Adding to my irritation, I’d texted Ryan like five times about it, and had yet to get a reply. Funny how the one time I needed him to step up to the plate, he was missing in action.

“Lots on my mind,” I told Bee.

She gave a sympathetic frown. “Nothing new on the trials?”

“Nothing,” I said on a sigh. It had been a few days, and I knew we only had twenty-eight days—one full moon cycle, Alexander had said—to complete the Peirasmos, but other than Ryan’s false alarm, nothing weird had happened at all.

Which felt weird in and of itself.

Now, I walked around the rack of clothes and looped my arm through Bee’s, tugging her out of the store. “Come on. I have an angst only Cinnabon can cure.”

When we got to the food court, Bee went off in search of drinks while I grabbed us a couple of cinnamon rolls.

By the time I got back, Bee was already at a table near the carousel, two Diet Cokes in front of her, and she pushed mine toward me as I sat down, along with a pale pink flyer.

“Look what I found!”

I took the flyer from her, raising my eyebrows. “The Miss Pine Grove Pageant?”

Bee took a sip of her drink and nodded. “We should do it.”

Blinking, I chewed on the end of my straw and tried to think of the best way to answer that. A group of girls I recognized from school walked by, their arms laden down with bags, and Bee watched them pass with a wistful expression on her face.

But then she shook her head quickly, and turned back to the flyer, tapping it with one manicured nail. “Look at the date.”

I did. “May first?” I read, and Bee nodded. “Last day of this moon cycle. Didn’t Alexander say that the trials would take up one full moon cycle?”

He had, but all that had meant to me was that we had a nice timeline—almost a month. I hadn’t considered what might be happening on any of those days.

“The Ephors are big drama queens, right?” Bee said, still looking at the flyer. “Look at what happened on the night of Cotillion.” When she lifted her head, her eyes were brighter than I’d seen them in a long time. “The trials are going to be connected to you, which makes me think they’ll be at school, or involve the town somehow. Stuff like that since that’s, like, your whole wheelhouse.”

Bee definitely had a point, and I wasn’t sure what bugged me more: the idea of something big going down in front of my whole town again, or that she had had that idea and I hadn’t.