He climbed up the steps, feeling Jaya right behind him. As he’d expected, everyone was on the bus already. (Except Caterina, who apparently was in her Tesla, according to what Alaric was saying. Who knew what her problem was besides an insatiable thirst for drama.) Grey took a seat across from DE and Penelope—one of the only few seats remaining—and Jaya promptly plopped down beside him. He kept his body rigid, and his eyes out the window in front of him.

“Where were you?” DE asked, reaching over to kick his foot with hers.

Grey flushed as he slid his foot out of the way. “Upstairs.”

DE snorted. “Upstairs!” she said to Leo, who was on her other side. “That explains everything.”

Leo shook his head and went back to talking to Rahul. There was an awkward pause while DE and Penelope waited for Grey to tell them more, which he didn’t. And then Jaya cleared her throat and began to speak in that very classy, very Jaya way about dresses or dancing or something.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as the bus began to move. Why the assist? But if she saw him looking, she gave no indication. Feeling equal measures of gratitude and guilt, Grey settled against the plush seat, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

About twenty minutes into the drive, DE leaned forward and said to him, “Who are you taking to Homegoing?” and Grey realized the dance had been the conversational topic the whole time he’d been alternating pretending to be asleep and staring out the window at grazing cows and sheep.

Feeling waves of something coming off Jaya and pointed in his general direction, he kept his voice neutral when he answered, still looking out the window. “I’m not going.”

“Homegoing” instead of “Homecoming” was another one of St. R’s “fun” events. Since St. R’s had to be different in everything they did as a proclamation of their elitism and inherent superiority, they’d decided to instead have “Homegoing,” the biggest event of the season. Homegoing was a winter formal, and everyone dressed up in their designer best and took a date they’d been gathering the courage to ask out since the beginning of the school year.

“You are not going to Homegoing?” Leo this time. “Why not? Mon ami, it is our chance to blow off steam after finals, non? It is the biggest event of the year. Everyone goes.”

“Well, I guess it’s going to be everyone minus one this year,” Grey said, turning to look at him.

Jaya was studying him, her eyes slightly narrowed, as if she couldn’t make him out.

“You have to go,” DE said.

Grey turned his gaze on her. “Have to? I don’t remember seeing that in the school handbook.”