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Ryder was only two desks behind me in the next row in social studies class. He was already seated when I entered the room and started for my desk. Just as I passed him, I heard him say, “Queen bee.”

I stopped. “Excuse me?”

“From the way they gather around you, you look like the queen bee.”

“Be careful you don’t get stung.”

“Queen bees only use their stingers to dispose of other queens,” he replied. “Each of them should be careful, not me.”

The bell rang, so I slipped into my seat. I wanted to look back at him, but I didn’t do it once during the whole class period. When the bell rang to end it, he was up but talking with Gary Stevens, who I thought was one of the nicer boys in our class. He was slim, with curly red hair and freckles that looked like drops of pure honey on his cheeks. His father was an accountant whose clients included many of the parents in Pacifica, but Gary seemed the most unassuming of the boys in our class. He had a great sense of humor, was bright and maybe a little immature, but I did find him the easiest to talk with, maybe because he was so meek at times. The girls couldn’t understand why I bothered.

“His idea of a good time is playing with his Wii,” Mona Kirland said.

“Not his wee-wee?” Lily Albert added, and everyone around us laughed. Everyone, that is, but me.

“Sometimes,” I told them, “it’s nice to talk to someone who’s not trying to upstage you all the time. You don’t have to guard every word you say or worry he’ll go making up stories about you afterward. Try it. You might like it.”

Some of them actually did, and I laughed to myself, thinking how the other boys were wondering why Gary was suddenly so popular.

I think Ryder felt comfortable with him as well, and when I went to lunch after instrumental class, I saw them sitting together at a table outside the cafeteria. I sat with my girlfriends and watched him out of the corner of my eye. Our lunch conversation had returned to more ordinary subjects such as soap opera stories, clothes, and makeup. Halfway through lunch, Jessica came out of the building. I had been wondering where she was. I could see the excitement in her face. She obviously had something to tell me.

I deliberately stayed back when the warning bell sounded and everyone started back into the building.

“Where were you?” I asked her.

“Claire found out about Summer,” she said, sotto voce.

“You heard about this just now?”

“I called her. She told me to try reaching her about now.”

“You’re not supposed to have your cell phone on in school. You could have been suspended.”

“I went into the bathroom. No one heard me.”

“Why risk it?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Yes, I guess so. There should be a motto over the front entrance,” I said. “ ‘Gossip, the lifeblood of Pacifica.’ Let’s go in.”

“Don’t you want to know what she found out?”

I watched Ryder walk into the building with Gary and then looked at her. “Well, obviously if I don’t let you tell me, I’ll be responsible for the first human being to really burst from scandalous information. Go on.”

“Summer was caught in the athletic storage room making love to her boyfriend, who happened to be a junior. She was to be quietly expelled, but the Garfields were given the option of just having her and Ryder transferred.”

“Why him, too?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I figure he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on her. That explains the outburst in the parking lot yesterday about her going braless. Well?” she asked, as if she had climbed Mount Everest or something.

I gave her my best stern glare. “If you spread this stuff around, you’ll make it really hard for both of them here,” I said. “And if one other person tells me this stuff, I’ll know you did.”

“What are you so upset about? I thought you wanted to know.”

“Never mind. You just remember what I said,” I warned, and started in ahead of her.

When I was at my hall locker, I saw Ryder