I look up at the house. The curtains reflect the greenish hue of the outdoor light, the panels pressed right against the glass like some gale-force wind is blasting nonstop inside.

“Then little Billy Berwick brought a dirty playing card to church. Kept flashing it at his friends during the lesson, under the desk, you know. ‘What do you have there, Billy?’ Ms. Savage said.” Kincaid’s impression of her voice is high and prim. “‘Nothing,’ he said back. ‘Well, perhaps you’d like to share this nothing with the rest of the class,’ she said. So he held it up for everybody to see, right there in the church basement. And it was bad—I mean bad. Like, triple X.”

“Oh, shit,” Moon says.

“Yup. She snapped. Grabbed that Bible of hers and just started whaling on him, whamwhamwham. Knocking him out of his desk, stomping him while the other kids tried to pull her off.” He props one mud-coated sneaker against the dash. “Finally, the pastor heard the screaming and ran downstairs. Had to put her in a choke hold until the ambulance got there. Church fired her, of course. Nobody’s seen her much since then.”

We’re quiet a second, then Sage cracks up. “You are such a liar! His mom never taught Sunday school—where’d you hear that?”

“I don’t know,” Bree says. “Trace is starting to make a lot more sense to me now.”

Kincaid nods slowly. “I speak the truth.” He picks up the mask, peering through the eye holes at the night.

We all jump when the front door of the house bangs open. “—yeah, yeah, okay. Okay. Okaybye!” Trace clomps down the steps, the dogs going nuts again, but this time he does a kind of presidential crowd greeting with them, petting heads, getting slobbered on—“Hey, buddy, hey, bubba, how you doing”—leaving them barking and wagging and wanting more as he jogs back to the car.

“Anybody want some jerky?” He’s got a big square of it wrapped in tinfoil, homemade stuff that smells like spices and smoke. Nobody speaks up. “Okay. That’s cool. More for me.” He eats it as we go.

Tonight, we follow Kincaid.

We all agree to go straight home after Trace lets us out at the park, to wash the evidence from our faces and lie low. Still, when Trace’s taillights flash, taking Sage wherever they go for privacy at night, and we hear Kincaid’s wheels hit the parking lot, Bree and I look at each other. And there’s no question. It’s now or never.

We’re smart about it, pulling up our hoods to hide our painted faces, waiting until his board sounds distant before we follow, edging up our pace a little at a time, afraid of losing him.