But I didn’t steal him, did I? We’re not cheaters. How can you cheat on a crush? How do you even navigate around one? I should’ve checked with her first, before Kincaid and I did anything. Bree, are you okay with this? Bree, do you mind? I think of her: bitten lips, pale stare, the vulnerability of her laugh. The shape of her silhouette, solitary and erect against the window shade. My guilt is a bruise-colored flower, unfurling with excruciating slowness. If she said yes, she minded, Please don’t do this, it hurts me, what then? Give it all up, tell Kincaid we could never be anything but friends? Friendship, so elusive and precious, all I ever wanted from this place. Until what I experienced with Kincaid in the woods, so intense, something I’ve been waiting to feel my whole life. How can I pretend that I don’t want him?

I slam my locker door and see Kincaid coming through the crowded hallway toward me. He doesn’t just walk up; he stops so close our toes touch, looking down into my face, not caring who sees, and how the hell am I going to keep all this under wraps? “Hello,” he says.

“School two days in a row? Watch out. Somebody’s going to think you’re a student here.”

“I didn’t come for the classes.” His smile is an inch away from mine.

“You know, a Halloween gremlin left something outside my house this morning. I didn’t even have a chance to thank him.” I shouldn’t kiss him here, I know this, but all I want to do is wrap myself in him, breathe in everything. “So, thank you. I love it.”

He nods slowly, says, “How’re you liking the book?” I realize he’s looking at A Clockwork Orange, which I’d forgotten I was even holding.

“It’s good. Disturbing, obviously, but I’m guessing that’s the point.”

Kincaid leans against the lockers, banging the back of his head lightly, deliberately, off the steel sheeting as he studies the ceiling. “Holds all the truths.”

“Such as?”

“How free will separates us from the animals. How a person having the choice to steal, rape, kill, whatever, is more important than whether they commit the crime. How every day, we all make the choice.” He pauses, meeting my gaze. “Be moral, or be a monster.”

I let his words settle around me before pointing toward the English wing. “Can you come teach my class now? Because you made that sound way better than Hyde ever could.”

“You don’t have to go.” Straightens. “Come with me. I just walk out. Nobody cares.”

Tempting doesn’t begin to cover it, but I’m carrying around enough guilt and worry for one day without adding skipping school to the mix. “Interesting approach to senior year. Just disappear, and hope they print out a diploma for you on graduation day?”