“I’m glad the lights are dimmed,” he says into my ear. “I’m definitely the only nonwhite person here. I kind of stand out.”

“No, you’re not,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s . . .” Then I realize that, yeah, he’s probably right. Our school is pretty white. I never thought about being the only one before. “Okay, well, good thing we’re only going to be here a second.”

We start walking to the dance floor, and the song changes and it’s a slow song. I can see Jessica—oh man, she’s wearing the pinkest, shortest, tightest dress with her long hair waving down her back—practically grinding on Brett.

A hand grabs mine and spins me around. Nik puts us in a slow-dancing position, and I look at him curiously. “Blend in,” he says into my ear. “Just walking around while everyone is dancing doesn’t really work, you know?”

“You’ve got a point,” I say, and I give in, letting him lead me in a circle. “You can dance.”

“Not really. I can walk in a circle and say it’s dancing.”

“I like it,” I say, looking into his eyes. We’re in this weird, awkward middle school dance position where we’ve kind of got a circle between us, so I close the gap, wrapping my arms around his neck. He embraces my back and I catch my head resting on his chest. This is nice. This is comfortable.

“This is weird, but”—I feel his chest move as he talks—“I’m glad we’re here.”

“Planning sabotage?”

“No. Dancing.”

“Me too,” I say, and I squeeze him a little and think of how this week has been. How have we gone from classmates to this? What is this, anyway? Are we going to keep hanging out after tonight? Are we going to keep talking and watching movies and dancing?

I think of when he came over and we watched The Last Jedi on my bed and how, even though we barely knew each other, I wanted him to kiss me. Just a little. Maybe.

Out of our hate for Jessica came this. I feel my bracelet with my other hand and suddenly I realize that we can’t fight her, we can’t do this.

“This isn’t right . . .” I start.

“Oh, okay,” Nik says, pulling away a little.

“No, no,” I say, grabbing him. “Not us dancing—what we’re about to do.”

“It’s a little late to have second thoughts . . .”

“No, it’s not. We haven’t done anything yet. We can leave. We can . . .” I look up into his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“We shouldn’t fight what we hate. We need to save what we love.”

“Huh?”

“If we do this and get caught, that’s it. We’re in trouble. She hates us. Why risk that? As awful as she is, she brought us together. I’m happier . . . knowing that.”