On her cue, Bethany and April Sparks tossed Jasmine and heard the soft thump as she landed in the spotters’ arms. Awaiting her own cue, Bethany waved to the crowd and to her father smiling at her with a koozied beer to his lips like he wasn’t planning some dreadful punishment for her this weekend—and she felt an idea forming.

Because she realized now there was a reason she hadn’t passed on Kimbra’s message to Luke Evers. Kimbra was a bitch—she’d abandoned her goddamn responsibilities tonight—but she was also very clever. If Kimbra was worried that something strange was happening after the game then it most definitely was. And whatever was going on, Bethany knew it was sinister enough that Jamal had to be framed for a fucking murder to keep it a secret.

And Luke Evers was the key. She had noticed the way Luke was suddenly hanging tight with Dylan’s old friends, boys who never used to give him the time of day. Those boys wouldn’t just suddenly start hanging out with someone like Luke. They didn’t do anything out of the goodness of their hearts.

As Bethany fell back toward the spotters—a little early, but who cares—she recalled something Alisha Stinson had once asked her and Jasmine as they’d picked at salads at Bethany’s house one weekend. “Don’t you ever wonder where those boys go after the games?” Alisha had said, and Jasmine—the whore—had laughed and said, “Not as long as they know who they’re coming home to.”

Dylan and KT weren’t the only boys who were hard to find on Friday nights, oh no.

Bethany had never cared back then, of course, had always been confident that Dylan would have told her if there were something serious going on, but clearly she had been mistaken. No more. Bethany wasn’t going to let this continue. These people could smile and they could talk behind their hands and pretend that nothing was ever wrong but Bethany was about to smash their faces into everything they didn’t want to see. She was going to stop this. She was going to fix everything.

Bethany landed hard in the spotters’ arms. She opened her eyes, realizing she hadn’t been entirely awake on the way down. For a moment, just a moment, she’d been certain she was falling, falling into the open mouth of the pit that had waited for her all week, the one that smelled of clay and rot, the one—

She trembled as she stood up, walking on boat legs.

She knew what she needed to do.

As the town rushed the field, as the marching band started braying, Bethany made her way to the parking lot. She turned back to see that no one had noticed her leave. She kept moving.

She would fix this. She would fix everything. Bethany was a very smart, capable, perceptive girl and she was going to fix everything.

She stuck to the dark tunnel that ran between the parking lot’s lights, nervous of the way the spangles of her uniform glinted, but she needn’t have been concerned. Every soul in town was on the field right now.