“You saw me moving it from my notebook to my shirt pocket. You looked right at me while I was doing it.”

“That wasn’t why I looked.”

“Then why’d you look? ’Cause you want to chew on my bone?”

“I just looked over,” I said.

“If you were Karen’s brother, I wouldn’t care. But you’re some kind of half-breed. I don’t know what you’d do with information like this.” He was staring at me, his eyes heavy-lidded. Then he reached a hand up and pulled a joint—à la Seth Colby—from his forest of stiff red hair. He was already palming a book of matches.

Each practice room had a square foot of glass set into its door. Mr. Tepper had a rule that these little windows were to stay unblocked, but students were constantly taping sheets of paper over them. The window just beyond Markham’s head was covered with black construction paper. One corner of the paper had been torn away, revealing an eyelet large enough for someone to peer through, but it was the beginning of lunch hour and the chorus room was empty.

Markham lit the joint and his entire face came to life, lifting into a comedy mask and then puckering as if the pot were a lemon. He made a whoopee cushion noise at the back of his throat. “Primo,” he said, exhaling. “But, now, you probably shouldn’t have seen this, either. Unless you want some.”

I’d never had and didn’t want any pot. I did and didn’t want to leave the practice room. I shook my head no.

“See, this problem’s only getting worse.” Markham took another hit. He licked his thumb and forefinger, pinched the joint out, and put it inside his sock. Then he reached over and brushed the outside of my leg with his hand as he retrieved the bag of white powder. “I’m going to have to get something on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only way I’ll know for sure you’re not going to go nark is if I’ve got something on you. It keeps us honest.”

“What’s there to get on me?” My hands, I realized, were shaking. I closed them over the edge of the piano bench.

“Think about it,” Markham said. “You tell anybody about me, you’re going down for what you did. You tell your sister what you did, you’re going down plus some.”

He stood up from the folding chair. I started from the piano bench but he put a hand on my shoulder and kept me down. “I don’t get it,” I said. “What did I do?”

He reached behind him and turned out the light. “Plenty.”