Something important was up. Boys at school stood in little groups, looking around nervously like the amateur criminals that they were. I watched them in the hallway, under the giant mural of the blue hawk, our high school mascot, a crude and ugly painting that had been freaking kids out since probably the 1970s.

“It’s got to be him, right?”

Jewel looked up from her book. “Hmm?”

“Sheffield,” I said.

We leaned against our lockers, waiting for the homeroom bell to ring. Listening to worried laughter, uneasy conjecture about who would be next.

“He does look guilty,” she said. “Then again, that’s his default mode.”

Sheffield looked up, saw me pointing, and smiled.

“Look at the way they all look to him,” I said. “He’s probably got them out there doing his bidding.”

“Who? The whole football team?”

I started to say, Absolutely, but I really didn’t have any evidence.

And then, on random unthinking impulse, I raised my camera. Looked through the lens.

“Shit,” I whispered.

Because I could see it, in the air around them. Their guilt. Their damage. Sick wet clouds of it overhead. Slimy black spiders of it perched on their shoulders.

Tingles shivered up and down my spine.

Sheffield grinned, when I panned across to him, and then he started walking toward us. I felt a little like I’d aroused the attention of a lion on the grasslands. I wasn’t afraid of him, but Jewel got social anxiety from harmless sitcoms, so I could only imagine how an interaction like this might mess her up.

“Ladies,” he said.

Through the lens, he was framed with the blue hawk directly behind him, its jagged wings looking like they could be his. An angel with ugly wings. And a button nose, and an arrogant smile, and eerily rosy cheeks. I took the picture, more to flatter him than because I actually wanted it.

“Hey, Sheff,” I said, when he sidled up to us. “Bummer about the parking lot.”

“Such a tragedy,” he said, although his smile said the exact opposite.

The other boys were watching us now.

“Who could have done such a thing?” I asked.

“Some very twisted, very angry soul,” he said. “I hope he gets the help he needs.”

“So you think it was a guy?”

“Forgive me,” he said, “for my unconscious gender bias. It’s wrong to have male be the default when dealing with someone of unknown identity. Blame my upbringing. That very twisted, very angry soul could very well belong to a girl.” And he grinned.

“You coming to practice?” some random lunkhead called to him from across the hall.

“When I’m finished with my conversation, asshole.” To Jewel, who had been pointedly ignoring him, he said, “God bless you, sister.” She flinched.

“Hey, the lot,” I asked. “Any connection to what happened with Marcy Brockelmeyer’s house, do you think? Or Judy Saperstein’s?”