Ryan snaps, “He’s a grunge kid. Like he cares about the environment. Right now he’s probably writing song lyrics about how nobody understands him.”

Wow. He seems to have it in for Shane, which is so not like him. I frown while Tara and Kenny glance between us, wide-eyed. They’re not sure what’s going on, and neither am I.

“Maybe we could talk about this later?”

“Come on,” he says, gathering up the remnants of his lunch.

I’m not sure I want to, but following Ryan has become second nature at this point. So I trail him into the hallway. I fold my arms, waiting for an explanation.

“I just…” Here, Ryan pauses, at a loss for words as he never is. “He doesn’t seem like our type, that’s all.”

“How can you tell, just by looking?” I ask incredulously. “You’ve hardly talked to him.”

I can’t believe I’m hearing this from him. He should know, better than anyone, how it feels to be picked on and excluded, based on factors beyond one’s control. Until the summer after freshman year, he was five foot four and routinely got shoved inside lockers. So Ryan knows damn well how Shane must feel; apparently he just doesn’t care.

“Well, I’m not letting you decide who I can be friends with,” I tell him.

“You don’t know—” he starts.

“Does he kill kittens? Sell drugs?”

“One of the secretaries talked to my mom, okay? She said he’s got a thick file. I’m not supposed to know about it, but … that’s never good, right?”

I almost get mad at Ryan then, but that—no. For a few seconds, I’m woozy and scared; this can’t happen. So I take four deep breaths, mustering a smile and a polite tone. “Did Dylan’s mom talk to yours?”

Ms. Smith might be Mrs. McKenna’s source; she works in the school office, which should make Dylan an outcast. Instead, he manages to be popular, probably because he’s hot and plays multiple sports. He’s also the asshole leading the crew that picks on Shane, who’s supposedly a bad guy. I could laugh at the irony.

“It doesn’t matter. Do what you want.” Ryan falls silent then.

This feels weirdly like an argument, but I have no idea what it’s—and then it dawns on me. “Are you jealous?”

Possibly not in a romantic sense, but Ryan’s used to being the only star in my firmament. Maybe he’s worried the Sage and Ryan Show can’t withstand Special Guest Shane. Who is totally uninterested in the role, believe me. Besides being the new kid, he’s got other problems, most of whom wear lettermen jackets.

“Do I need to be?”

Huh. That’s not a no.

“You’ll always be my best friend, no matter how many others I make.” Is that what he wants to hear?

Maybe I’m paying more attention than I usually do, but his face falls a fraction, and then he pulls on a goofy smile. “Obviously. Who could ever replace me?”

“Nobody.”

Ryan slings an arm around my shoulders on the way to chemistry. It occurs to me that people are used to seeing this because it doesn’t earn us a second glance. In chem, we’re lab partners, and if I’m honest, Ryan does most of the work. I’m not good with hard sciences or math; this frustrates me because I feel like I’m letting women down all over the world by feeding existing stereotypes. I wish I rocked at physics and could do differential equations, but I don’t have that type of intelligence. In fact, it’s likely I’ll never even get to physics or calculus.

Mr. Oscar teaches all the advanced science classes. You’d think that’s a first name, not last, but in his case, you’d be wrong. He’s thirty-something, and he thinks he’s cool, which means he’s always telling people, “Call me Tom,” but he doesn’t notice that everyone still calls him Mr. Oscar and only laughs at his jokes to be polite. I laze through a lab experiment while Ryan does all the measuring, mixing, and pouring. I pull my weight with excellent note-taking, however, and then I log our result. Chemistry is boring, but since it’s after lunch it means there’s only three periods to go.

The rest of the day, every time I see Shane, he’s getting a different kind of crap from the jock squad. At this point, if he was anybody else, I’d have already put a pink Post-it on his locker, but it feels like it would be too personal now. I mean, I could totally write, Your eyes take my breath away, in purple glitter pen, and I’d mean every word, but that would be so weird now that I’ve hung out with him. He’d probably take it wrong, not realizing this is what I do, and other people would see it, Ryan would hear about it, and it would become a thing—

No. I’m definitely not writing about his eyes. That’s a quiet truth, just for me, hugged to my chest like the hitching breath I can’t control when I glimpse him. He’s like a hunk of chocolate cake slathered in frosting that I’m not supposed to have, but can’t help wanting.

When I walk past the music room, I hear something that stills me in my tracks. People push past; I’ve become a rock in the middle of a rushing stream, but I can’t move. Then someone shoves me from behind, not on purpose, but the result is the same. I slam into the lockers past the classroom and bounce. The underclassmen who were wrestling don’t even notice that my brain has stopped firing.

Shane Cavendish plays like it’s his reason for living.

I don’t write that on the Post-it, of course. That would just get him beaten up even harder. Instead I scrawl, You’re awesome on the guitar, because the jocks might think that’s cool and leave him the hell alone. It’s a long shot, as I don’t have any particular cred with their crew, but being a musician is pretty spectacular. I can’t breathe for how good—how remarkably talented—he is. And I suspect that if he found out anyone was paying attention, he’d stop playing.

Backtracking to his locker will make me late for class, but it’s worth it. I stick the note just below the vents, as I always do, but this time it feels weightier, more, somehow, like this is a turning point. Shaking off the odd sensation, I dodge into econ with a mumbled excuse. Sadly, it holds no weight with Mrs. Palmer. Unlike the male teachers, she isn’t impressed with talk of “female problems,” so I get my first detention of the year, only the second I’ve ever had.

Since tomorrow is Friday and I have standing plans with Ryan, I ask, “Can I just get it over with tonight?”

I calculate; school lets out at two forty-five. An hour of sitting in silence, and I’m supposed to be at work at four. If I hurry, I can still make my shift at the Curly Q. Which sounds like a diner, but it’s actually a salon. I’m not qualified to do anything but shampoo hair, sweep up, and answer the phone, but it’s better than fast food. I work two afternoons a week from four to eight, which earns me spending money for the week. Since I’m under eighteen, I get paid fifty cents an hour less than an adult; that makes me a bargain. After detention ends, I’ll just need to pedal hard to keep Mildred from yelling at me.

Mrs. Palmer glances up from scribbling down my doom. “Can you get a ride home?”

“Yeah.”

I’ve always got my bike out front, and the town is small enough that I can ride anywhere I need to go from school. This is the one positive aspect of living in a tiny burg like this, especially given my opinion of privately owned fossil-fuel-burning vehicles, which covers nicely for my lingering fear

“Then it’s fine with me. I’ll let Mr. Mackiewicz know.”

The math teacher is on detention duty? Awesome. Math sucks, but I might learn something if Mackiewicz wasn’t such a black hole for hope. With such a good time ahead, economics drags even more than usual. I’m feeling bummed about the afternoon’s prospects as I take my place in Mackiewicz’s classroom, right up until Shane slips in. There are other people, too, mostly burners who cut class more than they attend. The room fills up, but I watch as he comes down the aisle toward me and settles in the desk next to mine.