“Briggs said things,” I confess from the floor. “The shit he said to me…” The memory of Briggs’s threats return, overwhelming all other thoughts of Ricky or his Expulsion. My face buckles as the dam restraining my emotional monsoon gives way. Marcos, intent on stifling my meltdown, extends a “stop” hand. Once again, he’s astonishingly easy to obey.

“If you can, I need you to take everything you’re feeling and hide it in a little bottle inside your heart.”

“What…? I’m serious, I’m like not okay—”

“I know you’re not. But I need you to listen because they’re coming. And if they find you how I did, looking a mess, they’re gonna find out Briggs did something, which won’t do you any good except get you in deeper trouble with him.”

“I’m listening,” I sniff.

“Everything you’re feeling, stuff it in a little bottle in your heart. Just long enough to make it through lunch.”

“I…I’ll put it in a little bottle in my heart.”

“And screw the lid on tight. You gotta act totally normal or we’re both gonna get questions.”

“I shouldn’t have run my mouth,” I break, choking on air. The enormity of how far I’ve crossed the line with these dangerous people engulfs me. “I think I’m being so smart, but I’m stupid—”

“You’re not stupid,” Marcos says with a finality that shuts me up.

I collect a deep breath and dry my eyes with the bottom of my shirt like an apron. My fingers and toes twiddle until the pins and needles vanish and I can move again. “Can you help me up?” I ask, coughing through post-crying phlegm. Sexy.

“You have to get up on your own,” Marcos whispers with a twinge of impatience. “I can’t touch you.”

Lord Almighty! A Nightlight boy couldn’t touch another Nightlight boy even to save him from drowning. This place sucks so much dick (and not in the way Drew and Briggs do to each other). Nevertheless, I follow his instructions and stuff every complicated, terrified, awful feeling into an invisible Mason jar. My frantic emotions resist this act like a cat being crammed into a Halloween costume, but into the jar they go. A corked bottle of pain—an SOS—shut away in my heart while I eat lunch.

Preferably half a cow.

I psych myself into facing the pain of standing and clamber upright. As expected, a long, searing pain awakens in my back. “You’re hurt bad?” Marcos asks, his all-business demeanor dropping a peg.

“I hit the whiteboard. Can you see it?” My shirt doesn’t rise halfway up before Marcos gasps. “What, is it bleeding?” I spin twice to spot the wound like I’m trying to catch my own tail.