Greg Holloway walked by, but no fellow jocks were with him, and he didn’t make the effort to utter even a token threat.

Nick finished his sandwich and glanced toward the office. They’d been told the other day in their homerooms that the school now had a student financial adviser to help kids manage their college saver accounts. It was part of a new public-private partnership between the school and The First People’s Bank. All sorts of services were supposedly offered, and the adviser was available any time. Students were even allowed to get out of class to meet with him, but Nick didn’t think any of them had done so. He assumed the financial adviser had been given a room in the office, and he found himself wondering where that was. In his mind, he saw Mr. Worthington seated in Principal Whittaker’s office, waiting patiently behind that big desk like a spider for a fly, while the principal was demoted to a smaller space somewhere else in the building.

He was certainly never going to visit any financial adviser.

The only thing left in his lunch sack was a banana his mom had packed for him, and there was no way he was going to put anything with that shape in his mouth on school grounds, so he threw the sack away just as his phone buzzed, alerting him that he’d received a text.

Aaron? he thought hopefully.

He checked his phone. No.

It appeared to be from either Mrs. Nelson or his counselor. There was no name attached to the text, only the school’s tag, but it asked him to stop by the library before the end of lunch period in order to discuss the writing scholarship. He had not applied for it and had no intention of applying for it, but he had not told that to anyone at the school, and they were no doubt wondering when he was going to turn in his application.

Lunch still had fifteen minutes to go, and he had nothing to do, so he wandered over to the library. Quite a few kids usually came in here during lunch, but today the building appeared to be empty. There was not even anyone at the front desk, and that was definitely unusual because Ms. Swanson was paranoid about students smuggling in food or smuggling out books, and she kept a sharp eye out for troublemakers. He was about to turn and leave, when he heard his name spoken from between the stacks: “Nicholas Decker.”

He recognized that voice.

Mr. Worthington.

The text had not been from his teacher or the counselor. It had been from the banker.

“Nicholas.”

Heart pounding, he immediately turned to leave, but on the door through which he’d just come was imprinted a shadow.

The shadow.