“I told you. Chloe just got back,” Max explained, though he shouldn’t have had to.

Jackson stumbled toward the entrance, angling for a better look, and Max grabbed the back of his sweaty T-shirt (yuck) and yanked him to a halt.

“Oh, come on! I just wanna say hi,” Jackson said, then his head whipped around in alarm. “Did she cast a spell on you? Is that why you’re with her?”

“I’m not with her. I’m serving her lunch in the place where I work. She’s nothing to me.” An anchor of guilt instantly dragged his heart somewhere down into his belly, and he prayed Vera couldn’t hear. But the real reason Vera was meeting with him was something he wouldn’t share with these people if they stuck branding irons to his chest.

“All right, all right.” Leo held up his tan hands. “We’ll go. You’re working. We get it.”

“We do?” Delilah countered.

“Yes, we do. Max is busy. We’ll check in with you later. I hear Marissa’s parents are away.” Leo tried to steer the conversation back to the typical, but Max knew the second they drove off, his friends would talk about him for the rest of the afternoon. He’d be lucky if he and Vera weren’t trending on social media.

“Hey, if she turns you into a frog, hop to my house, okay?” Jackson teased. “We’re turning on the hot tub.”

Max squinted with annoyance—Please, shut up—and when he opened his eyes, Delilah was right in his face.

“I guessh I know why you don’t text me back anymore.” Her tone was curt. “Thank God I shaw this, because I will stop texting you now.”

Seriously? That was a bit much. Max’s brows knitted together. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then explain it.”

“I don’t have to.”

They were barely together when school was in session, and now she, Leo, and Jackson were making him feel shitty when they were the ones being jerks—to him and to Vera. So far, Vera had shown no reason to deserve the crappy treatment she’d gotten from the student body over the years. If Max felt guilty about anything, it was how he was acting right now. To her.

His friends climbed back into Leo’s pickup, and as soon as the engine started, Max swiveled toward Vera. She met his gaze head-on, and he saw it right away.

She’d heard everything.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Vera

Vera scribbled her best rendition of an anime cat on the back of the paper menu using a cheap blue crayon—not cobalt, sky, or sapphire…just “blue.” Chloe leaned closer, studying her every waxy line.

“I love the eyes!” said Chloe.

“I saw them in a graphic novel.”

“Oh, I love manga!”

“Me too.” Vera handed her the crayon.

She could see Maxwell in the parking lot, lit by the blazing noon sun, talking to two of his friends, Leo and Jackson, and a girl from their grade, Delilah Pazinski. Delilah might be his girlfriend, or at least Vera remembered her decorating Maxwell’s locker—and by “decorating,” she meant decoupaging it with every trinket found at the dollar store.