“Group work time.” Gem knocked on Lia’s desk, dragging Lia out of her desk and pulling their seats to connect with Devon’s. “You two good with this?”

Devon nodded. His neighbor and default group partner, Faith, scooted her desk back. Ms. Christie passed out a packet of problems.

“What are we doing?” Lia asked Gem softly.

“Proving Hess’s law,” Gem whispered. “Biochemistry, chapter thirty-two.”

“Here,” said Faith, handing over a full page of perfectly ordered notes that were color-coded and highlighted. Her looping cursive was beautiful and impossible to read. “I’m glad you’re back at school. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Lia said on instinct. “Just a bit distracted. Thank you.”

“No problem.” Faith flipped open her packet, fingers tapping at the edge of her desk, and signed her name at the top. “Did they tell you anything about what happened? I can’t believe she tripped.”

“Faith,” muttered Devon. “Don’t.”

“Sorry,” she said quickly.

“She tripped.” Lia filled out her name at the top of the worksheet. It was chicken scratch in comparison to Faith’s. “And landed wrong.”

Faith hummed. They passed the packet around and filled out the ones they knew off the tops of their heads. Gem and Faith made small talk, and Lia slipped Devon the schedule she had written down of Peter’s, a little asterisk next to his after-school activities.

“Do you know Peter?” Lia asked Faith after they had exhausted their knowledge of biology and had resorted to flipping through their book for help. “He’s our next target.”

“He arrives fifteen minutes early to read the announcements, gets to class ten minutes late, and is in all regular classes plus creative writing,” said Faith. “That’s all I know.”

That was all Lia knew, too, and all she had written in her journal. Ms. Christie didn’t have it, and Lia knew that meant it had been tossed by the janitor. A year she had spent on that journal, and now it was covered in ham cubes and misprinted exams at the bottom of a Dumpster.

Lia flipped to the back of her school agenda and wrote Abby Ascher in the neatest script she could. After the name, she added a single tick mark. At least winning meant they were doing something good for the shelter, too.

Gem flipped through their book and groaned. “Which of you knows how to do problem eighteen?” they asked. “It’s the only one we haven’t got.”

“Yeah, one sec,” said Faith. She dug into her backpack and pulled out a crinkled packet of papers identical to the one they were working on. “My sister had Ms. Christie, too. This is easier.”

Devon pulled the packet onto his desk and studied question eighteen. “That seems slightly against the rules.”

“It’s homework, not a test,” said Faith. “In the real world, you can look up formulas. Look, I even alphabetized her notes and assignments. Flip to H.”

Gem spun their pen along the back of their knuckles and tapped a page in their book. “Don’t bother. I got it.”