I groan. “This is, by definition, using your intelligence for evil.”

Nick tilts his head. “Correct. On two levels, in fact.” He raises a finger. “Using one’s cleverness to creep and”—a second finger—“using one’s cleverness to diagram the cleverness-to-creepiness relationship.”

I open my mouth, close it, turn, and walk away. He follows.

We walk in silence for a few moments, letting the night flow around and between us. I glance back once. Nick’s easy stroll reminds me of a dancer: long strides, straight posture. When my eyes reach his face, there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. I whip around.

After a minute, he speaks up again, his voice curious behind me. “So, did you jump the cliff? The one at the Quarry?”

“No.”

“Well,” he muses, “aside from landing in the dean’s office on your first day of school—a record, I’m guessing, so well done—it’s not the worst thing to do. Cliff’s not that high, and it’s kinda fun.”

I turn back to face him, surprised in spite of myself. “You’ve done it?”

He chuckles. “I have.”

“But aren’t you the dean’s golden boy?”

He lifts a shoulder. “I’m great on paper.” A few minutes later, we arrive at an intersection where walking paths branch out all around us in a circle like spokes on a wheel. He steps beside me and we walk together down the path on our right toward Old East. Crickets and cicada song drone in the distance.

I wonder if Alice is back in our room. We’ve fought before, plenty of times, but nothing like this. Nothing that left me feeling this cold. I imagine Alice’s eyes in my mind, angry and scornful. The last person who’d yelled at me like that had been my mom. How am I so good at hurting the people I love? Hurting them so badly that they scream and cry in my face?

“So, Dean McKinnon said you enrolled with a friend?”

This boy is intuitive. Unnervingly so. “Alice. She’s always wanted to come here.”

He eyes me. “And you didn’t?” I blink, unsure how to respond, and he takes my silence as an answer. “Then why did you come?”

“I’m a smarty-pants.”

His scan of my face is quick, appraising. “Obviously,” he murmurs, “but that’s how you got here, not why. Nobody comes to EC just for the classes.”

I snort. “Tell that to Alice. She’ll be crushed.”

“Not answering the question. I see.” His attentive eyes pass over me like he’s found my insides and wants to idly peruse them. No rush. Don’t mind me. Just digging out your guts.