Danny and I share the following things in common: We are both half-Japanese, we have both read all the books people give you to read when you are, we both prefer brightly colored hair, and we both love clothes other people deem to be tacky. Danny is “aggressively gay” and I am “deliriously queer.” We haven’t lived in the same city for like many many years. So. Lots of texts.

I had already messaged Danny about my disco debacle. He was unsurprised and helpfully enraged.

DANNY

Never stop throwing your balls in their faces.

ANNE

I don’t think that’s helpful but I appreciate the sentiment

I paused in front of the school to take a photo.

From the outside, Greenville High was a redbrick building with the grid of windows you expect to see in high schools. In every pane, there were little green paw prints taped to the glass, which made it look like someone’s green cat had walked over the front of the building and no one had bothered to clean up afterward. Clearly the most important thing about the front of the school was the massive marquee sign that towered over it. Squatting on top of the sign was a giant green plaster creature with the body of a tiger and the neck of a giraffe (maybe?), with a pointed spiky head. I’m guessing this was probably the creature responsible for the paw prints in the windows. Its muzzle was pointed, like a hunting dog, away from the school. Its eyes were made of what looked like yellow lightbulbs. Were they lit up at night?

From the ground, I could see the little white teeth, bared. It looked like someone probably cleaned those teeth, and the sign, on the regular.

The text on the sign read: GO, DRAGONS, GO! DON’T COME FOR US!

“ ‘Don’t come for us’?”

As Lucy’s sweatshirts can attest, every school has a mascot. They’re all kind of weird.

I wondered what this mascot was standing on watch for.

I mean, I had a guess. But I wasn’t letting my brain follow up on those thoughts. Instead, I forced my feet to walk the twenty steps between the parking lot and the front entrance.

“Okay, Anne, let’s do this.”

Inside, Greenville High smelled like every other high school in the world: a mix of floor polish and sweat. The music of kids yelling bounced aggressively off the walls of green and gray lockers as students crisscrossed the green tile floor and did what kids do, which at Greenville High seemed to be punch one another on the shoulder and say stuff like “WHAT UP, DICK?”