“I’ve got some books you can read … for research purposes. Hold on one second. Erotica section, let’s see … Anaïs Nin is always a classic. Hmm … Did I already get you to read Fanny Hill ?”

“It was sort of ridiculous,” I admit. “Too many plump, fleshy thighs and large machines.”

“Ha!”

“Stop,” I plead, laughing when she pokes my side to tickle me. “And no erotica. This is serious research.”

“Fi-i-i-ne,” she says, picking up a book to shelve. “But I don’t really know anything. I missed Lucky’s early teen years. We were in Boston for my dad’s job.”

That’s right. I forget she missed some of the same Beauty years that I missed when her parents relocated to the neighboring state.

“Plus, you guys are two grades behind me,” she says, reaching above her head to straighten a section of falling-over books. “I only really knew him as the kid across the street that I’d sometimes see when I came to visit Grandma. I was a junior when he was a freshman. He hung with a different crowd.”

“What crowd?”

“Let’s see … he hung out with a guy from Argentina named Tomas. But he moved to Toronto last year. Oh, and he dated Kasia Painter right after Tomas left. For a few weeks, maybe? I used to see them eating lunch together my senior year. I think there were a few other girls—just like casual dates, here and there.”

“So you don’t know for a fact that he’s knocked anyone up?” I ask, squatting down next to the metal book cart to look for any romance books that need to be shelved.

“The Bunny thing?”

“Besides that. The Bunny thing has been disproven.”

“Interesting,” she says, thoughtful. “No. I don’t know for a fact about anyone else.”

I pull out two paperbacks from the cart and hand them to Evie. “What else do you know about Lucky? Like maybe why he’s had so much detention?”

She thinks for a moment. “I know for sure that he’s been in trouble for spouting off in the classroom. Saying smart-ass things. Correcting teachers in class, that kind of thing.”

My mind wanders back to when he borrowed my notes in class and corrected everything I’d written down wrong. “He’s always been kind of a smart-ass.” And I always kind of liked it.

“No, he’s just plain smart. Like, I remember Adrian saying he would’ve killed to have his test scores. And okay, this isn’t exactly firsthand, but … I heard that Lucky scored really, really high on his SAT this spring. Maybe perfect? Or so close to perfect that it doesn’t matter. One of the rare narrow percent of test takers that hits the top.”

No one in this town would accuse me of being a brain.

I knew it. He was always smart when we were kids. That little liar!