A. Mr. Hoover.

B. Mr. Hoover’s eternal quest to punish me.

C. Both Eliza and Josh Daley were in my gym class, and I had to somehow manage all of the aforementioned personalities without coming off as an A+ a-hole.

“No way,” Austin fist-bumped me as I dropped my backpack on the desk beside him. The desks were in clumps of four. Robert and Josh could sit with us too. “We’ve got all my faves,” said Austin, “minus Carter. LOC will have to do.” Whether or not Eliza heard his acronym for Little O’Connor, she didn’t answer.

“Ms. Johnson’s class will be joining us today, settle down, phones away, we have a lot of material to get through,” Mr. Hoover droned.

I recognized a few others in the class, mostly from my soccer team.

Eliza sat with her cool-nerd friends on the other side of the room. I had my back to her. Still desperate to say my piece, I hid my phone in a notebook and texted her. Talk after school? I had no idea if her phone was secretly out too, though I guessed not, because she was the extremely studious type.

“Welcome to hell-th,” said Austin. He passed around a pack of gum.

At the front of the room, Mr. Hoover started his PowerPoint for the day. It projected nicely onto his pristine whiteboard. You’re welcome.

The first slide was titled The Importance of Sleep. It had a cartoon of a dude tucked into bed, counting sheep. This was going to be good. And by good, I mean horrible.

“Guess he won’t mind if we sleep through this,” I whispered, “since it’s so important.”

Josh snickered. Austin leaned across his desk. “Yo, I have to tell you something.”

Mr. Hoover remained completely oblivious to the fact that almost no one was paying attention to him.

Josh and Robert hung off Austin’s every word. With him, you never knew if he was going to say something like, “Your momma is so fat, when she went to space she became the ninth planet,” or if he was going to spill some serious tea.

“I hooked up with Madison yesterday.”

I blinked. Of all the things, that was the least surprising.

“I should have asked where you guys stand,” he said, “and I get I’m the worst. She came—”

I shook my head, signaling for Austin to shut up. While I still could barely believe it, since Madison had said she was specifically interested in Carter, Madison and Austin did kind of make sense.

“Are you asking me for my blessing?”

Austin blew a big bubble with his gum.

“Go for it,” I said. “Just remember . . .”

“Bros before hoes.” Austin slid back in his chair.

I’d been about to remind him that Madison was a psychopath who lived for juice, but that rule—the cardinal rule—worked too.

“Bros before motherfucking hoes.”

Maybe it was the sudden swearing, or because we’d been pushing the envelope since his lecture started, but Mr. Hoover chose to start paying attention to us at that exact moment.