“People kept using it to picnic and party and, well . . . you know.”

“Know what?” I asked.

“Let’s just say, don’t walk on that fifty-yard line with bare feet. It might be . . . sticky.”

“Ew.”

We made our way down the high-walled tunnel, and when the field was in full view, I could see the soaring walls surrounded the entire arena. I’d noticed the walls on the school welcome folder but hadn’t realized how tall they were. It was a far more imposing sight in person. Poe pointed across the length of the field, to a high brick arch and a giant iron gate, nearly as wide as a two-lane highway.

“That’s the only way in for the public, and this”—he lifted his hands to the brick walls around us—“this is the only way in from the school.”

A stray thought crossed my mind that Hope High would make an excellent lair for the Drakes or another vampire house. We were always looking for places with strong defenses.

I spotted the planning committee gathered in the stands and waved. Sydney popped up from her seat and jogged across a corner of the field to meet us at the tunnel entrance.

“Special delivery,” Poe said, with a flourish of his hands in my direction.

“Took long enough,” Sydney said.

“I was giving her a tour of the fortress.”

“It’s all a little prisonlike, if you ask me,” she said. “But hey, it keeps the neighbors off the grass, right?”

Poe checked his watch. “I have to get to rehearsal.”

“Tell my brother hello,” I said. “You see him more than I do.”

Above his glasses, Poe’s eyebrows wagged suggestively. “I’ll send your love.”

“Gross. Just stay off the fifty-yard line, okay?”

“I make no promises.”

Up in the bleachers, the freshman and sophomore committee members were giving an update on float building progress. As Sydney and I joined the group, one girl was nursing the pads of her fingers and complaining of permanent glue damage from the thousands of pomps needed to build the float.

“Pomps?” I asked.

“Tissue paper,” Sophia said, scooting over for me to sit.

“Tiny, tissuey, torture devices,” the girl spat.

Sophia made a check mark in a notebook perched on her knees. “Okay, in addition to the Hope High float, we’ve sold entries for most of the usual suspects: 4-H club, Village Veterinary Clinic, the dentist—”

“The dentist?” I asked.

“We just have the one,” Sydney confirmed.

Sophia continued, “American Legion, Future Farmers, the Nowhere Gazette—”

“What’s that?” someone asked. It was Mark, the boy who’d lobbied for a Purge-themed parade float.

“The newspaper.”

“What newspaper?” Sydney asked.

“We have a newspaper?” another girl added.