But then Mike calls a third time, with two bits of bad news.”

Conor kept his eyes steady through sheer force of will, kept them pointed in the grownup’s direction despite an almost overwhelming desire to run, to hide.

“First, he’s had no luck tracking down our suspect. He went by the house, but no one would answer the door, and apparently the house phone doesn’t have voicemail. Second, he’s been back to the hospital to talk to Mr. Stevens again, but the kid is really sticking to his story, so much so that Mike tells me he’ll have to drop the case entirely—Mr. Stevens insists that he’ll testify in court that the only thing that took a swing at him was the root of a magnolia tree.”

Conor struggled to process this.

“Mike is concerned, naturally. Usually only two reasons for this kind of thing. Either the victim is scared out of his mind—and Mike says this kid doesn’t seem the type—or he has his own ideas about how to settle the score, and they don’t involve the authorities. Mr. Stevens seems perhaps a little young for that sort of thing, but hey, some kids are precocious. Mike’s hands are tied, so I agree to follow up here at school. I assume this means Mr. Falhanner will get away with it, but that we’ll talk to the parents and keep a close eye out for a month or two. I draft a letter to both families, and I go to sleep.”

The grownup paused, the lines on his face tightening. “Imagine my surprise, then, when Wendy knocks on my door at seven thirty this morning to tell me there’s a boy outside my office with ice on his knuckles and dirt all over his clothes.”

Wait, what?

“And the icing on the cake: this boy isn’t saying a word. Not one word. Won’t even give his name, although a quick look at last year’s yearbook clears that up.”

Conor’s head was spinning. Ashleigh had turned himself in?

Ashleigh?

He’d once dug a hole five feet deep, to hide the broken pieces of his mother’s favorite flowerpot. He took his punishments cheerfully enough once they had him pinned down, but he always made them work for it. In Conor’s memory, Ashleigh had never, ever confessed.

But he hasn’t confessed. He hasn’t said anything.

So…

So…

Mr. Sykes was still watching, and gave a tight, satisfied nod. “You understand my frustration, then. I have a victim refusing to admit he has been attacked. A bully who surrenders, but refuses to confess. And you, a witness who clearly wants to do the right thing, but who says he saw nothing and is giving me no useful information.”

“Ashleigh isn’t a bully.”

(Conor had no idea what was happening, but honor demanded he say at least that much.)

Suddenly, Mr. Sykes dropped his fist against the desk, causing the picture frame to bounce. “I am not interested in your opinions, Mr. Moreton!” he hissed. “I am in need of facts. I want you to tell me what happened here, so that I can deal with it. I have sixteen hundred students awaiting my attention, and I have neither the time nor the patience for games.”

And then Conor saw that he was indeed trapped, though the trap wasn’t of Mr. Sykes’s making. For even though he’d been present for all but ten minutes, those were the ten minutes that had truly mattered, and he really didn’t have the answers the new AP wanted. There was a bitter irony to Conor’s next words, because he knew they would be taken as a lie—

(And he would have gladly braved the grownup’s anger to protect his friend if they’d been a lie.)

—but they were nothing but the simple truth.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sykes,” he said, his voice trembling. “I didn’t see what happened, and I really don’t know.”

The silence that followed was the longest and most uncomfortable of the entire conversation, but when the AP spoke again, his voice was flat and colorless once more. “So be it,” he sighed. “Two weeks’ suspension for your friend.”

“What? But—”

“Discretion, Mr. Moreton. As assistant principal, I may suspend any student for up to ten days for any reason, without appeal. A fact which you would do well to keep in mind, since you seem to have decided that our relationship will not be one characterized by an excess of trust.”

What?

Mr. Sykes reached over to a phone on the corner of his desk and pressed a button. “Wendy, please notify Mr. Falhanner’s parents that he will be taking a two-week suspension, beginning tomorrow. I’ll still want to talk to him, but I have enough information to make a decision. If the parents complain, schedule a conference.” The voice on the other end acknowledged, and Mr. Sykes released the button.

“It’s just his mom,” Conor said, as the AP turned to look at him once more.

“Pardon?”

“Uh,” Conor said, and swallowed.

(He couldn’t have said where the words had come from, or what they were for, and already wished he’d caught them before his mouth had opened.)

“You said ‘parents,’” he continued reluctantly. “There’s just—he’s only got one. His mom.”

The grey-haired man said nothing, his gaze at once flat and sharp and somehow distant, as if Conor were not even there, was only a ghost, or maybe a memory.

Seconds crawled by.

“I don’t like things that are messy, Mr. Moreton,” the assistant principal said at last, and his voice was distant, too, the words directed at Conor but seeming to pass right through him. “If your friend is caught, he should be punished, and if he’s going to get away with it, then I should not have to deal with it anyway. The three of you have given me the headache of a problem and robbed me of the relief of a solution, and if I were you, I would try very hard not to find myself in this office again any time soon.”

He gestured curtly to the exit, and Conor pushed himself to his feet, his palms leaving a faint smear of sweat on the polished surface of the desk. Opening the door, he took one last look over his shoulder—

“Mr. Falhanner, you may come in, now.”

Conor’s head twisted back to the front so quickly that his neck cracked. There, on the same couch where he had sat listening to the announcements, was Ashleigh.

Time held still. There were bags of ice balanced on his friend’s hands, not quite covering up the cracked and bleeding knuckles beneath. There were leaves and twigs in his hair—wide smears of black dust on his shirt, his pants, his skin—splatters of what looked sickeningly like dried blood—

He didn’t go home last night.

Their eyes met.

“Ash,” Conor said, the beginnings of a question forming on his tongue—

—but before he could say any more, Ashleigh looked away, stood and walked past him with eyes downcast, sliding into the seat in front of the AP’s desk.

Conor hovered in the doorway for another half-dozen heartbeats, until Mr. Sykes called out “Close the door, please, Mr. Moreton.”

There was nothing to do but obey.

•••

Conor exited the office, stepping out into the main quad, the four high school buildings lined up like tally marks on his right, the three middle grade wings arranged in a T shape on his left. He trudged past the familiar sixth grade doors to the seventh grade hall in the middle and made his way to the bathroom.

Two of the mirrors inside had tape around their edges, as though they’d been recently replaced and hadn’t fully set yet. The other two were useless, covered almost entirely in scratch graffiti, badly-spelled obscenities and poorly rendered pictures of girls, cars, nuclear explosions, penises. Even though he was alone, Conor used the stall. It was mercifully clean, the result of the school year being less than thirty minutes old.

