“Jake, are you zoning out?” Mahalia’s waving in front of my face. The tension relaxes from her shoulders, and she puts her hand on my shoulder. “Not to tell you what to do, but if your friends really did this, then you may want to unfriend them? And clear your name to your brother, since he thinks it was you.”

With that, she walks around me to get to class, heels clicking with determination.

Principal Ross arrives a second later, charging like a bull toward Benji. “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

He rips him away, and Chad collapses on one knee, blood trickling over his chin. “St-st-stay away from her.”

The principal storms off with Benji’s elbow in his grip.

My stomach hurts. It feels like I did this, even though I know it’s more likely Sawyer uploaded it. Right after he reached one hand out of dead world and ripped the camera down.

Sawyer is hyperaware of the inner workings of my life and gets satisfaction from poking at it, probably in hopes the whole thing will topple over, because it’s fun and it feeds his weird obsession with seeing chaos in his wake.

How does it feel to be caught in the middle of something that has nothing to do with you?

On the bus that afternoon, someone stares at me. Across the aisle, perfectly upright, smiling deadly. They watch me through the narrow channel of Ponce de Leon Avenue, under the grove of Fairview and Lullwater. They smile at me, their head tilting slowly, closing the distance between us as the bus runs from the suburbs into the city.

I face them and find a skinny man reading a book in the fold-down seat, one leg crossed over the other, paying me no attention.

I imagined it.

My reflection in the window dazes me. I didn’t brush my teeth long enough or wipe the crust from my eyes.

I pull the wire down at Euclid and leap over a puddle to reach the sidewalk. Trash water splashes up in the big wheels, and when it’s gone, there’s someone behind it charging at me from across the street, a knife held up and ready to swing down.

I shrink into the bus stop and blink.

It was nothing. Only a telephone pole standing at the interweaving roads and tram tracks.

The midafternoon sun threatens darkness. I hustle past the murals, thrift stores, and restaurants, my destination past a street performer and his raggedy dog. A little booth between the alleyways, tucked in so you can barely find it.

I go inside, past a curtain of beads. Candlelight burns softly over the glass displays. Bracelets and necklaces, amethysts and emeralds on cords of gold. Canisters of shea butter, books on voodoo and Yoruba.