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I whipped my head to face him. It was Raj’s turn, I’d done it last week.

He puffed up, sensing my rebellion. “Now.”

If I got fired from this—who knew how long I’d be grounded for—or how I’d ever get another job again. My mom wasn’t like Sarah’s—I didn’t get an allowance. If I didn’t have a job, I’d never have any cash—and we’d be completely dependent on my mom, who was, how should I put this?Fuckingunreliable.

“Fine,” I said and stalked outside. I heard Burton apologizing for me behind my back, and the entire team’s harsh laughter.

I picked up water laden trash bags, watching mysterious brown liquids pour out of small tears in them as I attempted to carrythem to the dumpster one by one without letting anything from them touch me.

How was I going to keep working here without Lacey? When, and where, would she get another job? Would she? Would she even come back to school tomorrow? Or was her mom packing her room up right now, to send her off to boarding school? Her room still had posters of horses and kittens, because her mom wouldn’t let her put up the bands she listened to in secret with Sarah and I. If she was home tonight—and was staying home—how would she be able to go to sleep in her own bed with all those stupid kittens looking down?

I yanked the last trashbag out of the container and knotted it fiercely. Why wasn’t life fair? What was the point of it all when it wasn’t? How were we supposed to go on?

I heard the laughter of the baseball team as they left the Shax, their hoots and hollers, the sound of the doors opening and closing on their fancy trucks as they took off, and threw the last bag of trash into the dumpster angrily, feeling unnamed things spray me as I slammed its lid shut.

I walked in the backdoor of the Shax. The lights of the Shax were dim—we were done for the night and if I was lucky Burton would be hiding inside his office counting tills. I snuck past his office door and saw Darius scraping the grill with the grill brick and watched him quietly from the doorway. He was still the most appropriate person to get a ride from, nothing about my math from Friday night had changed.

And he’d actually been with me on Friday night, working, for the most of it.

And yet.

He paused as if finally feeling my presence and looked back at me.

“You look like hell.”

“It’s raining outside.”

“There are these things called coats—” he began.

“I need another ride,” I said, to cut him off.

He looked at me then—not in a gross way, but in a humane way, trust me, I could tell the difference—and possibly saw that I was trapped between pissed off and crying.

“Sure,” he said softly.

“Thanks,” I said, and headed to get the trash out of the bathroom.

By the time I finished running the rest of the trash out, Darius was done with whatever less disgusting in-house chore he’d been assigned, and was waiting in the break room with his army-green coat and backpack.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. We ran out in the drizzling rain to his Corolla where I slid into the passenger seat again, ever so glad that Darius didn’t smoke. I mean, not cigarettes at least.

“So what was that about?” he asked, settling in beside me.

To admit what’d happened would be letting him know that it’d bothered me and showing weakness, no matter how legitimate, was often to invite repetition. “Nothing.”

“Really?”

I sighed and looked up at the ceiling of his car. The fabric in the corner had disconnected from the roof and was starting to sag. I stifled the urge to reach up and press it back into place. “One of them pinched my ass,” I admitted. Because if Darius ever did that, I could throw a lava-hot fry at him.

He made a revolted sound. “Ugggggh. Fucking baseball team. Think they own the school, and everyone in it.”

I twisted toward him, finally feeling understood. “Thank you!”

“This shit is why I’m going to college back in California,” he said and stuck his keys in the ignition.

“I know. Me too,” I agreed emphatically, even though I knew I’d be lucky to manage affording Kansas State.