The art room, air thick with pottery dust and paint fumes, is a battlefield. The teacher hasn’t made it back from the gym yet, so bits of broken pastels and colored pencils soar through the air; a lead point bounces off my cheek, making me swear and smack my hand over it. Trace lounges in a chair by the window, paying attention to none of it as I come up to him. “Can I borrow the key to the back door?”

“What for?”

“I just need to get out of here.” I hold out my hand, keeping my expression as blank as possible, trying for a Bree face; I don’t want him knowing how scared I am of getting caught, or how worried I am about what Kincaid will say when I catch up to him. “I won’t lose it or anything. Promise.”

After a second, he takes his key chain from his pocket, pressing the basement key into my palm. “Don’t forget to lock it behind you, going and coming back. Custodians usually don’t come in until two o’clock, so you got time, but if one of them figures out what’s going on, bye-bye Key to the Kingdom. Got it?”

“Got it.”

The bell rings as I go down the east hallway, trying not to run—I’ll never catch Kincaid at this rate—stopping at the blank door that conceals the steps down to the basement. Take a breath, put the key in, hesitate a moment until traffic’s light, then sweep myself inside, laying my shoulder into the door, waiting just a moment to see if some teacher will try to follow me through. Doesn’t happen.

I go after him, locking up behind me.

It plays out one way in my mind: catching up with Kincaid, how happy he’ll be to see me, how he’ll put all my fears to rest, be real with me. Then our kisses right there on the sidewalk in full view of the world.

But this is how it really goes: I run down the hill, hope sinking fast, seeing no sign of him. Standing despondent on the corner of School Street and Main, lost as to where to go, other than the park. I’m already running the risk of getting busted for skipping last period—being spotted on Main Street could hurt my chances of convincing them I was in the bathroom the whole time, barfing straight through to the bell.

I’m about to turn around when Kincaid pops out of the shelter of a doorway down the street, the old Strand movie theater, which looks like it’s been closed for decades. A familiar adjustment of his coat, then pushes off on his board. I know what he was doing—using the shadows for a quick sip of Fireball, a fifty-milliliter bought fresh from Trace yesterday before everything happened.