“My books all got ruined,” she said, her eyes on fire. I knew how much her books mattered to her. She spent a lot of money on them. Bought new ones every week. Posted pictures of them online. Made memes out of her favorite quotes. She had a blog and everything.

“That sucks.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t understand. They should have been fine. My house flooded, but the water didn’t rise very high. Someone took all the books off my bookshelves, and put them on the floor.”

“Shit,” I said, and then apologized for the profanity.

She nodded. “Whoever did this? They knew us. Knew me.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Yet. But when I find out? I’m going to punish them.” She didn’t curse, but the anger in her voice was just as frightening as a swear word would have been.

Shouts, from down the hall. Loud laughter. Which is when we all learned why the stink of garbage was so strong. Someone had taken all the trash bags out of the dumpsters behind the school, and ripped them open and dumped their contents in every classroom.

It pretty much scrapped first period, as everyone was busy cleaning up and wondering at what kind of vengeance the administration would rain down on us.

All day long, I looked for whoever wrecked Jewel’s house. Watched faces, with and without my camera. I saw an awful lot of ultramarine tendrils. I knew without question what they symbolized. Guilt. But the thing is, guilt about what? Checking out those websites your parents told you were off-limits? Sneaking around behind your girlfriend’s back? Or breaking and entering and destruction of property? One guilt looked like any other.

I even had some of my own. Because Jewel hadn’t been on Sheffield’s radar, before the two of us confronted him in the hallway together. Had I brought this on her?

That’s when I noticed Bobby Eckels. Football player; second string, I thought. Even with the naked eye, you could see that he was twitchy. Through the lens the darkness I saw around him was fresher, rawer. When he caught me staring, his lips peeled back almost involuntarily into a snarl.

The football team . . . Sheffield.

That was when the idea popped into my head fully formed.

Maybe that was my photo project.

Maybe that was the Truth with a capital T that I could uncover.

The people doing these things. The monsters among us.

After school, I sidled up to Sheffield.

“Ash,” he said, sliding his headphones down around his neck. They were oversize, ostentatious. Expensive.

“Word is, when it comes to the football team, you kinda run the show.”

He smiled. His button nose wrinkled. “Those guys are my friends,” he said. “They could have cut me out when I hurt my knee and couldn’t play anymore, but they let me keep on tagging along.”