Three months ago, Rosemary would have found these people vaguely amusing; now, she saw them for what they were. Repellent loveless outcasts. Freaks.

“Fuck me, it’s the phantoms!” said the fat boy who asked to be called Betty. “Where have you been? You two just vanished from class like Vin Diesel’s career.”

“I had to go to my grandma’s in Oregon,” Arik said, calmly. Rosemary almost believed him—he’d become such a good actor.

“Et tu, Lucy Liu?”

“I quit,” Rosemary said. “Lost interest.”

“Oh.” The boy tried to fathom how anyone could have lost faith in something that meant the world to him. “You’re still welcome to hang out here though, if you like.” He lowered his voice. “We badly need to improve this gene pool.”

Rosemary and Arik gave each other a look—Let’s amscray.

As they fled the Shakespeare Wall, Betty called out after them in his falsetto: “In case you’re curious, we’ve been reading the canon with Mr. De Souza, who’s even more pretentious than Mr. Z, if that’s even possible. No farces—imagine!” He made a face. “He’s issued a fatwa against Neil Simon . . .”

Behind the aluminum shed that stored the theater props, Arik and Rosemary stood in a foot of fallen leaves. There were five minutes left to steal and they devoured them greedily. Once their lips locked, it became impossible for them to keep their hands off each other. Rosemary wouldn’t let Arik pull away even after the last bell rang.

“Let’s cut school today,” she gasped.

“If we did that today, I’d never come back.”

“Then let’s not come back.”

“What about Workshop?”

“Fuck that, it’s retarded.”

“Rose . . . you’re crazy. Where would we go?”

She was effortlessly coquettish all of a sudden. Her hand slid down the waist of his jeans until it found his swollen cock. She fondled its tip, and rubbed the silky-soft ridge. Arik trembled.

They kissed deeply again. He put both hands down the back of her jeans and squeezed her ass. “Oh, Rose, I want to fuck you . . . I need to fuck you.”

A few feet away, there was a rustling in the leaves. They looked up, expecting the groundskeeper, José. But it was Mr. Z, approaching the props shed with a heavy red backpack in his hand. When he saw them, he froze in his tracks, as if he were the one caught in the act.

“Mr. Z,” said Arik, his voice all jittery. “We were just practicing. For Workshop this afternoon.”

“I see,” Mr. Z said. He cast his eyes on Rosemary for her excuse.

Instead of speaking, she reached around Arik’s waist. He flinched, self-conscious in Mr. Z’s presence. Still, something egged her on—she rested her head on Arik’s chest and gazed back defiantly at Mr. Z, her fingers tracing the edge of Arik’s fly.