“What?” again, but softer, an echo. Ivy, knitting up a storm at the park; being cool enough to give me a heads-up about the unspoken rules, helping me avoid the girlfriends’ claws.

I turn, looking at where we sat last week to hear the story of Dabney Kirk’s head. Landon sits separate from the rest of the skaters, picking at her food with a pinched, abstracted look on her face. Her hair is down—free of its usual slick twists, it’s a pedestrian shade of light brown, unexpectedly curly—and she isn’t wearing any makeup, rendering her strangely vulnerable. She senses us looking, returns the stare for a moment, then goes back to sporking her burrito to death. “Ran away where?”

“They’re not sure yet. There was a big fight at her house Thursday night—her stepmom again—and I guess she bolted,” Sage says, shaking up her strawberry milk, and I can’t tell if she senses it, too, the sudden wrongness of everything, if that’s why her expression is so closed. “That’s the reason Landon texted me yesterday. She didn’t say anything about Ivy running away, just asked if I’d seen her. I figured Ivy’s dad took her phone away again.”

I remember the assembly Friday, spotting Landon sitting by herself on one of the top risers, combat boot bobbing, keeping time. Waiting for Ivy. “Thursday was forever ago.” Glance at Kincaid, who’s listening closely, rubbing his knuckles over his road rash.

Trace shrugs. “Cops and her family kept things quiet over the weekend. Figured she was just hiding out and she’d come back on her own. Now they’re thinking maybe she caught a ride down to her mom’s place in West Virginia.” Trace nods over at Landon. “You know her stepmonster was always weird about them. Finally drove Ivy out the door.”

“Without her other half?” Bree shakes her head. “Can’t see it.”

“Maybe they got in a fight, too,” I say, half listening, and the words drift and evaporate under lunchroom white noise, as they should, because I don’t know them, Landon or Ivy, and the new kid is the last person who should be floating theories.

On my shoulders, the dark thing flexes its scaly feet, folds its wings, and continues to wait.

Fourteen

AFTER THE LAST bell, I linger in front of the school, wondering if I can catch a ride with Trace, or if they’ve left for the park already; taking the bus seems so bourgeois now. I’m about to give up when I see Kincaid push through the glass doors. His gaze finds me, and in an instant, I know he was looking for me.