It seemed like an eternal agony, but then I heard “All right, guys,” and watched as Mr. Larson jogged up the rest of the stairs, all the way to the landing until his wide back blocked Dean and Peyton from my view. He was saying something to them, impossible to hear over the noisy protest of my lungs, but I caught Dean’s “Awww, come on, Mr. Larson.”

“Pat!” Mr. Larson yelled, waving the boy’s soccer coach over. “Sic your dogs.”

“Barton! Powell!” Coach Pat’s voice launched like a cannonball from across the gym. “Get your butts over here!”

I was a few steps from the top now, and I heard Dean’s words clear as if they were spoken into my own ear. “Someone’s marked his territory.”

Mr. Larson’s shoulder blades pinched together in outrage, and then he was inches from Dean, hand wrapped so tightly around his arm I could see the white halo of his fingertips in Dean’s skin.

“Hey!” Dean raged, twisting.

Then Coach Pat was there, his mouth hot in Mr. Larson’s ear, and the whole scene dissipated as quickly as it had escalated.

“What was that?” I tripped over the last step and smacked my shin into the concrete. “Ow,” I moaned.

Mr. Larson turned to look at me with such concern that for a moment I thought I’d cut myself when I fell and just didn’t realize it. I patted down my legs, but there was no sign of injury or blood.

“Tif, you okay?” Mr. Larson reached for my shoulder but quickly drew his hand back, scratching the back of his head instead.

I wiped sweat off my upper lip. “I’m fine. Why?”

Mr. Larson dropped his head, revealing the perfectly centered crease in his thick slab of hair. “Nothing. No reason.” He put his hands on his hips and looked out at the soccer players dancing around the ball, spinning wildly on the polished hardwood floors. “Girls, let’s move this into the weight room.”

I found out later that Dean got detention for what he said to Mr. Larson. The next day, Hilary asked me to eat lunch with her. Somehow, these events were connected. I didn’t know what that connection was, and I was too impatient to claim my rightful spot at their table to care.

Arthur was distraught over my new cafeteria zip code.

“You’re playing organized sports and now you’re breaking bread with the HOs,” he lamented after English class. “What’s next, Dean Barton is your boyfriend?”

I made a gagging noise, more for Arthur than for myself. “Never. He is truly a grotesque human being.”

Arthur took the stairs faster than I did, his breathing troubled at the top. He got to the cafeteria first and gave the door a two-handed shove. It gasped open, clanging sharply against a metal folding chair. “Well, I could rip his cock off and choke him with it.” The door swung back, slamming my shoulder and cutting Arthur off for a moment. I nudged it open to see him still standing there, grinning nastily. “I hate pretty much everyone, you know?” He let that linger there for a moment before walking away. I stooped with hurt but pretended it was just so I could prop a chair in front of the door, because Mr. Harold, the history teacher, was always jiggling with the latch and huffing, “Goddamnit!” when he let go, thinking he had fixed it, only to have the door snap shut with a defiant clap. “This is a fire hazard!” he warned the students not listening all around him, pinning the chair against the door to hold it open. When I looked up Hilary was waving at me from across the room. “Finny! Finny!” What they’d all started calling me. Delight bloomed on my face, and I followed the sound of my new nickname like the nascent little lemming that I’d become.

“I’ll be back at nine thirty to pick you up.” Mom pushed the gear stick into park, and the car rocked back on its heels with a wheeze. The check engine light had been on for a month. The mechanic told Mom it would cost eight hundred dollars to turn it off, and when she asked him if he thought she’d been born yesterday he just repeated himself. “You really need to get it fixed,” he said, and it was Mom who flushed red as the car.

Never, in my life, had I arrived at a dance alone, and the idea of walking into the gym without a friend flagging my side made me nauseous for Leah. But just a few short hours ago at lunch, Hilary and Olivia had asked if I was going to the Fall Friday Dance.

“I wasn’t planning on it, but . . .” I held my breath. Waited for one of them to fill in my sentence, to invite me to her stately home, thousands of ivy arms hugging its brick body, so we could try on outfit after outfit, vetoing each one until there were clothes strewn all over the floor, sweater arms and legs twisted at excruciating angles, a series of dead body chalk outlines.

“You should.” Hilary managed to make it sound like a warning. “Ready, Liv?” They rose from the table and I did too, even though I had half a wrap in front of me and my stomach was writhing for more.

I couldn’t go to the dance in what I was wearing, and it would be tough to manage cross-country practice and then get home, change, and get back to Bradley in time. I told Mr. Larson I wasn’t feeling well and he said, so kindly I had to look away from him, that I should just go home and get some rest. I didn’t want to lie to Mr. Larson, but I also thought that it was unfair I had no one to approve my tank top and jean skirt except Mom, and that I had a right to do everything within my power to change that.

“You look very nice, sweetheart,” Mom added, when my fingers stilled on the handle of the door. For a moment, I wished we could just peel out of the parking lot, go and split a mushroom and artichoke quesadilla at Chili’s. We always ordered honey mustard sauce to dip it in, and the waiter always looked at us funny when we asked him to bring us a side.

“I think I’m too early though.” I forced a tone of confidence so Mom would see I knew what I was talking about, and I wasn’t just stalling. “Maybe we should circle around one more time.”

Mom shook her watch free from her sleeve. “It’s seven forty-five. I’d say fifteen minutes is just the right amount of fashionably late.”

It will be worse if you don’t go. The handle clicked before I even realized I was pulling, and I nudged the door open with the fat wedge of a Steve Madden.

The world inside the gym vibrated with TRL’s top ten and strobe lights, shifting rhythmically in shades of pink and blue and yellow. I just had to locate a group to slip in with quickly, I strategized, before anyone realized I was here alone.

I saw the Shark, hanging outside the rainbow glow of the dance floor with a few theater kids.

“Hey!” I shouldered my way into the fold.

“TifAni!” The Shark’s pupils were predatory in the perimeter’s shadow.

“What’s up?” I shouted.

The Shark launched into a tirade against dances (“Just an excuse to dry-hump”) but added that she came because Arthur might be able to get us pot. I found myself wishing I had eyes located on the sides of my head, like her, so that I could scan the bodies on the dance floor without making it glaringly obvious that I was only talking to her until I didn’t have to anymore.

“How can you not like dances?” I gestured to the room, an excuse to take inventory of the crowd. In the five seconds this afforded me, I didn’t see Hilary or Olivia, or Liam, or any of the Hairy Legs.

“I’d like dances if I looked like you.” The Shark’s eyes lingered on the dangerous hem of my jean skirt. I’d lost six pounds in the three and a half weeks since I’d joined the cross-country team, and all my clothes were smiling low on my hips.

“I’m still so fat.” I rolled my eyes, thrilled.