Then why would the girls’ Healthy Living class be postponed, too?

Get real, Del. How could anything you said during a conversation with Pastor Newsome last night have this much of an effect less than twenty-four hours later? You are not responsible for this.

But for someone who’d pulled off such a thrilling lie to get Kiera to dinner this Friday, I sucked at lying to myself.

Chapter 14

AS AGREED, SHIANNE MET ME by my car after the final bell for the first of our tutoring sessions. She climbed in with a crumpled Red Bull can and alarming wide eyes. None of the school vending machines sold energy drinks, but I knew who the caffeine plug was. “You copped from Kent Oster. You really are flaunting your wealth now.”

“His one hundred and fifty percent markup only seems steep when you aren’t desperate. I so needed this. Home, Jeeves!”

We did the slow crawl out of the school lot. While we inched along, I said, “You haven’t heard anything about MJ today, have you?”

Her face crumpled. “Mister Jay? Why would I hear anything about him?” She jerked forward, snapping her seat belt tight across her body. “Oh, he isn’t a Baby-Getter Dad, is he?”

“No! That’s not what I meant. Never mind.” Though that wouldn’t have been too far off from escalating BabyGetterToo drama. Last I heard, a couple of the previously anonymous dads were getting sued for child support, or were going on the offensive by asking for DNA tests. Maury Povich shit I didn’t care that much about, if I was being honest.

I hoped MJ was okay.

It was silly asking Shianne. Mom would’ve said this was my guilt talking. I turned up the music, focused on that.

There was virtually no traffic headed in the direction of Shianne’s house. She lived in Green Creek’s oldest-money neighborhood, Poplar Estates. These were houses built a long time ago, like over a century. Dad said my great-grandparents wouldn’t have been allowed to live in this part of town, because back then you had two barriers to overcome: money and skin color.

Now it was mostly just money, which the Griffiths family had plenty of. Shianne’s dad was some executive for the meat-packing company that ran a big plant in the neighboring town. Her mom helped start some software firm in college that she and her partners sold for big dough when Shianne was a kid. Now she worked on various apps and coding projects at her leisure. Their neighbors were the lawyers and doctors and bankers of our community. I knew all this from the times I used to bike to her place and eat Hot Pockets while doing homework in her family room.

I hadn’t come to this side of town since I last visited her, way before Baby Zoey. It always struck me how the sky seemed wider and bluer over the rich part of town.

On her street, we passed Tanisha Thompson’s house, location of our imaginary sexcapade. Tanisha and friends had gotten out of the school lot before us, and were in her driveway, exiting Tanisha’s new Chevy SUV. At neighborhood speed limits, me, my car, and my passenger were easily recognized, and I saw the speech bubbles hovering over their scowling heads like a comic book panel: Is that Shianne in Del’s car?