Instead of his fist flying past Eric’s face, a move they’d practiced a hundred times, something went wrong. There was a dull noise, not like the sharp fake-punch sound they produced through trickery. Eric staggered, but not a calculated, staged stagger—a real staggering stagger that concluded with him losing his balance and falling to the floor. He landed on his back, hard.

Scarlett decided it was time to go. Immediately.

MISS CALCULATIONS

Every head turned away from the carnage on stage to watch as Scarlett made her wobbling, half-running way out of the darkened room into the blinding sunlight. She allowed her legs to follow their instincts. She rounded the building and headed for the playground. There was a low brick wall on the far side. She ducked behind it and sat on the ground, collapsing her face into her knees.

She was alone for several minutes, except for a few brave pigeons that would not be scared off by a human running at them, arms flapping in the wind. She tried to block everything out—shutting her eyes. But it was all still there. The girl. The look on his face. Eric crumpled on the stage.

She soon became aware that someone was standing nearby, but it didn’t seem worth it to look up and see who it was. The person slid down the wall and sat next to her.

“Do you remember when I accidentally set fire to myself?” Spencer asked.

Scarlett pulled her head up just enough to look over at his shoes.

“I saw it on TV, these stunt guys explaining how they do those scenes where they run out of exploding buildings. I thought I could do it by spraying hairspray over my pants and burning off the fumes. It actually worked for thirty seconds. Looked great. Except that I hadn’t worked out the plan for putting myself out. Stop, drop, and roll takes a lot longer than you’d think.”

Scarlett remembered this quite well, but couldn’t answer because a lump of something had risen in her throat so fast that it gagged her. She tried to force it back down, hold whatever was left of herself and her dignity together.

“I’m not asking for any particular reason,” he went on. “Except maybe to see if you noticed how stupid I am. You pretend not to see it, but I think you do.”

She wanted to say that he wasn’t stupid—she took all honors for that. Stupid to think she could date Eric, stupid to follow Mrs. Amberson’s advice, stupid not to listen to Spencer in the first place. She wanted to say she was sorry, but all that came out was a noise that almost sounded like a quack.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, dropping an arm over her shoulders.

Whatever was gripping her throat released it, and a torrent of tears erupted from some unknown reservoir inside. She buried her face in the folds of his jacket and sobbed huge, wheezing sobs that finally scared off the remaining birds. It was like she was draining herself dry.