“What’s wrong?” she asks.

I flinch, snapping back to reality.

“AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” I wonder where that’s coming from.

The rugby boys are tossing a ball around people eating their lunch. They’ve come out of their blazers and are now just in their button downs, some with the buttons undone to reveal the muscle at the top of their chests and the little chains with the silver crosses that so many of them seem to wear.

“Jake?”

“Sorry.”

People call my name all the time—I think more than I even notice. I try my best every day to be better about paying attention.

Fiona holds out a bag of chips to me, and I invite myself to two or three. I don’t like Doritos, but I like being offered things, because it makes me feel welcome, in a way. I can’t remember the last time I had lunch at school with anyone other than Grady. But he’s in tutoring today, and I’m grateful for that.

She looks at the graying red meat on my tray. “What kind of meat is that?”

“I think it’s a rabbit?”

“You don’t know?” She smiles, and there’s a fang in her gums.

St. Clair kids have a thing for game meat. Things you’d hunt in the woods—deer, goat, roebuck, moose. You might catch those kids in hunting hats on social media posing with cadavers, which is why I’m afraid of social media—people that I don’t even talk to started to send me friend requests, and I didn’t want them, but it would’ve been rude to deny them. So I deleted all of my accounts instead, and now I live off the map.

I haven’t had much to eat in four days beyond bites of sandwiches. Benji and I installed three security cameras on Saturday. Figures have been zooming by when I enter and leave rooms, but they’re never there when I stop to look at them. The sky has been so dreary, so full of death, like a cold blanket, and I’m almost certain I’m sinking slowly upward into it.

A bomb lands on the corner of my tray, flipping off the meat and potatoes.

Not a bomb, a soccer ball. Rolling on the ground by our table.

“Incoming!” Chad’s warning comes a little too late. He flings his body over me to retrieve the ball.

“Can y’all be more careful?” Fiona barks.

“My bad, li’l Chan.”

I run my fingers along my tie and lapel buttons to check for any splatter.

Chad tucks the ball under his big arm and turns his lipless mouth into a baby pout. “Sorry about your little lunchy-lunch, Jake.”

And he waltzes away.