Conor’s locker was a top locker, and as he unloaded his bookbag into the half-sized space he sent up a silent thank-you; at least this year he wouldn’t have to choose between crawling around his classmates’ knees or waiting for the halls to clear and being late to class. He closed the door and opened it again three times, making sure he knew the combination with his hands as well as his brain, and then checked his schedule.

There was no point in heading to homeroom; it would be dismissed in a few more minutes anyway. His first class—English—was in a room just thirty feet away. Walking over, he pressed his back against the locker nearest the door and slid to the ground.

English.

English.

First period English.

…the thought refused to complete itself, Conor too tired to force it into words. There was just the feeling, trapped and sinking and overloaded all at once, stuck stuck stuck stuck stuck—

English.

He had to go to English because he had to do well in seventh grade so he could move on to eighth grade so he could go to high school so he could get into a good college so he could get a good job, blah blah fucking blah—

Hey, come on, it’s not that bad.

But the echo of Ashleigh’s voice in his head was halfhearted, because it was that bad. Ashleigh knew it, too—stuck, they were all stuck, one day they would both grow up and the ones who had bought it, bought into the system, the ones who thrived on it, they would be the bosses and they would have all the money and it wasn’t fair, just because they were the ones who didn’t have anything better to do—

(He could feel his thoughts racing, gathering speed. But he didn’t have the energy to stop them, nor the sense that trying would make anything better.)

Conor didn’t want to be a teacher. Didn’t want to be a doctor. Didn’t want to be a lawyer or a scientist, couldn’t see himself as a politician or a businessman or a garbage truck driver. He always wanted to ask them, those grownups who smirked and blathered and condescended to him about buckling down and taking it seriously—do you like what you do all day? Was the prize worth having spent sixteen years in a hamster wheel?

(He never actually said the words, though. There was a chance they would say yes, actually, and then what would he do?)

There wasn’t one single thing he’d ever witnessed a grownup doing that he genuinely wanted to be a part of. Not every day for the rest of his life. But there was no alternative.

He wasn’t terrible. He’d made B’s all the way through elementary school, with the occasional A thrown in and only a couple of really memorable failures. He knew how to do it. Only today—now—it was too much, the fakeness of it too blatant, too in-his-face, the whole thing was papier-mâché and shadow puppets and he couldn’t, could not do it, would not be able to fake it for even a single hour. He’d just made an enemy of the new AP, had watched them roll Guyler’s limp body onto a gurney and drive off with lights flashing, had smoked his first joint with Ashleigh and had jumped—God, I broke Binder’s Gap yesterday. I really actually did it. I jumped all the way from the auditorium to the gym…

How on earth was he supposed to care about English, after all that? He already knew English.

Ashleigh.

What he needed was to talk to Ashleigh. But that wasn’t possible until who-knew-how-many hours or days had passed. He didn’t know whether they had any classes together, or whether Ashleigh would be on the bus, or whether Mrs. Falhanner would even let him use his phone, his computer—

(Conor’s thoughts stumbled.)

(Stumbled, because Ashleigh hadn’t gone home last night, which meant that it hadn’t been his mother stopping him from answering his phone, it had been something else, Conor had been pinging him for hours and he simply hadn’t answered. And just now, in the office—)

The bell rang.

Exhausted, he hauled himself to his feet, pressing back against the locker as the hallway flooded with students. He waited for the stream to slow, turned and walked through the door—

The classroom was a cold, bare place, tile floors and metal desks in long, straight rows, with whiteboards covering every inch of the front wall. The teacher, a youngish woman in a plain outfit, was busy erasing the leavings of her homeroom activities. Conor took two steps and slid into the nearest desk, up against the wall and just inside the door, where he could see the whole classroom in front of him without having to twist around.

“Hey, Monito!”

Conor turned as a skinny boy with dark, close-cropped hair dropped his bag and plopped breathlessly into the nearest seat in the next row over. “Hola, ‘olt,” Conor answered.

Conor had known Holt Avery since the fifth grade, when the other boy had cheerfully ramped up a food fight Ashleigh was trying to start by dumping an entire plate of creamed spinach onto his own head. They’d spent a week together in afterschool detention, along with the three other boys who made up Ashleigh’s fan club.

(Conor had never gotten along very well with the larger group. It sort of felt as though Ashleigh disappeared when the others were around, transforming into some near-perfect copy of himself that Conor didn’t understand, could never quite figure out how to talk to.)

By himself, though, Holt was the sort of boy it was almost impossible to dislike. He lived a few streets over with his mother, grandmother, and three sisters. They invited him over for dinner from time to time, and Conor had spent the night afterward more often than not.

“Been looking for you,” Holt said. “Long time no see. You missed homeroom.”

“Office.”

“Yeah, I heard. Was it about Guyler?”

Conor shot him a sharp look, and he shrugged. “Ellie Maye’s mom checked him into the ER last night, told my mom about it. Figured it might’ve been you and Ashleigh.”

There was no hint of judgment in his voice, nor anything like approval, either, for which Conor was grateful.

“I notice El Capitán isn’t back yet.”

“Still talking to the AP,” Conor said. “Does everybody know?”

Holt shook his head. “Don’t think so. Nobody was talking about it.”

Which meant Holt himself hadn’t said anything, either.

“What’d Ellie’s mom say?”

“Concussion, broken nose, black eyes, fractured rib. Eleven stitches on his forehead, but no internal bleeding. They kept him there overnight to keep an eye on him.” Holt gave Conor a measured look. “Pretty serious stuff. She said there was a cop there, talking to him.”

It was the closest the other boy would come to digging for more detail. When he saw that Conor wasn’t talking, he shrugged again and switched gears. “Did you see any of the new high schoolers?”

“What, the ninth graders?”

“No, I mean the new ones. The ones from—”

Just then, the sound of a single clap cut through the chatter. Holt broke off, both of them turning to see their teacher at the front of the room, hands still raised, her face expectant.

Quickly, silence settled over the class. There was no name on the board, and Conor glanced down at his schedule.

Ms. Palmano.

Without a word, the woman turned to the dry erase board behind her and drew four large columns, labeling them A, B, C, and D. She capped the marker, and then, as an afterthought, uncapped it again, adding the word (grades) after the letter D. Stepping back toward her desk, she spoke.

“I’d like you all to come add your names to the board, please.”

No one moved.

Cautiously, a girl named Katie raised her hand. The teacher nodded.

“Um. What?”

“Come add your names to the board under the appropriate column.”

Another hand went up. Again the teacher nodded.

“Like, what we got in English last year, or…?”

“Was your grade last year correct?”

Again a confused silence. Holt caught Conor’s eye, and jerked his head toward the front of the room, waggling his eyebrows. Conor shook his head.

