I find myself looking for Ben at the afternoon assembly. The gym echoes with friends yelling at one another from across the room and bodies climbing over each other on the bleachers to get better seats. I don’t see him. Instead, I spot Luke and Amber across the gym, at the very far end of the front row; Amber signals me over and pats the bench space next to her.

The assembly is a production, to say the least. The gym lights wink out, dramatic music plays, we hear sneakers squeak on the slick floors, and then when the bass drops, brightness floods the room and the whole cheerleading squad materializes on a giant mat. Bronte, Natalie, and Morgan do backflips and basket tosses, intermixed with crisp dance moves. The principal welcomes us, brings out the football team, the school band plays, and there’s even some poor kid in a foam Viking costume with a giant head that shakes his ass while the crowd whoops. It builds and builds to the big announcement: Old Hollywood Glam has won the homecoming-dance theme, and Natalie beams a thousand-watt smile. I can’t help but wonder if she personally threatened the student body into voting her way.

The principal hisses into the mic for us all to quiet down, and calls Natalie to the podium. She smooths her long brown ponytail over her right shoulder and clears her throat.

The gym, which was previously chaos, falls into a hush, like everyone knows what is coming. The change of tone is so abrupt it unsettles me.

“Thank you, Principal Morris,” Natalie says. “Please join me in a moment of silence and reflection for Caroline Quinn, taken too soon and robbed of so much. She is a reminder to us of all of life’s preciousness. We honor her. Please close your eyes with me.”

People cough. Shuffle their feet. I close my eyes. What is everyone else thinking about? Their plans for this weekend, probably. What do high school students know about death? Well, most of them, anyway. I think about Ben again. With my eyes closed, I almost feel his arm stroking my own. I lean into the intoxicating heat, seeking more, more, more. “Ow!”

I open my eyes to see a very real Luke grinning. The bastard pinched me!

“Come on,” he says. “They’re about to launch into eighteenth-century poetry about birds, and then the marching band’ll blast our eardrums. We have something better in mind.”

“We?” Amber hisses, but Luke waves her off, grabbing me by the hand and setting out in a half crouch. We slip through a side door and into a stairwell. When we’re down one flight, he finally talks.

“You want to see the pool? Where it happened? It’s right here.” Luke points beyond the landing, to another set of double doors. Waggles his eyebrows.