“What are we going to do?” I said when we found it, now worried about what Elise might have in mind. I knew she liked pranks, but we’d never pulled something off at school, and definitely not on someone who could get us into real trouble.

“Nothing crazy,” she said, getting into the driver’s seat. “Come on.”

“Are we stealing her car?” I asked, not moving.

“Nah, just borrowing it. Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal,” she said, pulling the seat belt across her.

It was a sign of how much I trusted her that I finally got in. “Okay.”

We didn’t go far, just to the parking lot of a nearby strip mall. Elise pulled out her cigarettes. It’d become a little ritual of ours, Elise lighting two and passing one to me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll drive back and drop the keys off in the lost and found. She’ll look for them when she realizes they’re missing, but she’ll find them eventually.”

“You didn’t have to do this for me,” I said quietly, feeling vaguely embarrassed but also secretly happy that she cared so much about me.

“I wanted to! People like her are the worst. What the fuck did she even mean, ‘What an odd name’?” Elise scoffed, that sharp glint in her eye. “It’s unfair that we couldn’t say anything just because she has all the power.” That kind of thing really bothered her. The world was unjust, and someone had to right those wrongs. She was that someone.

I looked at her in awe.

“What?” she asked. “Do I have something on my face?”

I laughed. “No, just—thanks. For caring.”

She smiled.

After we finished our first cigarette, Melody texted me.

Melody: Where are you?

I’d begun to hang out with Elise and her friends at lunch most days, and the more I avoided or ignored Melody, the more she tried to pull me back.

Me: Getting lunch off campus

Melody: We’re not supposed to do that!

“Is that Melody?” Elise asked, rolling her eyes. “Let me guess, you’re in trouble.”

“No,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Melody’s mad at you, isn’t she?” she said.

“Probably,” I admitted. “But it’s not a big deal.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you this but she cornered me the other day,” she said like she was confessing a secret.

“What?”

“Yeah, we’re both in sixth-period Spanish, right? So after the last bell, she followed me out and pulled me aside. She kind of threatened me.”

“Um . . . What?” I repeated. I couldn’t imagine tiny Melody Moon threatening anyone.

“Okay, maybe not threatened, but warned. She was all huffy about how much time you were spending with me, how you and her were friends first, blah blah blah.” Then Elise laughed, like it was Melody who was being completely ridiculous.

“Wow,” I said, feeling a little worried about Mel—that she would corner Elise like that. She was stubborn and loyal but she’d never seemed possessive. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Maybe she wasn’t trying to threaten Elise but was just venting. Maybe she was even trying to get us all to hang out together more. Whatever it was, it backfired. “What’d you say?”