As Winston remained frozen by the door, Nessa yelled out, “Just get in here!”

Eve got up to talk to him as he took off his gloves and untied his scarf. He remained out of earshot from the rest of the group. With the doorway on one end of the room and the couch and TV on the other, everyone could see what was going on, but not hear it.

“Hey.” Eve nodded to Winston.

“Hey.”

Eve could feel Nessa glancing over at them and waiting to see what happened.

“So…” She felt relieved to find she wasn’t blushing.

“I loved what you wrote,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I love your…” He paused and pressed his lips together like he did when he thought hard about something, focused on the mission, or the locker, or the lights. “Your voice.”

“Thank you,” Eve repeated. “It felt good to use it.”

“I bet,” he uttered under his breath. “Look … I’ve apologized to each person in there except you. And that’s because I betrayed you worst of all. I made you think I was safe, and I was the opposite of that.”

“What did your mom do when you told her?” From the little bit she’d seen of Winston’s mom at the assembly, she could only imagine how intimidating she must have been after he admitted what he did.

“Let’s just say I’m only allowed to come here tonight because I’m apologizing, and I won’t be out in the world much this winter. Or this year. She seemed … I think the right word would probably be ‘heartbroken.’” He took a breath. “When I told her, she said, ‘You know what you need to do,’ and she wrote down Principal Yu’s number for me. And then she left the room.” Winston bit his lip. “Anyway, Principal Yu was pretty nice about it. Disappointed, though. She said she had to do some thinking about how to handle it, so … my fate is uncertain. Caleb’s, too.” After a beat, he added, “She told me how you guys had already told her about Brody. How it wasn’t him.”

At that, Eve smiled. They’d gone to Principal Yu the day after the show to tell her they knew Brody didn’t do it. They didn’t say how they knew. For some reason, though, Principal Yu hadn’t probed them further. She’d said she understood and thanked them.

“What’ll happen to Brody, you think?” Eve wondered aloud.

“He’ll get in trouble for the stuff he did do, I bet. I also heard he might transfer to Greenmount.”

Eve allowed a few moments of silence to pass between them.

“I stood by and watched Caleb write it,” Winton said finally. “I could have stopped him.”

“Yes,” Eve said.

“I’m so sorry.” Winston met her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Eve.”

“I know you are.”

Though their friends’ roars of laughter were only yards away, at that moment it felt like miles. Like she and Winston were on their own island.

“Guys! The ball is gonna drop soon! Come on!” one of the girls called out to them.