“Sorry,” I murmured, helplessly.

I chased after her.

I took my time getting to the car. From a distance, through the glare of the windshield, I could tell that she was crying. Sobbing relentlessly. The moment she saw me, she shook herself to her senses, wiping away the evidence of heartbreak. Meanwhile, I took slow, deliberate steps.

By the time I reached the passenger-side door, she had collected herself.

“As my friend,” she said, “can you promise me never to talk about this?”

I bit my lip. Nodded.

“I promise.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

THE DAY OF Twelfth Night was finally upon us. Due to the performance starting at three p.m. sharp—which, on a school day, was crazypants insane—Ziggy begged Principal Durden to give us excused absences from seventh period. We needed more time.

Principal Durden—who was totally fangirling about her son in the lead male role—gave us excused absences from fourth period on.

We were ready. We were prepared. There was no way anything could go wrong.

Or so we thought.

It happened as I was putting on my torn “shipwreck dress”—ready to be washed ashore, like flotsam, upon the coast of Illyria.

Flash.

Suddenly, my face was pressed against someone else’s face, and we were in a dim room, and I was pretty sure I was leaning against a shelf. I attempted to pull away and bumped into a long vertical stick. The stick fell over, knocking a stack of soft white cylinders off the shelf with it. Toilet paper?

I grabbed my chest. It was as flat as the earth according to acclaimed rapper B.o.B.

“Oh my god,” I said, and it was my voice. Ezra Slevin’s voice.

“What’s wrong?” said Holden. “Are you okay?”

Holden flipped the lights on. We were in the janitor’s closet. He was decked out in Duke Orsino’s dark waistcoat and matching cravat. His hair was a hot mess.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” I said.

“Are you still Wynonna?” said Holden. “You’re still Wynonna, right? Please tell me you’re still Wynonna.”

There was a distant scream of flat, low-level panic, escalating rapidly in frequency. It was the sound of Wynonna having a meltdown.

“Oh my god, of my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god—” I said, with no sign of stopping. I fumbled with the janitor’s closet door, opened it, and stumbled out. The handle of a mop came with me, landing with a swift crack.

“I can explain,” said Holden. “You see, I told Wynonna I was nervous, and she was like, ‘Oh yeah? I’ve got something for that,’ and she grabbed me by the hand, and dragged me into the janitor’s closet, and—”

“Dude, I don’t care about that,” I said. “We’ve got a much bigger problem.”

“We do?”

Was he seriously serious?

“Viola?” I offered, hint-wise.