“Ha. Yeah, he is.” Sage examines the sprinkles in the pastry glaze. “Did Landon text you guys at all?”

My “No,” blends with Bree’s “Like I talk to Landon.”

Sage shakes her head at her. “Right. Your ‘everybody hates me’ delusion.”

“It’s not a delusion. It’s keen observation of other people’s words and body language. Called being perceptive. Probably means I’ll be an extremely successful artist someday.”

“Or a paranoid cat lady. Since when do you care about art?”

Somewhere, in another galaxy far, far away from the hellish guilt dimension I’m writhing in, the hoodies are coming, shoulders hunched, sleeves tugged over their raw knuckles to fend off the cold.

“Since always. I just suck at it.” Bree reaches down, straightening Hazel’s hood, which was tucked into her coat collar. Hazel makes a vague shooing motion without looking up. “So, what was Landon’s issue? Drugstore ran out of Essie Wicked and she needed an emergency mani before school?”

My gaze is locked ahead, seeing splattering paint, the stunned face of the dog man. Green Hood stares at me as he goes by, saying nothing, apparently speechless since Bree neutered him with a pair of pruning shears in front of a live audience.

At school, everybody’s talking about it, dividing the population into kids who think it’s hilarious and kids who don’t, primarily ones who live on Perfect or streets like it. I pass through it all, glazed over, telling myself that the flashing arrow pointing at my head is a by-product of no breakfast and too little sleep, that Ma will not be seized by a craving for Jell-O Jigglers, discover the boxes missing, and put it all together in a stunning mental leap. Nobody knows. Nobody is looking.

I don’t see anybody worth seeing until lunch. Bree, Sage, Trace, and—Kincaid, unbelievably. Packaging reduced by 35 percent: no board, no coat, hands in his jeans pockets. Trace goes straight to the hot-lunch line and pretends to muscle his way in front of the last guy in line, starting a laughing shoving match that ends in a teacher swooping in, cawing.

Kincaid splits off and drops onto a stool across from me at the flotsam table. His T-shirt’s black, faded, worn over a white thermal undershirt, the collar of yet another shirt visible under that. He reaches across the table, and for a split second I think he wants to hold hands; my arm moves a quarter of an inch before his fingers land and start tapping a signal on the laminate between us. The close call with total mortification coats me in panic sweat, making me force the cheese crackers I was holding into my mouth all at once. He watches with interest as I struggle to chew. Hard swallow, sip of iced tea, then I rasp out, “You actually came to school.”

“I wanted to hear what people were saying.”