When class is over, I have to make myself turn around. I look at his socks first. Stars and moons. His sock drawer is bottomless.

“Hi,” I say, as Mr. Hoffman and the other students file out, talking low, glancing back at us. My shoulders start to creep up, but I catch myself, straighten. Jack’s watching me with his head tilted to the side. He glances around the room, then back at me.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I spent most of the class trying to figure out what I wanted to say to him. What I had to say. I still have nothing, but I can answer his question.

“No,” I tell him. “We have an honor board hearing to get ready for, don’t we?”

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “That’s so unfair.”

It takes me just a moment to catch up.

“What do you mean? You’re going to be there, right? You’re as immoral as we are.”

He smiles at that, but he’s shaking his head. “They’re giving me demerits for the curfew violation.”

I pause. “That’s it?”

He’s looking at me strangely. “Yes.”

“No. Are you kidding me?” The surprise of it. The disbelief that’s making it hard to think straight.

“No, Addie, of course not. I don’t understand—”

I’m shaking my head, and I can’t listen to him. He doesn’t understand why I’m getting upset. Which is even more upsetting.

It all spills out in a rush. “You weren’t just there,” I say. “You were involved in the show. You were onstage. You were performing. We were all performing in a burlesque show. All four of us. But only three of us—Katherine and Nevaeh and me—are getting hit with an immoral-conduct charge.”

“Well, yes—”

“You don’t think it’s unfair? You don’t see the discrepancy here?”

“I know I was performing, technically. And they’re not charging me, but I mean, I can see what they’re saying—”

My brain shrieks to a halt.

“Technically!”

“Well, yeah—”

“And you can see what they’re saying?”

He’s shaking his head at me.

“Addie—”

I jump up and push the classroom door shut, maybe a little too firmly, because I am afraid I’m going to raise my voice.

I stand against it. His hair is all riled up, and he’s wearing his glasses, and he looks like he has no idea what I want from him, and I feel like I’m made of tissue paper and I just need a match.

“What is it, Addie?” he says. “Are you okay?”

“You asked me that already,” I tell him. “I’m definitely not okay.”

He looks horribly uncomfortable, but also really sincere. “If this is about last week, I’m so—”

“Last week?”

“In my room,” he says. “When I—”

In his room? I cut him short again.