Rolling his eyes, Holt stood and strolled casually to the board. Picking up a red marker, he wrote HOLT in large capitals right across the middle, with the HO in the B column and the LT under C. Then he walked back to his desk with his hands in his pockets, whistling.

There was a smattering of nervous laughter as the class waited for the teacher’s reaction, but she gave none—just watched, her face revealing nothing. Eventually, two other students stood up, and then the floodgates opened. Soon there was a scrum at the board as they fought for colors and pride of place.

“Why are we doing this?” asked one boy as he waited outside the pack for a blue marker.

“I thought we might start with a moment of honesty,” the woman answered. Only a few students were close enough to overhear, Conor among them. Quietly, he picked up a black marker and added his name in small letters right underneath Holt’s. There were ten or eleven other kids who had also chosen to straddle one of the lines.

When they had all retaken their seats, Ms. Palmano reached into her desk and pulled out a phone. Holding it up, she photographed the board.

“Well,” she said, “half of you cheated.”

Another nervous chuckle.

“I think I can fix it, though. If a solid A is a 95, and a solid B is—what, 89?—then I suppose I can give Arianna a 92.” Arianna’s name was written across the boundary between A and B, and she squirmed uncomfortably in her seat as everyone’s eyes fell on her. Not for long, though—a moment later, the attention shifted again as the teacher picked up her gradebook and began scribbling, looking back and forth from the board to the page.

“Wait—what are you doing?”

This from another boy, one whose name Conor didn’t know.

“Writing down your grades.”

“What? What do you mean?” He sounded slightly panicked, and from the looks on the faces of the other students around him, he wasn’t alone. “For what?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who gave it to yourself.”

“No, I mean—what’s it for? Is that, like, a quiz grade, or—”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was just going to put it onto your report card.”

This triggered a wave of protest, which their teacher completely ignored. She kept writing, her eyes flickering back and forth, until she reached the bottom of the page and set the gradebook back down on her desk. Turning, she hoisted an expression of exaggerated innocence onto her face and asked, “Is there a problem?”

A dozen voices spoke all at once, and she raised her arms in a calming gesture. Slowly, the voices quieted and were replaced by a dozen raised hands. She pointed to one.

“But we haven’t done anything yet!”

“So? You’re going to. Now we both know what to expect.”

Another outburst, this time involving at least a dozen voices. Again, she waited, and again the students slowly settled and raised their hands.

“If those are our grades for the quarter, what’s to stop us from just doing nothing?”

“I hope you’re not suggesting that it would be a good idea to cheat in my class, Miss—”

“Gibson. Susanne Gibson.”

“Are you saying you plan to cheat, Susanne?”

Susanne fell silent, her face burning. Someone else spoke in a stage whisper. “Wish I’d put myself under A instead of C.”

“Cheating, Mr.—”

“My name’s Ben.”

“And twice a cheater—you didn’t wait your turn.” She called on another boy in the front row. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Rami, ma’am—and can we change our grades?”

“CHEATING!” she roared, and the class was evenly split between those who laughed and those who flinched. “One does not simply change a grade!”

“But we didn’t know what the grade was for!” protested the boy who’d spoken first. There was a general mutter of agreement, quickly smothered by the stern glare their teacher swept around the room. Not everyone had joined in—there were a dozen or so students who hadn’t spoken at all, Conor among them—but those whose hands were raised looked mutinous. Holt was shaking with suppressed laughter.

“The grade is for your work in this class, which I would have thought was perfectly obvious from the fact that I was writing it down in my gradebook,” Ms. Palmano said. She nodded toward the girl sitting directly in front of Conor.

“What work, though? And my name’s Jennifer.”

“You tell me, Jennifer. You’ve promised me”—here she paused, scanning the board—“an A’s worth of English work. What will it be?”

“Aren’t you supposed to tell us? You’re the teacher!”

“And you’re the student. Would you rather learn how to follow directions, or how to write them?”

There was a lull as the protesters digested this. Holt was still laughing silently; Conor reached over and punched him in the arm. “What’s so funny?” he hissed.

“This whole thing,” Holt whispered back. “Está jodiéndolos—they’re all taking it so serious, and she’s just trolling them. I bet she didn’t even write those grades down. Bet she was just taking attendance. Oh, man, I hope she doesn’t get fired.” He started laughing again.

Hands were going up into the air once more. The teacher called on another boy, who identified himself as Jeremy. “Are you saying we’re supposed to make up our own assignments?”

“I’m saying you owe me something for that B you’ve asked me to sign off on.”

“What if we can’t think of anything?”

“Then you’ll fail.”

“There aren’t any failing grades up there,” Ben pointed out. “You only went down to D.”

“Oh, I’m not saying you’ll fail the class. Then you’d just be right back here again next year—how would that help?”

“Wait—are you saying we can’t fail?”

“Of course you can fail, I just sa—weren’t you listening? I’m saying that your grade has nothing to do with it.” She threw her hands up in mock frustration. “Look, this is a very simple concept. I don’t know why you’re having so much trouble with it.”

“You’re not explaining it!”

“Exactly!”

The discussion dissolved into chaos. Conor watched with clinical interest as half of his classmates came unhinged, feeling oddly detached. There were a few—like Holt—who clearly found the whole thing funny, and a few more who were just watching, wary or anxious or bored. But most were somewhere between stricken and outraged, their voices piling up on top of one another.

And there in the center of it all, making no effort to temper the riot, stood Ms. Palmano, a small smile curving her lips as she let them wear themselves out.

Holt was right—she was doing this on purpose. Was winding them up.

Why?

It wasn’t a loud question. Not like the ones Jennifer and Jeremy and Ben and Susanne were currently shouting, to no avail. But it penetrated Conor’s fugue, somehow—caused his brow to furrow, tilted his head a fraction of an inch.

This woman was up to something.

Conor wondered what Ashleigh would do, if he were here. Probably go up and erase the board, or declare the class dismissed and walk out.

Or…

He hesitated. A beautiful idea had just occurred to him—but it couldn’t be that simple, could it?

Conor swept his eyes around the room, at the pandemonium still raging unabated. Slowly, he reached into his binder, took out a sheet of paper and a pencil, and laid them on his desk.

Ms. Palmano winked at him.

Oh, Ash would just love this.

Conor picked up the pencil and wrote his name and subject at the top of the page. Then, looking up at the board, he also wrote the number 85, and circled it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Holt following his lead; a moment later, the girl in front of him withdrew her voice from the tumult and did the same. Slowly the idea spread, in fits and starts, like ripples radiating out from Conor’s corner, until a tipping point was reached and the whole room fell silent. Then there was only the zip of bookbags and the snap of binders, the rustle of paper and the scratching of graphite and ball points.

