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“Not a one.”

“K.” Darius had just asked me out. Not under duress or while facilitating me being a superhero. It was all I could do not to smile myself silly. “Is everyone out in California so forthright?”

“I bet half of them wouldn’t even know the word,” he said, and pulled into Redson High’s parking lot.

I beat Lacey to our lockers and wondered for a dark moment if she’d decided to skip again today, risking Mrs. Ellis the counselor’s wrath. Then she appeared out of the back of a crowd—I hadn’t seen her because she’d been skulking along their edge, using them for cover.

“Hey!”

“Hey.” She straightened up in front of me, gaining two inches. “Heard anything else?”

“Haven’t started yet this morning,” I said honestly—and my head was thanking me for it by not hurting for the first time in a week.

“And you’re sure about Sarah?”

“As sure as I can be.” I watched relief spread across her face—and the circles under her eyes weren’t quite so dark. “So—what’s your news?”

“I’m going to prom too.”

“What? Who?”

“Jonah Price,” she said, as my mouth fell open. “You’re not the only one with junior friends, Jessie.”

“But…Jonah?” I knew without snooping anything from Jonah’s phone that he was gay. Everyone did. He’d been gay since he was ten.

“I know, I know,” she said, confirming me. “But his parents are clueless. He wants to go, he needs a date, and I needed to go, and we’ve been friends since choir in sixth grade.”

“I should have never let you be that nerdy. What are you wearing?”

“Betsy’s taking me out today, right after school. It won’t be fancy, but it’ll be new.”

“She’s the best.”

“I know. I wish she were my real mom, every day.”

I thought back to my last talk with my mom and how awful it’d been—but at least it proved she cared, in a willing-to-mutilate-teenage-boys way.

“So,” Lacey went on, “I’ll see you and Darius there, right? And I can come hang with you when Jonah inevitably ditches me for Sam?”

“Totally.” For the first time in a long while it seemed like everything was going to work out. The only weak link was that my mother, for once in her life, might care too much. “Unless I get grounded.”

Lacey grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Don’t get grounded.”

I grinned at her. “I’ll try not to. Swear.”

I spent that day listening in the halls and trying not to look for Darius. What we had and how I felt about it was nice and new and I didn’t want to wear the shiny off of it just yet. Just thinking about him made me smile to myself like an idiot—if I hung out with him in person, who knew what stupid things I’d do?

What if he didn’t feel like this? What if I was alone in my stupidity? He said he wanted to take me out on another date—but despite my mother’s ineffectual attempts to warn/protect me, I wasn’t stupid. A lot of guys said all sorts of things right before prom—I knew, because I was reading alotof their texts right now.

However things turned out, they didn’t bear thinking on, until after tonight.

I goofed off with Lacey during lunch, trying to cheer her up with the electronic foolishnesses of our classmates and discussing where her aunt would take her after school, and then went to chem, in which Liam ignored me entirely.

About damn time.

Lacey and I met at her car at three-oh-five and she had me home at record speed so that she could go shopping. And when I got home, beauty preparations began.

I knew from snooping that most girls had already gotten their nails done and were hitting the Sephora make-up counter before prom. But I didn’t have that luxury—whatever was in my bathroom now was what I had to arm myself with, and it did feel like arming. While most people would be too busy having fun or wrapped up in their own drama to notice anyone else, there were a few at the edges who I knew would hunt down slower herd members without mercy. I had no interest in trying to keep snark about me or Lacey off of ZB for the rest of the night.