“What happened after class?” Molly asks, her stunned expression reminding me I forgot to explain why Marcos and I would suddenly be saying “watermelon, cantaloupe” over and over.

“Just a talking-to from Briggs,” I reassure her. “I just got scared, you know. Just a tiny scratch on my back and a little scare, that’s all. Ricky Hannigan got worse.”

“A scratch? Are you okay?”

“I’m laughing, aren’t I?” But her uncertain gaze loosens the cork on the little bottle of emotions in my heart. She heard my voice crack—everyone heard it—a crack as small and ominous as a pebble striking a windshield.

“Hey, um, no more questions, okay?” Marcos asks. “Let’s let him eat.” Telling Molly what to do traditionally never ends well, but given the circumstances, she nods and strokes the puffy bandage on her cheek—her own memento from stepping out of line. Marcos pivots to me with soft, mother hen-like seriousness. “Eating helps.”

How come he has so much firsthand knowledge of how to make it through an assault from a staff member? I can’t consider that right now; that sort of thinking might burst open the little bottle. Instead, I gulp my pudding, and the cold, vanilla-sweet treat instantly erases the filthy taser metal from my tongue. If only eating could erase the throbbing gash on my back. Or the memory of Briggs’s stale breath…

“Lemonade?” asks the girl in the bob wig. Darcy doesn’t wait for my answer before refilling my plastic glass with life-giving nectar. She pours with her left arm; with her right, she drops Karaoke Bill’s Walkman onto my lap, and I cover it with my napkin. She’d been bussing dishes in the back long enough to listen to it for herself.

“Thoughts?” I ask. It took Darcy three rounds of serving coffee and lemonade before she, Molly, and Marcos were finally caught up on the events of the clinic, the clifftop, and this Ricky Hannigan’s Walkman surprise.

“We need to talk to Drew again,” Darcy says, reaching past me to top off Marcos’s lemonade. “And we’ll get the truth this time.”

“I think he’s done talking—” I say.

“And I think he can help us find more Ricky tapes.”