•••

At the end of the period, no one had finished, but that was okay—Ms. Palmano assured them that anything worth turning in would take at least until Wednesday. When the bell rang, they packed up and left, and although he was closest to the door, Conor was the last to go. The teacher didn’t wink at him again, but she did smile, and as he smiled back, he felt a tiny flicker of…of something, he couldn’t put his finger on it but it was warm and promising in a way that nothing else that morning had been.

Maybe having English first period won’t be so bad.

It didn’t take long for the glow to wear off, though. The rest of the morning crawled by, an endless parade of icebreakers and course outlines, all soul-crushing tedium. By the time he left his fifth period and headed for lunch, he felt as if summer had been a lifetime ago.

“Do you think they ever stop to consider that by seventh grade, we already know everybody’s names?” he grumbled to Holt, as they joined the long line of kids waiting to pass through the double doors.

“You don’t know everybody’s names,” Holt countered. “Who’s that over there, by the drink machine?”

Conor squinted. “Shorty McShorticus.”

Holt chuckled. “It’s so they can learn our names, brohombre. Besides, you’re looking at it all wrong. Think of it like an experiment. We’re getting to hear every possible way to mispronounce Siobhan. Plus, no homework.”

Conor grunted, and the line moved, the pair of them passing out of the sunlight and into the building.

The cafeteria at East Binder was enormous, yet even so it took three separate lunch rotations to cycle everyone through. It was divided down the center by a long staff table, with middle schoolers on the right and high schoolers on the left.

This was third lunch, which meant that the food was at its worst, but it also meant that Conor had nothing left for the afternoon except for an hour of Activity and seventh period Art.

It took the two of them a full five minutes to get through the line, and they wandered for another looking for a table before Holt nudged him on the shoulder and pointed. Conor followed his finger to a table in the corner, took stock of the people already sitting there, and hesitated.

“Oh, come on,” Holt said. “Don’t be that guy. Nobody likes that guy.” He began threading his way through the minefield of chairs, and after a moment’s indecision, Conor sighed and reluctantly followed.

Might as well get it over with.

The table held six chairs, three of which were already occupied. As Conor approached, Holt plopped himself down in a fourth, shouldering aside Nolan Brinkley and Eddie Hooper and tearing savagely into his cheeseburger. Conor took the left of the two remaining chairs, next to a smaller boy who was introduced as Nicholas, Nolan’s little brother.

“Where’s Sam?” Holt asked thickly.

“Second lunch,” answered Nolan. “Ashleigh, too.”

They were a miscellaneous bunch—among them, only Nolan and Sam were close outside of school, although Holt did his best to be friends with everyone. In the hallways and classrooms, though, they stuck together. One reason was that East Binder was the kind of place where a guy could use a few people watching his back. The other reason was Ashleigh.

The other boys—Holt, Nolan, Eddie, and Sam—followed him religiously, which had the effect of ensuring that they were usually all in the same place at the same time. They were his cheerleaders, his minions, his guinea pigs—each, in his own way, under the other boy’s charismatic spell. When he wasn’t around, they gathered together like lost ducklings, clinging to one another as a substitute for Ashleigh’s missing gravitational pull.

(At least, that was how Conor saw them. No doubt they would describe it differently. When he was honest with himself, he knew that his own friendship with Ashleigh probably looked no different, maybe ultimately was no different.)

But for some reason, the love and respect they all shared for Ashleigh hadn’t transferred, wasn’t quite enough to bring them all properly together. Ashleigh was usually with Conor or with the group, and when they did all end up in the same place at the same time, there was inevitably something of a tug-of-war, the two sides jealously competing for the greater share of Ashleigh’s attention and approval.

(Conor had tried to put this into words, once—with Holt, the only one of the four he felt able to properly talk to. But it had been an awkward, unproductive conversation, and by silent, mutual agreement, neither of them had ever brought it up again.)

Had Conor not already been standing in line with the other boy, he would have gone off and found a quiet spot of his own. But given what had happened the day before, the posse was bound to track him down eventually, and in the fairer portions of his heart, he reluctantly acknowledged that they had at least some right to know.

“Is it true?” Eddie asked, as Conor set down his own tray.

Conor shot a glare at Holt.

“Don’t look at me, you,” the other boy grumbled. “I said nada.”

Nolan raised his hand, looking slightly sheepish. “I saw him this morning,” he said. “When I took attendance down to the office. Just for a second. He was in that little room behind the secretary’s desk, icing his knuckles.”

“And Guyler wasn’t in homeroom,” Eddie added. “So what happened?”

Conor took an immediate dislike to the excitement in Eddie’s voice—the sense that the other boy was thrilled, that he was expecting to hear a fun story, was thinking of it all as entertainment—

He doesn’t know.

“I didn’t see what happened,” Conor said flatly. “I came around the corner and Guyler was already down. Ash was—he took off.”

“So there was a fight,” Eddie crowed. “Man, I wish I’d been there.”

Conor felt his face flush. “You wouldn’t say that if you had been.”

“Are you kidding? A chance to watch Ashleigh kick the shit out of that fuckstick? Dude, I’d’ve bought tickets.” Eddie grinned, and even Nolan smiled shyly.

“It wasn’t like that,” Conor shot back, struggling to keep a rein on his rising frustration. He tried to remind himself that Eddie was an idiot, that he didn’t know any better—that up until yesterday Conor hadn’t known any better himself, would’ve probably had the same reaction—

If only Eddie would quit looking so goddamn smug.

“You don’t get it,” Conor continued. “Guyler’s in—he ended up in the hospital. There were cops out looking for Ashleigh. He didn’t go home last night. It wasn’t funny, or epic, or awesome, it was—stop laughing!”

He slapped his palm down on the table, and everybody jumped.

That’s right. Shut up.

“You weren’t there,” he growled, feeling the blood pulsing in his temples. “It was—it was scary, all right? You can’t—this isn’t like some game that Ashleigh won. Things are fucked up, now. It’s—it’s—”

It’s real, he wanted to say, but he could already tell that line was hopeless, could see in the faces of the other boys that they didn’t get it, weren’t going to get it—that he didn’t have the words to make them understand.

Although it wasn’t like they understood nothing, either. They had quieted, at least, the grin sliding off of Eddie’s face. “What happened?” he asked again, this time in a very different voice.

Conor heaved a sigh.

They do deserve to know.

Some of it. Not the drugs, or the Gap, or Guyler’s strange, inexplicable lie. But the stuff they would eventually find out anyway—that much, Conor could give them.

(In as few words as possible.)

