“Thanks?” It’s a bombardier jacket, fake brown leather with a fake shearling collar, a grommeted waist cinch I never fasten. Not something I get a lot of compliments on.

Still crunching his fortune cookie, Trace sticks his hands in his pockets as the breeze whips around us. He paid for everyone with crumpled ones and fives, yesterday’s booze money—I guess that’s what they meant by “covered”—leaving an untidy stack for Daisy before she even had a chance to bring the bill. “You coming with us?” he asks Kincaid.

“Nah.” Kincaid steps on his board and leaves without a goodbye, his head angled up like he’s watching the skies.

Bree whispers, “Think he’s going home?”

“Probably. Crap.” There’s never a good time for us to follow him.

Trace holds up his phone. “Tick-tock. We got three minutes.”

We run.

We cross back onto school grounds at a different place, cutting through the woods that separate it from the house next door, scaling a chain-link fence, and dashing across the field to a basement-level door. We’re already late—even using every trespassing shortcut they know, it’s still a five-minute run from Main Street up to school—and it’s now officially two minutes past the bell, class time trickling away, our seats conspicuously empty.

Trace fumbles in his pocket, pulls out a key, and jams it into the lock, letting us go ahead of him down the dim stairway into the basement before locking the door behind him. “Where’d you get that?” I whisper.

“Office. Took it when I was waiting to see Crack one time.”

As we cross the concrete floor, I keep expecting a custodian to spring to full height in front of us like one of those punching-bag clowns, but it’s just a big basement with a little daylight filtering through low windows, the air vibrating with the low-grade roar of a boiler. We go up another flight of stairs to a door, easing it open to peek out at the empty English wing hallway.

Trace takes the main hallway, heading back up the stairs toward the art room. Sage and Bree go toward Hyde’s English class, and I turn left, toward study hall, four sets of footsteps fading to mine, alone.

Klatts pins me with her gaze as I step into room twelve, people turning in their seats to stare. “Sorry.” I fumble the door shut behind me. “Had to go to the bathroom.” I feel like a complete idiot, but the girls said it was their best line. If they give you a hard time, start going into detail, Bree said. No teacher can argue with explosive diarrhea.