“You are the worst liar in the entire world.” As I shifted the car into park, a couple of girls walked past the car, long hair blowing in the breeze. Other than them, I didn’t see anyone else in the parking lot.

“I’m not lying,” he said, but I waved him off.

“Look, I know we’re not exactly best friends, but we have known each other more or less since the womb. Remember in second grade when you spilled all the blue paint, and tried to say you hadn’t? You’re making the exact same face.”

David rolled his eyes. “And what face is that?”

I jutted my jaw out and gave my best David scowl. “Kinda like this,” I said through clenched teeth, and he gave a surprised laugh.

“Okay, I do not look like that. That looks like . . . I don’t know, Dick Cheney.”

“No, this is totally how you look when you lie,” I insisted. “You did it with the blue paint and you’re doing it now.”

David’s grin slowly faded and his fingers fiddled with the edge of his T-shirt, pulling it up over his bicep a little. Since when did David Stark have biceps? How did you get any muscle tone when all you did was type and be annoying?

“Trust me, Pres,” he answered as he opened his door. “That’s it. No more to tell.”

He wanted me to trust him, and Saylor wanted him to trust her, and I just wanted this whole thing over with.

So why are you here? a little voice whispered inside my head. Instead of chasing that thought, I got out of the car and hurried after David.

He was looking at his phone. “Okay, so the appointment is in ten minutes on the second floor of the library. Which would be . . .” He pointed to the large Gothic building. “Here.”

I stared at it, waiting to feel that sudden tightness in my chest that told me David was in danger. But there was nothing but the breeze brushing my hair into my face and the slight chill of early November. No vise around my heart, no Pop Rocks.

“Should we go in?” David asked, and I nodded.

Walking inside, the familiar old building smells of mildewed carpet and burnt coffee assaulted my nose, but other than that, everything felt . . . fine. Normal. Maybe this was a routine scholarship interview.

The office David had been told to go to was on the library’s second floor. As we made our way up the stairs, everything was completely silent except for the squeak of David’s sneakers on the stone floor. “Do you feel weird?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. I feel . . . weirdly unweird, actually.”

Slanting me a look, he gave a half-smile. “Only for us would unweird be weird.”