“Whatever. Just go get it,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “I’ll see you in fifteen.”

She ended the call before I could tell her it wasn’t that simple, and I took a deep breath before I sent my mom a text.

Need to get my backpack, I wrote. Going to Ally’s right after.

I hoped that would be enough to placate my mother for a while. I didn’t want to spend too much time at home. I didn’t want to talk about my dad.

As I drove back, I braced myself for spending the next few hours with Ally. I didn’t want to talk to her about my dad, either, but I also didn’t want to tell her about Jake hanging out with Clover.

Not until I knew what it meant, anyway. Or why the thought of them together bothered me so much.

Chapter Ten

“All plants and animals fall under each of these eight taxonomic ranks,” my biology teacher lectured the next day. “All plants and animals,” he repeated, “without exception.” Mr. Ellison directed his pointer to the screen behind him. “New discoveries are classified accordingly. It starts very general and becomes more specific as you move from domain to species.” He adjusted his glasses and gave us all a stern look. “And yes, this will be on Thursday’s quiz.”

I ignored the collective groan from the class as I shaded in the last of the eight segments of the triangle I’d copied from the graph on display. It would be available on the school’s network by the end of the day, but I still preferred to sketch out diagrams and timelines during class lectures. When Jake had teased me about it at lunch a few months ago, citing it as an example of how weird I could be, Finn came to my defense and fired off some obscure statistic from an even more obscure source about how writing down information triggers some neurological response that helps with knowledge retention. I didn’t know if any of that was true, but copying that chart kept me from being bored.

Mr. Ellison paced the front of the classroom. “If there’s nothing else you remember about this,” he said, with a backward gesture to the board, “you should know plants and animals only breed at the most base level. At species.” A hand three rows in front of me shot up, and my biology teacher paused. “Yes, Brian?”

I covered my face with the palm of my hand in anticipation of what was to come. Brian Tucker may have been popular and from a wealthy family, but what he had in looks and athletic ability, he lacked in intelligence. There was no telling what was about to come out of his mouth. Worse yet, Mr. Ellison had just said “breed,” and reproduction was the only part of biology of any interest to Brian and his circle of friends.

“So, a tree and a whale can’t make, like, baby treewhales or something, right?” Brian asked.

Mr. Ellison nodded. “Correct. One’s an animal, and the other’s a plant.”

“But, like, fish and animals can get together, right?”

I sat up straight and glanced across the room to see if Jake was alert to witness this exchange. He met my gaze and lifted his hands in a small shrug. I faced forward, my attention focused on the back of Brian’s head.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Mr. Ellison said, his brow knitted together in concentration. “It’s never been proven, I don’t think, but theoretically, I suppose one species of fish could mate with another species, and—”

“No,” Brian interrupted him.

“No? Then I don’t understand.”

Brian breathed heavily, like a dragon about to spit fire. “I mean, it’s like….” He paused. “Well, you know how seahorses happened from a horse getting it on with a fish? Like, how common is that?”

Jake and I exchanged disbelieving glances. The class sat in shocked silence until someone snickered. Then a ripple of laughter spread throughout the room. Even Mr. Ellison had to bite his lip and look away to retain his composure.

“Settle down, everyone,” he said at last. “That’s enough.” To Brian, he added, “We can talk about that after class, if you want.” As if on cue, the bell rang. “We’re in the lab tomorrow, people,” he called out as everyone began the mad dash into the hall. “You’ll need to finish diagramming your squid to study for your quiz.”

“That has to be an act,” Jake said as we left class together. “No one can be that dense.”

“I don’t know.” I pursed my lips as I considered it. “You’d have to be pretty brilliant to fake that. I mean, not even Finn could convincingly pull off something like that.”

“What can’t I pull off?” Finn said from behind us. He put his arms around both Jake and me, effectively separating us.

“Being an idiot,” I said before I shared what Brian asked just moments earlier.

Finn shook his head. “He’s not an idiot. A Neanderthal, maybe, but recent findings have been showing that Neanderthals were actually kind of smart.” I snorted, and he said, “No, seriously. It’s raising more questions on why the entire species—”

“I wasn’t doubting Neanderthal intelligence,” I said. “I just don’t think ‘smart’ is the word I’d use to describe Brian Tucker.”

“I’ve been tutoring him in geometry,” Finn said with a frown. “It took a while, but he understands it now.”

“How much did you have to apply to soccer before he got it?” Jake said with a chuckle.

I smiled. Finn was the highest-scoring player on Westgate’s varsity basketball team, something he attributed to his superior grasp of physics and geometry. It would make sense for him to use that same philosophy to get through to Brian, but I somehow doubted it would be effective in helping him understand biological taxonomies.

As we approached my French class, I shrugged Finn’s arm off my shoulders. “Au revoir,” I said. “I’ll see you guys later.”

“Adieu,” Finn said, bowing his head and tipping an imaginary hat.

“I’ll meet you at your car after school,” Jake said. “You’re still coming over, right?”

“You aren’t hanging out with…anyone else?” Mom would’ve called that a leading question, but I’d been waiting for him to mention something about where he’d been and what he’d been doing the night before. Instead, he just grinned at me.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m all yours.”

They continued on to their class, and as they walked away, I heard Finn say, “So how’d it go last night?”

I couldn’t hear Jake’s response, but I watched him bob his head and could only assume it — whatever “it” was — went well.

And for reasons I couldn’t understand or explain, that didn’t make me very happy at all.

****

Jake put his head down, his forehead and nose touching the tabletop. “Would you please explain the point of this? It’s not like any of it is useful.”

“Finn would freak out if he heard you,” I said, tapping the back of his head with my pen.

He sat up and grinned. “That’s why I don’t tell him stuff like that.”

Jake and I had our things spread out on the dining room table at his house while we studied for our upcoming biology quiz. He still hadn’t mentioned anything all day about the previous afternoon’s secret rendezvous with Clover, and after obsessing most of the day about what they might have been doing, I’d decided it was best if I didn’t ask. I figured he didn’t tell me because he didn’t want me to know, so I feigned ignorance. Dr. Brinkley probably would’ve said I was avoiding the issue, and though that really wasn’t far from the truth, I’d decided some things were just easier to leave unsaid.

“So Mia said you came over last night,” he said.

I glanced up to find him watching me. “Yeah. I, um, forgot you wouldn’t be here.” It would’ve been the perfect time to ask what he’d been doing, to ask about Clover, to find out anything, but I chickened out. “I ended up going to Ally’s,” I said, twirling my pen between my fingers. “Rehearsal got cut short.”

He bobbed his head a couple of times and returned his attention to his laptop. I was relieved he didn’t comment on my unusual forgetfulness, but I was also disappointed he didn’t volunteer information on his own whereabouts.