“Now, don’t forget about the paper due tomorrow,” Mr. Elliot said. It was Monday afternoon, and the seconds were ticking closer to the final bell. “There will be no extensions granted for anyone without an extremely valid excuse, and ‘I was too tired’ is not one of them. Please note, I am not your father, and I don’t love you, so appealing to my humanity is a waste of time you could be spending on your homework. Clear?”

A few halfhearted murmurs from the class, but nothing too enthusiastic. I glanced up and caught Brooke’s eye one row ahead of me. She gave a dramatic grimace. The bell rang, and everyone shot to their feet, chairs scraping and shoe soles squeaking and friends calling to each other across the room. Mr. Elliot raised his voice to be heard over the cacophony. “This isn’t an exercise in paper conservation, so I encourage you to meet the word count. As much as I appreciate your thoughtfulness in giving me less work to grade, which I might add I do on my own time after dinner, if you can’t write more than half a page on symbolism it makes me look bad. And I hate looking bad, because Ms. Georgeson always manages to slip in a dig my way about it at the staff Christmas party. Do you want to ruin Christmas for me?”

I stopped outside the classroom and pressed myself flush against the wall to avoid the flood of tan-and-navy-clad students pouring into the halls while I waited for Brooke. She’d warned me before class she wanted to hang back to ask a question about the essay, and she was my ride home that day, because Mom had to stay behind for a staff meeting and Ainsley was at class until four thirty.

I zoned out while I waited, until suddenly my attention caught on Finn and Brougham joining the main artery from one of the smaller capillary halls, along with two of their friends, Hunter and Luke.

Brougham and Finn seemed to be the unofficial leaders of their pack of four. Together, they resembled what I imagined it’d look like if a puppy made best friends with a particularly cranky cat. While Brougham stalked the halls with sharp eyes, barely reacting to the jokes and chatter of his friends, Finn bounded, clapping Brougham on the shoulder, snatching Hunter’s phone from his grasp, and reading something aloud from it to Luke’s delight.

I didn’t mean to stare as much as I was, but I couldn’t help but wonder what on earth the puppy saw in the cat. Then the cat spotted me, and I froze, caught red-handed in my goggling.