“Look, we were messing around on campus, and we got separated. I guess Guyler was there, too, or maybe he followed us, because I was gone for a couple of minutes, and when I came back, he’d been decked. Ashleigh split, I called 911, and this morning they picked up me and Ashleigh both and asked us questions. I got yelled at, he got a two-week suspension. That’s pretty much it.”

“Two weeks, damn,” Eddie breathed.

Nolan frowned. “How long until Guyler gets out of the hospital?”

“He’s out already.” This from Holt, who had finished his burger and was halfway done demolishing a double basket of fries. “He probably won’t be back for a week or two, either, though. Broken nose, fractured rib.”

Eddie’s eyes widened in wounded surprise. “You knew?”

“Not my story.” Holt made a point of catching Conor’s eye, and Conor nodded in silent thanks.

And that was that. For a minute or two, Eddie blustered on about how Guyler had gotten what he deserved, but that was just Eddie being Eddie. Conor let it wash over him, focusing on his food, and soon enough the conversation left him behind. His thoughts wandered as the three of them offered tips to Nolan’s brother, and as Nolan told stories from their summer rafting trip. They were almost to the end of lunch before Holt made an attempt to draw him back in.

“So, Conor, did you see any of the guys from Central in the office this morning?”

Conor had no idea what he was talking about.

“You didn’t hear?” Eddie asked. “Didn’t you wonder what the deal was with all the cops this morning?”

Conor blinked. “I thought—”

Apparently not.

“Tell me.”

“They found some kind of toxic waste in the ceilings at Central two weeks ago, had to shut down the whole campus. They couldn’t find a building for a temporary school in time, so they spread the kids out to all the other high schools in the county.”

Conor remembered what Mr. Sykes had said in the office that morning—we have our fair share of problems at Central. “So the cops….”

“They were here in case anybody decided to bring knives or drugs or whatever.”

Nolan’s brother Nicholas piped up, the first Conor had heard him speak. “My friend Philip said they caught a guy with a gun. Cuffed him up right out in front of everybody.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, for real. Philip saw it himself.”

“Man, how stupid can you be? You’d think he’d’ve ditched the thing in the bushes or something.”

“Must’ve thought he could sneak it past, I guess.”

“Did you see any of them, Conor?” Holt repeated.

“No,” Conor said. “I wasn’t down there for very long.” He paused, wondering. “How many of them came here?”

They all looked at each other blankly. “Well, there’s what—like, two hundred kids per grade, right?” Nolan asked.

“Different in the city, though,” Holt pointed out.

“Yeah, but not that different. Call it two fifty per grade, maybe—that’s like a thousand for the whole school, right? How many schools did they spread them out to?”

“My dad said the whole county,” offered Eddie.

“So that’s us, Northern—”

“—East Chatham—”

“—Lincoln—”

“—South Bedford, Lakeside, and Voyager,” Nolan finished. “What’s a thousand divided by seven?”

There was a pause. “More than a hundred,” offered Eddie.

“It’s 143,” said Nicholas.

They all stared. The younger boy shrugged. “So divide that by four, and that’s about thirty-five new kids in each grade.”

“One classroom, give or take,” Holt mused.

“They’ll spread them out for sure, especially if they’re worried about gangs and stuff,” Eddie said confidently.

“Unless they keep them all together, like quarantine.”

Once more, Conor withdrew into his own thoughts, letting the conversation drift past him. Had there been drug-sniffing dogs, in among the cops that morning? He couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think so.

He thought about the bag of weed, currently buried in the mulch beneath the equipment shed. If Guyler didn’t mention the roof—and at this point, it didn’t sound like he ever would—then there was no real need to take it back up to its old hiding spot. He wondered how much it was worth, and whether it would keep as well in the cool, dark damp as it had in the dry heat of the rooftop.

What, we selling drugs now?

No. Of course not. He was just wondering, that was all.

The bell rang. There was a vast roar as five hundred chairs slid backwards all at once, the teachers shouting to corral the sudden chaos. Together, Conor and the other boys stood, dumping their trash and their trays and joining the flow of students slowly filtering through the double doors.

As they passed out into the hallway, Holt and Eddie still speculating about the Central students, Conor realized that he had managed to go almost a full five minutes without thinking of any of the horrors of the previous day. And while Eddie had been annoying as always, once they’d quit talking about Ashleigh, the rest of it had been harmless, casual.

He looked at the faces of the other four boys as they walked, found—to his surprise—that he felt no desire to escape, to pull ahead or let the crowd swallow him. It didn’t rankle, the way it so often did, to be within arm’s length, to exist inside the bubble of their conversation. For the moment, at least, it felt fine to simply be there.

Which was something.

•••

Three quick spins of the dial, one solid shove on the door of the overstuffed locker, and Conor was free. He weaved his way through the crowd, moving half a step slower than a jog as he headed for the exit. The gusting wind was cool against his face as he passed through the doors and out into the quad, but he left his jacket open, letting it ripple, capelike, behind him.

One down. One hundred and seventy-nine to go.

The afternoon had stretched on forever. His sixth class, Activity, had begun with the presidential fitness test. Conor was one of the few who actually enjoyed it—after a whole summer spent clambering around on rooftops, he was able to do twelve pull-ups in a row, now. But the test had been followed by flag football, and he had nursed an injured wrist all the way through Art.

Passing through the front hallway and out into the courtyard, he stepped out of the flow of students and paused, turning on his phone. He was disappointed (though not surprised) to see that there were no new messages, and he argued with himself for a full minute before pocketing the phone without sending any of his own.

Rejoining the crowd, he headed for the long line of buses parked along the south side of the lot. They were a mismatched bunch, ancient steel-and-diesel relics alternating with sleek, flat-faced modern designs, the wall of classic school-bus yellow broken here or there by pale blue or dingy beige or peeling white. Already there were hundreds of students, strung out in clumps, waiting for the drivers to arrive and unlock the doors.

Conor drifted down the row, searching for number 134. Spotting it, he quickened his pace to a trot—

—until suddenly the shape of the crowd next to it clicked in his brain, and he broke into a flat-out run.

God damn it—

There were precious few reasons for everyone to be standing in a circle like that, and none of them good. He could see phones out, filming—could hear jeering laughter—felt a sudden premonition so strong that he heard himself shouting “Let him go!” before he could even see past the densely packed shoulders.

“What do you want, faggot?” Eichardt snarled, as Conor shoved his way through into the open space at the center. There was only one lackey with him this time, but that was plenty—the hulking boy had no trouble holding both of Timothy’s arms behind his back as Eichardt pawed through his bookbag. Conor cursed himself for not making the connection earlier—that all three of them rode the same bus, that of course Eichardt would remember the morning’s humiliation, and seek revenge.

