I catch Bree’s sleeve before she splits off with Sage. “Maybe we shouldn’t.” She stares at me. “Isn’t this, like, grand theft auto?” Another pause. “As in a felony?”

“That’s the general idea, yeah.” She pulls loose, smiling a little. “Hey. We’re only lookouts, right? Nobody can give us the chair for that.”

Then she goes, heading around the opposite side of the school with Sage, while Kincaid ducks low, running beneath the windows in front. I’m the last one left standing, rooted to the spot, and I finally race for my post. Whether I’m loving this or not, I don’t want to be the one Crackenback sees first if he decides to step outside for some night air.

I’m wearing gloves and a hat, still freezing right through my jeans as I press myself back against the fence that marks school property, glad nobody on staff cares enough to tame the climbing vine that’s grown wild through the chain link, providing me with cover.

I dance a little from foot to foot, straining my ears for the sound of an outraged teacher or a shrieking car alarm. Do cars that old even come with alarms? Debating what I’ll do if all this goes to hell, who I’d text first with the news that we’re all about to get busted. Makes me realize that I’ve never seen Kincaid with a phone in his hand, never heard him say he’ll text somebody later, nothing like that.

Time crawls. I check my phone. Ten minutes gone by.

I google Ivy’s name. No news. School’s buzzing about how it’s been almost a week, and nobody’s heard from her. If she were headed to West Virginia by any normal means, she would’ve been there by now. The doom creature on my shoulder sinks its talons in deeper, and I lower my head, shutting my eyes, remembering Ivy, her fearlessly short haircut, how she loved her cat enough to knit him a present. It doesn’t feel right that she would leave a pet she was that crazy about, especially if her stepmom and dad might give him away to the Humane Society or something.

Tires crunch over asphalt. I jerk up, ready to text, when I realize it’s coming from the wrong direction, back by the teachers’ lot.

They’re driving without headlights, maybe ten miles an hour. It’s Crackenback’s VW, looking like some fugly little insect on a set of narrow tires. As I watch them pass, I see the princess mask smiling at me from the shadows behind the steering wheel, Moon ducked so low in the passenger seat that I can only make out the top of his cap.