“I’ll bet you this person comes to the Spinney at night,” she says. “Because whoever they are, they don’t want to run into you. They want to keep their identity a secret. But why? That’s what I want to know. Anyway, we should have a sleepover on Friday, and we can sneak out of your house just like we did on Halloween. Then we go to the Spinney and wait.”

“So, basically you want to have a stakeout?”

She grins. “Basically.”

“But what if the person doesn’t come that night?” I ask. “What if they come before then?”

“Go to the Spinney as soon as school’s over,” she says, “and take the journal out of the hollow. Don’t put it back until Friday. They’ll probably come and check, and when it’s not there, they’ll come back again until it is.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe not. Sometimes it takes a while for them to write back.”

Fina shrugs. “Then we do it again the next Friday. What’s the worst that can happen? Either way, it’s an adventure!”

“Yeah,” I grumble. “And if my mom catches us, it’ll be our last.”

The bus stops for Ruby to get on. She bites her lip when she sees Fina sitting next to me and glaring at her. Under Fina’s gaze, Ruby seems to wilt like a thirsty rose. And weirdly, I find myself feeling kind of sorry for her.

“Traitor,” Fina mutters.

“Yeah, but look,” I say, nodding my head toward the back. Ruby is sitting by herself across the aisle from the Graces, staring silently out the window. “She doesn’t seem very happy.”

“She shouldn’t be. Who would choose to hang out with those girls?”

Fina rolls her eyes, but I shoot another glance back at Ruby, thinking. Remembering.

“You know what she said about the kids at her old school making fun of her?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“I bet she told Edie about me because she thought if she could just hang out with the popular girls, nobody would make fun of her anymore.”

Fina pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “My guidance counselor back in California always said that kids who are bullies are usually kids who have been bullied themselves,” she says. “But it still doesn’t make it okay.”

“No,” I say. “But at least I get why she did it. I don’t think it was to be mean.”

“So, are you saying we aren’t going to concoct an elaborate revenge plot to get back at her?” Fina asks, giving a dramatic sigh of disappointment.

“You’ve done enough plotting for one day,” I say, giving her a light shove. She curls her fingers together and does an evil-mastermind laugh, which dies away when we pull up to Edie’s stop.