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“You’ve missed a lot.” I put my fingers to my temples, trying to squish the T. Rex back in. “Mason’s gonna give me the pictures tomorrow.”

“What?” Darius said.

“It was that, or fail. I caught him cheating—I’ll fill you in later.” If we had a later.

“And this?” he said, gesturing to my current state.

“Mason didn’t agree so easily.”

“I told you not to do this anymore, Jessie.”

“You didn’t mind when I was doing it to save you now, did you?” I snapped.

“Jessie!” Without warning, Lacey embraced me in a body-shaking hug.

“What?”

“We did it!”

My head hurt so badly I hadn’t had a chance to think yet. Mason had agreed to hand pictures over. I hugged her back. “You’re right!”

She started to jump up and down but I held her still. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Come on, Jessie! We won! Come tomorrow we can go in and parts of it will still suck but at least we’ll have real evidence so fuck him.”

She took a step away from me and started doing a silly dance. I looked at her and laughed. If my head didn’t hurt so righteously, I’d be dancing too.

Darius, however, was still pissed. “You took on Mason, and didn’t tell me?”

My headache was too bad to have this fight now— “You seemed preoccupied the last time we talked.”

“Yeah, but I’m supposed to be your sidekick,” he protested, and I gave him a look. “I only said I needed some time, Jessie. Not that I was going away. I would’ve shown up for this.”

“Well you’re off the sidekick hook now, okay? I’m not a superhero anymore.”

“Says you,” Lacey said.

“No—I mean it. For reals.” I held my hands up underneath the streetlight. There was no power in them anymore, just marks where the gravel had pressed. “I used the last of it in there scaring Mason. I’m out.”

“Really?” Darius asked.

I reached toward him, waiting to feel the give of his charge and felt nothing until my hand touched the skin of his chin. “Yeah. It’s gone.”

“I’m sorry, Jessie,” Lacey said.

“It’s okay,” I lied. “It did what it needed to. Mason’s gonna give us Danny. We just have to come up with someplace not at school to meet-up, since he can’t be seen near me. I told him I’d text him where.” It wasn’t like we had a clubhouse, though.

“And we have to warn the other girls,” Lacey said. “Once we turn in pictures, the cops’ll have to figure out who they are.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve met the others?” Darius asked.

“Not yet. But we will. I hope. Maybe. I’m not sure,” Lacey said, while Darius thought.

“My uncle has a hunting cabin outside of Milford. It’s not nice or anything but it could work.”

It was just twenty minutes away from Redson. “It’ll do.” My mom worked again tomorrow night—could I just keep pushing my luck? “Ten-thirty okay?”