We hear a commotion during lunch, and everyone bolts into the hallway to see Luke and Josh scuffling: headlocks and punches and bodies thrown up against lockers.

“What happened?” someone asks.

“Josh told him he should quit the team because he’s a pussy,” I hear.

Pete rushes out of the staff room and hauls them apart.

“What the hell are you two doing?” he shouts, panting, his own shirt coming untucked. Luke wipes the blood off his face and glowers at Josh, who glares back. I look across the hallway through the gathering of spectators and see Dee, holding my lunch sandwich. She takes a bite and holds it up at me—Cheers!—and turns, walking back into the cafeteria. I see Lottie looking on, watching Pete separating Luke and Josh with her head cocked in concern. She catches me watching her, and I spin on my heels, following Dee.

The room is buzzing when I go back in, and I sit at our table feeling an adrenaline rush that comes only from watching someone get theirs, watching someone else give it to them.

Two girls and a boy plop down at our table with a thump. I know them the way we all know each other, which is to say I pretend not to know them at all, even though they’re in homeroom with us. They are friends with Matthew, I remember. I’ve seen one of them, Ava, I think, getting harassed by Breanne for being a kind of social justice warrior. I’ve always liked her from afar.

“Um, hi,” I say, taking a swig from my carton of milk. Dee nods at them in greeting. The rest of the kids at our table—those who have slowly, over the past couple of weeks, joined Dee and me—turn, listening.

“Hi,” Ava says. I like her look: she has black lipstick and a deep side cut in her black hair. “I’m Ava. This is Antar and Marta.” Antar puts up with a pretty consistent run of bullying from Breanne and Josh that runs right under Pete and the other teachers’ noses. Antar is Sikh and wears a turban, which they seem to think is reason enough to harass him daily. Marta is a redheaded girl so painfully shy that, while I’ve seen her many times, I’ve never heard her speak.

Ava looks down the table and I see Michelle, the girl Breanne bullied, watching us. Ava jerks her head, calling Michelle over. She scoots down and sits with us, and I smile at her. She lifts a hand in greeting.

Ava juts her chin out. “So. Is it you?”

Dee shrugs.

“I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but it’s a hunch, and I’m not usually wrong with my hunches. You seem like the only person here who’s that kind of baller.”

“Not admitting anything, but … maybe,” Dee says, holding Ava’s gaze.