My bag wasn’t designed to carry this many textbooks. Once I’d loaded it up as much as I could, squeezed in next to my laptop, I was left balancing the rest in my arms. Mom, throwing herself into her drill sergeant role, stormed down the hall without offering to help me carry anything.

The crowd of students parted for us, a Red Sea that only had to take one glance at Mom’s face to dive out of her way. Somewhere in the sea, I caught sight of a familiar head bobbing. Alarmed eyes. Mouth opening, saying words I couldn’t hear over the usual hallway chatter. Shoving and weaving toward me.

Brougham broke through the wall of bodies and came right toward us, undeterred by Mom. “Darcy, hey. What’s going on? What happened?”

The sight of his face, concerned and open, made my heart swell. It was the first time all day someone had looked at me with anything better than disdain. Having someone who got it, someone who was on my side—and who wasn’t shocked to find out my secret—felt enormous right now.

“Hurry up,” Mom snapped back at me. I picked up my pace, and Brougham fell into step beside me.

“They found out about the locker,” I whispered.

Brougham’s voice was panicky. “Wait, are you in trouble?”

Mom flipped around to stare Brougham down. “Go to class,” she said in a dangerous tone.

“Yup, just a sec, Ms. Morgan.”

“No, now, Alexander.”

You didn’t fuck around with Mom when her voice got like that. It was her “don’t touch the hot stove top” voice, her “how dare you throw a tantrum in the supermarket” voice, her “if you ask me to buy it one more time I’m not going to tell Santa you want it” voice.

And Brougham, bless his heart, Brougham who’d grown up fearing what would come next when his parents raised their voices, froze.

Then, amazingly, he unfroze, broke into a jog, and caught back up with us. “Ms. Morgan, wait. It wasn’t just Darcy. I was involved, too. And you don’t understand, she wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was helping people—”

If he followed us for much longer, I wouldn’t put it past Mom to lash out. I touched his arm to cut him off. “There’s no point. Go back to class. I’ll be fine.”

“But—”

“Go. You’ll make it worse.” I gave him a pleading look, and he slowed, wounded. By that point, we’d reached the entrance, and he couldn’t exactly follow us to the car. So he stayed behind, and I followed Mom out into the sunlight.

We climbed into the car, and Mom let her head fall back against the seat without starting the engine. “You messed up, kid.”