We turn the corner into the Crenshaw driveway, and Camille stops short and puts both of her arms out to stop us from going any farther. There on the front lawn in front of Crenshaw is the Taylor High School Titans flag, waving high in the Texas breeze from our flagpole. Underneath, the Guardsmen flag lies in a heap on the ground.

“Well,” Camille says flatly. “I guess you don’t have to worry about getting them first.”

· fifteen ·

JULIAN

I pulled the flag down as fast as I could and switched it out for ours, but I know it was too late. Most of the school had already seen our flag on the ground. Which meant they knew that Taylor got us first.

I didn’t much care. These pranks and superstitions are dumb and nothing but a distraction from the real task at hand, which is beating Taylor at all costs.

Right?

It had been easy to ignore up until the minute Coach Marcus pinned that C to my uniform. It meant a lot that he trusted me to lead the team and keep their eyes on the bigger picture. To the team and to Meridien, it meant that I was in charge.

I balled up the Taylor flag and threw it into my backpack.

“We’ve got to get them back good now, Cap!” Bucky Redd shouted to me as soon as I set foot inside the front door of Crenshaw this morning.

“What are we going to do? We can’t let that go unanswered.” Nate cornered me before first period. “You’ve got to get serious about this.”

“I know,” I told him. “Back off and let me think. I need peace and quiet to come up with ideas.”

For the rest of the morning, I had football players and cheerleaders and Guardettes and band kids all wondering what my next move was going to be. I failed an English quiz because I never did finish the reading the night Elijah showed up in my kitchen. I left my graphing calculator at home, and we had a surprise “checkup” in calculus. My ribs burned every time I sat down at a desk, and my favorite pencil broke in fourth period. That was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, and by the time lunch rolled around, my head was pounding. I escaped to Figg’s classroom with my tray of chicken nuggets and a foil-covered applesauce cup.

“What’s up, Julian? Need some quiet?” he asks, setting out his own lunch on his desk, a cardboard carton of Chinese takeout leftovers, complete with a set of wooden chopsticks and a fortune cookie.

“Do you mind?”

“Never. Pull up a desk,” he says, tucking a napkin into his shirt to protect his tie and breaking the chopsticks apart with a satisfying click.