We sat in silence while watching kids scampering over the brightly colored playground equipment. A little girl climbed up the same slide where, when we were eight, I’d shoved David off the ladder. Or had he shoved me? I couldn’t remember. And there, on the swing set, a boy sat on the swing where Ryan had given me my first kiss.

Shutting off the ignition, David leaned forward on the steering wheel. “She wants you dead,” he said.

I looked at my hand again. “Yeah, I got that.”

He let out a heavy sigh, dropping his forehead to the steering wheel. “So what do we do now?”

I wished I had an easy answer. I wished I could pretend none of this was real, and that everything could go back to the way it was. But now there was a lot more on the line than my social life. My actual life was at stake here, and while the idea of hiding under the covers, preferably until Rapture, was appealing, it didn’t seem to be an option.

Sitting up straight, I pushed my hair away from my face, gathering it into a loose knot. David’s backpack was at my feet, and I fumbled through it until I found a notebook and a pen. Skipping past a bunch of sketches at the front—which, hey, were actually pretty decent. I stopped, looking more closely at a few. There was Chie, his friend from newspaper, her dark hair curling around one ear, hand playing with her bangs. And there was Bee, laughing. Bee did this thing when she laughed of tipping her head all the way back, mouth open and teeth flashing. David had captured it perfectly, and I couldn’t help but smile.

I flipped to another page, and there was me. I took up nearly the whole sheet of paper, standing next to a wall of lockers, my head slightly down, face in profile. I was smiling, but my shoulders were tense and I was clearly twisting my ring around my finger.

Clearing his throat, David pulled the notebook back and flipped to a blank page. “I like drawing people,” was all he said before once again placing the notebook back in my hands.

Something seemed to have settled over the car, something heavy and weirdly tense, like the air before a storm.

“When did you draw—” I asked, but David tapped the blank paper in front of me.

“So what was all that stuff Blythe said?”

Taking the hint, I nodded and picked up a pen. “Okay. So the Ephors want to do a spell that makes you Mega Oracle.” I jotted that down. “And they’re doing it at Cotillion.”

David was studying me over the rims of his glasses. “Are you . . . making a flow chart?”