I rolled my eyes. I didn’t hate Colt. He actually treated my baby sister better than I’d ever seen any of my friends treat their girlfriends. But, he was dating my sister. I had to give him shit on principle. “Tess,” I said again, guiding her back toward her locker. “This is your one shot.”

She swallowed hard before a muscle in her jaw ticked. That same anger trigger I’d seen in Sean too many times—like the one time I’d cracked his password on the desktop in his room and reconfigured all his specs.

“Talk to me.”

“I have nothing to talk about. You’re being weird.” She avoided looking me in the eye.

“Damn it, Tess,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. I was going to be late to coding. “If you know who pulled that crap this morning—” I glanced around, making sure Tanner wasn’t going to rappel from the ceiling or something. “You could catch a lot of heat.” Whenever Tanner found out who did it—and he would because he always did—then he’d likely punish the culprit’s circle of friends, too.

That was his style. Probably one of the main reasons I’d never pulled a stunt on his system even though I’d been dying to since the sixth grade, when he’d forced me to peel off every sticker on my laptop that I’d collected from my summer computer science boot camp. I’d earned those tiny, sticky badges of honor, and he’d claimed they were a distraction and forced me to toss them in the garbage.

“Whatever,” she said. “You’re delusional. And now I’m late.” She brushed past me, hurrying down the hallway that was now almost empty of students.

Maybe I was. Maybe none of her friends would be dumb enough to pull a prank like that, but when it came to Tessa, I was on high alert. We were only two years apart. She’d been my best friend since my parents brought her home—not that I’d ever tell her that—and I couldn’t stop the instinct to protect her. It was in my blood. Probably why Sean—my older brother—was always riding me about shit, too. He likely felt the same way, but whenever he came home to visit and started hovering over me, I told him to eff off.

Kind of like how Tess just did to me.

Huh.

Perspective.

I blinked a few times, crawled out of my head, and rushed down the hall.

Thirteen strides later, I dashed into Mr. Griffin’s room.

His full, quiet room.

I swallowed hard, ducking my head under the light of the projector as I found my seat in the back.

“Mr. Winters,” he said, drawing more attention to my entrance as I settled in my desk. I dug my laptop out of my bag, firing up the screen in seconds.