Did you have to pull this shit on literally day one, my fucking god—

If Conor had been there two minutes earlier, he might have been able to head the older boy off, rally the crowd against him. But it was too late, now—there was a circle, and the circle was hungry.

“Who’re you calling a faggot?” Timothy’s voice rang out. “At least he’s not grabbing all over little boys like your friend here.”

Conor winced. Eichardt’s face darkened.

Maybe we should just get it over with. Push some buttons, take a couple of black eyes—

(Again the memory of flashing lights.)

Sometimes it wasn’t just a black eye.

The fear made him hesitate, and the hesitation filled him with self-loathing, and the self-loathing curdled into something black and reckless, all of it happening in the space of a heartbeat, so that by the time he opened his mouth, he no longer cared about dropping the temperature.

“Let the kid go,” Conor repeated, his own voice taut and burning.

“Or what, bitch?” The bully dropped Timothy’s bag, spilling pencils and books onto the sidewalk. He turned to face Conor head on, stepping forward, looming—

The shin, go for the shin—

“Or we find out who’s the faggot when we put you on your knees, asshole.”

Eichardt’s head jerked toward the new voice as Conor’s breath caught in his throat. Off to the side, the crowd was parting, the circle opening up as a fifth boy edged his way in. His face had been washed, and he was wearing an old, threadbare blue-and-gold East Binder t-shirt over his ruined jeans, and the look in his eyes was flat and cold and utterly unafraid.

Ashleigh.

He stepped forward, stepped close, and now it was Eichardt’s turn to hesitate. Conor could see the calculation unfolding in the older boy’s mind—he and his friend still had the upper hand in terms of raw strength, but it was two against three, now, and the privacy of the circle would not last forever. He hadn’t actually come there to fight—had probably just been hoping to put Timothy in his place—

Before the eighth grader could recover, Ashleigh bent down, reaching for a small scrap of bark on the ground. Straightening, he balanced the chip of wood on his left shoulder and locked eyes with Eichardt.

The circle held its breath. That was a formal challenge, one that even the sixth graders would recognize—either Eichardt would knock the chip off of Ashleigh’s shoulder, giving the younger boy an opening to throw the first punch, or he would decline, and everyone would know that the eighth grader had backed down from a fight.

With a seventh grader.

A seventh grader whose little brother had kicked him in the shins and gotten away unscathed.

Conor had only a split second to appreciate the trap before the inevitable happened, Eichardt’s arm jerking forward as if on puppet strings. The chip went flying, and before it had even hit the ground, Ashleigh’s fist was already swinging. It struck a glancing blow to the side of the bully’s jaw, enough to make him stagger but not enough to knock him over. Eichardt fell back, arms windmilling—

—and Ashleigh screamed.

It was a raw, animal sound, shockingly loud, and the whole circle flinched, recoiled, drawing back on itself. Eichardt regained his footing, but froze, half-crouched, a trapped and hunted look appearing on his face as his eyes darted from side to side. He watched along with everyone else as Ashleigh crumpled to his knees, still screaming, clutching his right hand with his left—

(Suddenly, Conor understood. Ashleigh had hit the boy with his swollen, ruined knuckles.)

It was a situation for which no one had anything even remotely resembling a script. Long seconds passed as Ashleigh’s scream tapered to a moan, which then broke apart into sobs and finally died. Still no one moved—not Eichardt, not Conor, not even Timothy.

The teachers heard that, he thought. They had to—they’re on their way, they’re coming—

Ashleigh rose slowly to his feet, jaw trembling, tears leaking from furious eyes. He reached up to wipe his face, and when he pulled his arm away, there was another collective gasp.

There was a second woodchip. On Ashleigh’s right shoulder this time, indicating that he would punch with his left.

“Your move,” he said, and though his voice cracked halfway through, no one laughed.

There was a brief, wild moment in which it seemed that Eichardt would do it anyway, was going to sweep the chip off and trigger the whole performance all over again, but then he took a step back, stumbling over Timothy’s bag, and the spell was broken. “What the fuck, man,” he shouted, to no one in particular. Still looking hunted, he grabbed his friend by the arm and dragged him out of the circle, almost taking Timothy with them. At the last second, the bully released the younger boy, who bent and began silently gathering his things.

And just like that, it was over. The crowd exploded into conversation as Ashleigh’s shoulders sagged, as he sank back to the ground, cradling his hand once more. Conor rushed over to him, a smaller space remaining around them as though Ashleigh’s crumpled figure was generating some kind of force field.

“What the fuck, man?” Conor echoed. He reached out tentatively, put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, and was relieved when the other boy didn’t shrug it off.

“They never mess with the crazy ones,” Ashleigh said wearily. “Best I could come up with on short notice.”

“Well, it worked, but—Jesus.” Ashleigh had stuck his fist inside his shirt, wrapping the fabric tightly around it, and Conor could see fresh blood already leaking through. “We can ask the driver for some ice when he gets here—”

“Not taking the bus.” With a groan, Ashleigh began rising to his feet again; Conor put a hand under his arm, and the other boy took the help without comment. “I’m walking.”

He turned, and Conor followed his gaze to Timothy, who was standing rigidly a few feet away, trembling, his bag back on his shoulders and both fists clenched.

“Tell Mom,” Ashleigh called out.

“Fuck you,” the younger boy spat. “Tell her yourself.”

And then Timothy spun on his heel and stalked away, disappearing into the crowd. Ashleigh stiffened, a look of surprise breaking through the exhaustion on his face.

Conor blinked. “What—”

“Dunno,” Ashleigh said, sounding almost threadbare. His eyes remained fixed on the spot where Timothy had stood. Conor watched the rise and fall of his shoulders, the way each breath leaked slowly in, and left as if crushed out of him by some vast weight. He opened his mouth to say—

What?

Something.

But before he could find words, the sound of a diesel engine roaring to life made both of them jump. Turning, they saw that the driver had arrived, the bus doors now standing open, shadowy shapes moving down the aisle within.

“I’ll go with you,” Conor said. “We need to—”

“No,” Ashleigh said flatly. “Look after my brother.”

“Ash—”

“No.” He looked directly into Conor’s eyes for the first time, and underneath the exhaustion there was steel, and fire, and something else—something Conor didn’t recognize, but it brought him up short.

“I’m going alone,” Ashleigh said. “Don’t call.”

And without another word, he was gone, walking up the row toward the street, hand still tucked into his shirt. He didn’t look back, and Conor made no motion to follow—just watched until he disappeared over the hill, feeling lost all over again, and almost surprised when he looked down and there was no body lying at his feet.

