Yet Whiskey and T-Bay, so helpful yesterday, had ignored her after first period. A few of the girls on the squad had shrugged when Kimbra had murmured a simple question—“Have you ever heard of some place some of the boys go? Somewhere they don’t talk about?”—and given her blank looks that she took to be genuine.

Despite all her care and discretion, Garrett Mason had caught her eye in biology, had brought a bruised finger to his lips without a word. Shh.

Then, at lunch, KT had texted, his first message to her since last Friday, and all he wrote was lets leave now. She hadn’t responded, even when he’d started blowing up her phone.

And now here was this odd message from her father. He always went quail hunting on the weekends, leaving town after the game so he could be at her uncle Jarvis’s house outside Sprickstown in time to sleep and still be up well before dawn, when the quail started to rouse. Yet today he had apparently decided to miss the game altogether.

Her father never missed a game.

Something bad is going on

“Yo, K-K-Kimbra. You got a second?”

It was Benny Garcia, the backbencher’s backbencher, standing like a dwarf in his oversize pads and fussing with his gloves. The opening bars of the pep rally’s warm-up number were already echoing from the gym.

“What is it?” Kimbra said.

Benny only nodded at the empty cafeteria. She studied his big green eyes through the grill of his helmet. He looked like he had something important to tell her.

She made a motion for Dashandre and April to go on to the gym without her, followed Benny through the scraps of paper that still hung from the cafeteria’s doorway. Information—like money—was irresistible to her.

“Has your d-d-dad s-said anything about it this w-week?” Benny said.

“About quail hunting?”

“N-n-no. Ab-b-bout the B-B-Bright Lands.” When B-B-Benny tried to whisper, spittle flew from his lips, clung to the bars of his helmet’s grill. “G-Garrett said if I t-told the c-cops Jamal wanted a c-c-condom at the game then they’d t-t-take me there tonight.”

Kimbra struggled to see what this had to do with her father. Nothing, she insisted. Nothing. “So?”

“They’re t-t-taking Luke! Luke!” Benny pointed down the empty hallway. “B-But I h-heard it was your d-d-dad runs that p-party. He m-must have t-told you wh-where t-to find it, right?”

Down the hall the pep rally’s warm-up number repeated: they were waiting for her.

Kimbra hardly heard it. She didn’t care. Suddenly she didn’t care about much of anything.

Benny took an anxious step away from her, another. “F-forget I said it,” he said, and jogged down the hall.

Go. Go now.

Don’t think. Don’t ask.

“Don’t let those guys fuck you up.”

Something bad is going on

Heading 2 uncle jarvis’s house early

Go.

She didn’t bother to change out of her cheer uniform. She took off down the hall, pulled loose her phone, texted KT:

Let’s do it.