Elliott leaned over and kissed my cheek, and for a moment I stopped worrying. Merit threw another touchdown pass, and we were on our feet again, cheering. This, I felt in my very bones, was what Friday nights were made for. Friends, fun, football. And popcorn, always popcorn.

Iris The Password

“I keep thinking I see him everywhere,” I told Chloe. Chloe, Dabney, and I were sitting in the row of bleachers right in front of Greg, Ben, and their incredibly annoying posse of friends, and behind Emma and her cute little seventh-grade group of girls. I was glad Emma and I would be in high school together. Being a freshman could be tough between the senior boys excited for fresh meat (some were nice, some were not, and you needed an older girl to tell you the difference) and the older girls who were mad that you had stolen their social standing as cute new girl on the block.

Emma was adorable now, but you could tell that once she lost the braces and the babyish roundness to her face, she was going to be a knockout. I’d probably be jealous. But I’d still look out for her.

“Who?” Dabney asked.

“The man in the closet,” I whispered.

“We could barely see him in the photos,” Chloe said.

“Well, I know, but the more I think about it, I remember this, like, wavy brown hair with a little bit of gray in it and his eyes were strangely round. And very green.” I paused. “I think. I don’t know. They kind of glinted at me, and they seemed green, but they might not have been.”

Chloe rolled her eyes at Dabney. “With information like that, we should have gone straight to the police.”

“So basically, every middle-aged man looks like him?” Dabney asked me, shooting a you’re being a bitch look at Chloe.

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“I still think we should tell my parents,” Chloe said, slurping her soda. Chloe was funny because she could look so grown-up with a glass of champagne and practically ten years old with a paper Pepsi cup with a straw.

Maybe she was right. But I hated getting in trouble. And I was afraid that was the only thing that would come from telling the adults.

I glanced down at the field—the football was really secondary in this social outing—just as Merit snapped a pass. My heart dropped. He was so hot. And there was freaking Sophie cheering her heart out for him in a skirt so short you could literally see her butt cheeks.

“Hey,” Ben said, leaning over behind me. “Want some Whoppers?”

Whoppers were my favorite candy. “You’d share with me?” I put my hand to my heart. “Oh, Ben, what a gentleman.”

He rolled his eyes. “Only because I got the king-sized pack.”

“Hey, Chlo,” Greg said. “Want to go walk around for a minute?”