•••

Conor was slumped at the kitchen table when his parents came home, eyes closed and head buried. It was after six, the sun already hidden behind the treetops as the two cars pulled into the garage, one right after the other. They said nothing as they came in, and neither did Conor. There were small sounds—the scrape of a drawer, the soft clunk of a knife, chair legs sliding along the floor. A plate was placed on the table, and pushed toward him.

He lifted his head. His mother had made him apple slices with peanut butter, and both she and his father were sitting across the table, arms crossed and waiting.

He picked up an apple slice and licked it, knowing without looking that his mother’s nose was wrinkling with disapproval. After another long silence, he sighed and put the whole slice in his mouth, chewing it into applesauce before swallowing.

“I’m in trouble,” he said finally, lifting his eyes to meet theirs. They sat like bookends, mirror images of stern concern on each of their faces.

“What tipped you off?” his mother asked dryly.

“You guys never say hi when you’re mad.” He reached for another apple slice and bit it in half, putting his chin back down on his forearm. He should have expected this, he realized, just like he should have expected Eichardt’s attack on Timothy. He wondered what else he wasn’t expecting, and how bad it would be when it happened.

You need sleep.

“How else did you know, Conor?” his father asked quietly.

This was how it went, with his parents. No yelling or arguing, no lies or excuses. He couldn’t recall the last time they had pronounced judgment on him; they almost always waited until he pronounced it on himself.

He tried to gather his thoughts. “You had to come pick me up from a police car.”

“Why would we be mad about that? It was an emergency, you called 911, case closed.”

“But there was a fight, and I was, um. Involved.”

“Nonsense. You said you didn’t lay a finger on Guyler, and we believe you. You tore up your own shirt for bandages. Unless you were lying?”

“I wasn’t lying.” He finished off the second apple slice and reached for a third. “I was trespassing on school property?”

“Come on, Conor. You’re stalling.”

He chewed thoughtfully, wondering as he did so what answer they were looking for. Almost, he wished he could just tell them everything, have them mete out punishment and call it a day. Then it could all go back to normal, back to the way it had been before yesterday…

Yesterday, when he still didn’t know what the inside of an ambulance looked like.

“Conor?”

“Sorry.” He popped another apple slice into his mouth. There was no such thing as back. The world hadn’t ever been that way—it had always been this way, and he just hadn’t noticed.

“Um,” he said. “I…wasn’t very helpful when the AP called me into his office? Did you hear about that?”

“Warmer, but you’ve gone too far. Rewind a little.”

Conor frowned. Rewinding a little would take him to the police cordon, and the bag, and the rooftop. But there was no way they could know about those, was there?

He felt his throat tighten. No, they couldn’t. For one thing, even they wouldn’t be this calm, not if they were waiting for those particular bombs to drop. For another, he’d left before they even—

Oh.

“This morning,” he said.

“Bingo.”

“I left early.”

“Too early,” his father corrected.

“With no note,” his mother added. “After everything that happened yesterday. How do you think your father felt, when he came down to wake you up and found an empty bed?”

(They all knew she was the one who came downstairs first in the morning.)

“Your mother had to call the school to make sure you were all right,” his father said, picking up the thread.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, not yet,” his mother said cheerfully. “But you will be.”

Conor’s heart sank. “How long?”

“A couple of weeks,” his father answered. “More, if you haven’t finished all the yardwork by then.”

Conor looked at him dully. “You planned this.”

“Not at all. But it is convenient. Rake the leaves, mow the grass, and stack the firewood. Oh, and blow off the driveway and the roof while you’re at it. We can negotiate about the weeding once you’re through.”

“You want me to use the leaf blower on the roof?”

“What, suddenly monkey boy is afraid of heights?”

They were past the hard part now, and into banter. Conor could never decide if he liked his parents’ method or not. It was good that they never yelled, that the three of them could laugh together even in the middle of a lecture. But still. He sometimes wished there could be sides. Something to press against, something to fight. With all of them working together, there was nowhere for his frustration to go, and so it built and built and built—

“Two weeks is a long time,” he said slowly, hoping to bargain.

“Not nearly as long as the infinity I spent between finding you gone and hearing that you were safe,” his mother shot back. “Two weeks is nothing. You’ll barely even be started with the quarter by then.”

That reminded him. “Ashleigh’s suspended for two weeks. They told me this morning.”

“Oh?”

“Can I take him his homework?”

His parents exchanged a look.

“Can’t Timothy do that, now that he’s graduated from Littleton?” his father asked.

“If I’m grounded and Ashleigh is suspended, it’ll be my only chance to see him.”

Silence.

“Twenty minutes,” he pleaded. “Walking time included, just down the street and back. Please?”

“What is there for tonight?”

“Nothing.” He knew better than to lie.

“Go to your room while we talk it over. No computer, no phone.”

He stood up.

“Yes, ma’am,” his father prompted.

“Yes, ma’am, yes, sir,” he echoed.

He walked down the hallway and into his bedroom, closing the door without turning on the light. Flopping down onto the bed, he rolled over and stared up at the ceiling, at the scattering of glow-in-the-dark stars still clinging to the light they’d gathered in the day. He could hear his parents’ voices through the wall—muffled, indistinguishable, warm, reassuring. He had heard those same voices through that same wall for as long as he could remember.

He rolled over onto his stomach, buried his face in the pillow, trying not to think.

About Ashleigh.

About Timothy.

About the bag, and the Gap, and the long year ahead.

About Ashleigh.

Sighing, he got up, turned on the light, and moved over to his desk, where he fiddled with his supplies as his mind wandered. Pens, pencils, erasers, paperclips—he picked them up and put them down, switched them from one compartment to another, moved his sticky notes from the drawer to the stand and back again, rearranged the books on the bookshelf. On a whim, he got out a sheet of notebook paper and drew an 85 at the top. Thinking for a moment, he wrote the words Dear Ashleigh in the upper left corner. Then he erased the Dear and wrote Hey. Then he threw the paper away.

He pulled out the blank book that Ashleigh’s mother had given him for his last birthday—a black, leatherbound journal, the kind with a little ribbon for marking your place. He opened it to the first page, which was shockingly, paralyzingly white.

There was a knock at his door.

“Come in,” he called. His father entered, walked around the bed, sat down on it facing him. It was low, so his eyes were exactly on level with Conor’s.

“Your mother and I agreed that you can take Ashleigh his homework. Twenty minutes, like you said. Twenty minutes and two seconds, and you’re done.”

“Thanks.”

The word came out sounding flat, but Conor meant it. He was exhausted now, drained and limp, but he would go over there soon—needed to go over there soon, he wasn’t sure exactly what it was that had fallen between him and the other boy but whatever it was, the longer it lay there the harder it would set.

He glanced at the open book on his desk.

