Imogen felt a rage firing up inside of her again. Perhaps it wasn’t much, but at least it was something. Because it hadn’t just been Jo who had been keeping secrets. It had been Cool Girl. And Eli, too. But Eli seemed like the kind of boy who didn’t just keep secrets. He looked like he dealt in them. Cool Girl having that kind of power and knowledge—over the place that Imogen felt safe—gave Imogen a sudden burst of feeling and energy.

Imogen pushed up off the wall of books, ready to do battle with Cool Girl and her minion. Ready to, verbally at least, slay them both. But then she stopped as she opened the door, remembering what a good listener Art Boy—no, AJ—had been for the moment. “Hey. Thanks.”

AJ nodded, like he knew and he understood. “Sure. Anytime.”

AJ, Imogen was learning, was the kind of person who didn’t use all that many words to communicate, but he was honest with all the tools he did use. His nods and his shrugs and his raking his hands through his hair were true and real. He wasn’t a performer. Imogen understood with vivid, sudden clarity why Little Miss Perfect had a crush on him. Not because Imogen herself wanted him. But it was impossible not to understand that the person who spent her day performing for the camera would be drawn to the one who couldn’t fake his way through social niceties.

Imogen was done with social niceties.

She flung open the break room door and stormed in. There were piles and piles of boxes, neatly stacked, all along the back end of the room by Jo’s desk. Not in the way of Jo’s desk. But conspicuously away from the door. And close enough to Jo’s desk that they were hiding in plain sight. A notebook sat on Jo’s desk. That had to have been the ledger. Had to have been further proof that something was amiss.

“What in all of hell is going on?” Imogen sounded like her father, constructing idioms out of his second language. But she was too pissed off to care. Because she genuinely needed to know what in all of hell was going on.

“Who told you anything was going on?” Cool Girl crossed her arms over her chest in a deeply defensive posture.

There was something about that. The way Cool Girl deflected. The way she projected. The way she made an honest question into a volley at the other person that set Imogen’s teeth on edge. Made her so angry, like it wasn’t only her mind or her body that was angry. It was deep in her bones. Practically a riot in her soul.

They were two people who never had anything in common other than this bookstore. And the bookstore was closing, which left them with plain nothing.