By fourth period, I’ve seen every other cheerleader in the junior class, so I know it isn’t a squad thing. Not that I care. Not that I’m a little worried. If Amber’s proven anything, it’s that she’s always watching out for herself.

I definitely don’t care.

I just need to check the time on my phone.

No unread messages.

Crap.

“Hey.” The voice is low in my ear, the sound of someone pretending to be passing by who doesn’t want to get caught talking to me. I know it well by now, have heard it from a freshman girl here, a soccer player there—the few people in the school who think what I’m doing is cool, even if they know they’re not allowed to voice it. This time, though, it’s a voice I’m familiar with. “You seen Loud?”

“Nope.”

Miguel swears under his breath, but whatever he’s worried about, he doesn’t share, and I don’t ask. Though I don’t need him to tell me that from a “hope to become cheer captain” perspective, this probably isn’t a great day to skip.

I want to think she’s home soothing a broken heart with a pint of ice cream or whatever, but I know better. She’s probably just getting Gator green stripes in her hair.

The telltale rush of air that would accompany Miguel moving on with his day doesn’t come, and even though I wanna take the opportunity to leave him in the dust, my feet won’t make the movements my brain wants them to. It’s like part of me still thinks there must be a decent guy in there, and I don’t know why. Queer solidarity? Some sort of invisible rainbow-striped bond?

“Listen, I wanna help.”

Oh, maybe that’s why.

Still, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in Atherton, it’s never to get your hopes up, even around the people you think could be your friends. “Hell of a way of showing it, by whispering to me in the corner like I’m some kind of criminal creep.”

“It wouldn’t exactly work if people knew we were talking,” he points out, and as if he’d just summoned them, Matt Devlin and Lamar Burke round the corner and start heading in our direction. “Meet me in the art room at lunch.”

Well, he certainly found the place most likely to contain zero people who care about football.

Still, the thought of getting my hopes up again exhausts me. There’s nothing one guy on the team can do at this point. The others have given up their pride in the game—there’s nothing left for them to lose. But every day I’m here I risk tearing my family further apart, losing my best friends, losing my mind.