His father cleared his throat. “There’s something else, Conor, and it’s awkward to try to get you to say it, so I’m going to give you one chance, and then I’m going to say it myself.”

Conor blinked, feeling whiplashed. His father was looking at him seriously, expectantly, eyes full of concern.

Oh hell.

The silence stretched out uncomfortably. Conor could feel the tension in his body, rising in tandem with the growing disappointment on his father’s face. What is it, what is it, what does he want me to say, what did I do—

When he could bear it no longer, he spoke, trying his best not to sound flippant.

“Can I have a hint?”

“Yes, you can have a hint. Smoke.”

A kind of chain reaction took place in Conor’s head. It began with they know, which became they know about the drugs, and then they know about me and the drugs, that I took drugs. From there, his brain leapt to I’m the kind of kid who does drugs, and as the whole thing reached critical mass, he gasped out loud. What felt like fifteen different feelings all slammed into him at once, guilt mixed with shame laced with dread and smothered in self-loathing, all layered atop a vast, boiling reservoir of fear and desperation.

He burst into tears.

Instantly, his father was beside him, arms wrapped around his shoulders. Conor turned into the embrace, pressing his face into his father’s chest as he wept, shuddering into the dark as meaningless words of comfort washed over him. They sat like that for a long time—whether seconds or minutes, Conor couldn’t have said—until slowly he became aware that his father was no longer murmuring, was calling his name, calling him back.

“Conor. Conor—Conor.”

He came back to himself with a jerk, like waking up from a dream—lifted his head, saw the smears of tears and snot he’d left on his father’s shirt and felt another wave of disgust. He could feel his chin trembling, and another handful of tears rolled silently down his cheeks.

“Conor, wait.”

He looked up at his father’s nose, unable to make himself meet his eyes.

“Conor, it’s okay. This is okay. You can cry, it’s fine. But Conor—Conor! Wait. Talk, first. Tell me, first, and then we can deal with it.”

And his father’s voice was so soft, so familiar, so reassuring, that Conor did tell him, the words tumbling over one another, fighting to get out. He told him the whole story, the whole entire story, from the very first day on the rooftop, all the way back at the start of the summer—when they’d discovered the bag and conceived of the plan, decided that they were going to catch a bad guy.

“We waited all summer, Dad, every day we were up there waiting for somebody to come and get it, we had cameras and tripods and everything, we even spent the night up there a couple of times and we didn’t mean it, Ashleigh didn’t mean it, we just—we just thought of it, and we tried it, and it was—it was stupid, it was wrong, we didn’t mean for Guyler to end up in the hospital, it’s all my fault, I could have said no but I didn’t, I said yes and now it’s all—it’s all—it’s all—”

He couldn’t find the words, could not draw out the last lingering bit of poison, and eventually he broke down again, collapsed into his father’s arms and cried again.

And then—like flipping a switch—he was finished, the storm easing into hollow emptiness. And then he was ashamed for an entirely different reason—because he had come completely apart, had broken down and cried like a baby in front of his father, it had been years since he’d done that. He felt naked, and weak, and he turned away, suddenly unable to bear the weight of his father’s sympathy, and he scrubbed violently at his face with his sleeve until his eyes and nose stopped leaking.

A coward and a criminal and now a crybaby, too.

“Sorry,” he choked out.

His father burst out laughing.

Conor twisted, humiliated, furious, only to see that there was no mockery in his father’s expression, that his eyes still held the same love and care that had been there from the start. “Conor,” he said gently. “Didn’t I say it was okay to cry?”

Conor said nothing.

“There’s nothing wrong with being upset, kiddo. You’ve been carrying this—this—it sounds like a mountain, honestly, all day long you’ve been carrying all of this, and nobody asked you if you wanted it, and you didn’t have anybody to help—hell, I’d be worried if you didn’t feel like crying a little, right now. That’s what would really scare me—to think that you’d turned into the sort of person who just takes all of this in stride.”

“I didn’t cry just a little.”

“Forget it, Conor, there’s no shame in that. Or rather, there is shame, but it’s a good shame, a shame that means you feel bad about being bad, that you haven’t taken the badness inside of you and decided to get comfortable with it. What are you worried about—that I’ll think less of you?”

He looked into Conor’s eyes and saw the answer there, reached out and pulled him into another hug, squeezing so tight it almost hurt. “Conor, I’m just glad you told me. We smelled it on you last night, you know—your mother and I both smelled it. Probably the cop smelled it too, that Grimes or whoever he was, but he had bigger fish to fry and he was nice enough to let it slide. We were going to talk to you about it this morning, but when we woke up, you were already gone.”

“That’s why I’m grounded, isn’t it. It’s not about me leaving early.”

“Well, that too, but no, you’re right—it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it hadn’t been for your poor timing.”

“So you don’t think—you don’t think I’m—”

Conor tried mightily, but he couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t quite make it past the embarrassment that his father had assured him he didn’t need to feel. It was too childish, the question he wanted to ask—too blunt, too simple, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it, even though he burned with the need to hear the answer.

“No, Conor, you’re not a bad person. You made a mistake, that’s all. Nowhere near as bad as the one Ashleigh made. You didn’t hurt anyone but yourself—and to be honest, you probably didn’t hurt yourself, not even a little bit, one joint isn’t going to hurt you, not at all, although don’t tell your mother I said that. How do you think we both recognized the smell?”

Conor nodded, and hiccupped, and his father laughed—they both laughed, and the laughter was twice as good as anything he’d felt in the past day and a half, better even than the moment when he’d broken through the Gap. His father hugged him again, and spoke to him for a few more minutes, and promised him that he wouldn’t have to see his mother until the morning (when the shame of it wouldn’t be quite so fresh). And then he kissed him on the forehead, and ruffled his hair, and left, and Conor fell onto the bed, and for the second night in a row he drifted off without undressing, though it wasn’t even seven yet.

Two thoughts came to him, then, in the shifting fog just before sleep. The first was that Ashleigh—whose burden was surely heavier than his own—Ashleigh had no father to confess to, had only his mother, who worked two full-time jobs and was never around, and would not be able to help him the way Conor’s own father had just helped. This was desperately sad, and for a moment it almost roused him—almost sent him for his jacket, his shoes—but he was tired, so tired, and empty now, drained—and besides, he was grounded—it could wait—it could wait.

Tomorrow.

Conor would talk to him tomorrow, and would drag him back to the surface—understood now just how deep into despair a single mistake could drive you, and what it meant to hear it from someone else—that they believed in you, that you weren’t a bad person, that it was going to be okay.

And then the second thought, a lone, flickering fragment as oblivion rolled in: that in all of that confession, his father had not asked—

(And he had not volunteered.)

—what had happened to the bag.