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And I was surprised to find out that I wasn’t even away from electricity out here. Power lines were strung overhead, like God’sown piano wire. They sizzled in the humid summer air, and if I squinted a little, they glowed.

“How was school?” Lacey asked.

I made a disparaging sound. I should’ve punched Kortney in the face this morning. “Bad, but not that bad. It’ll ease up. I think. I don’t know. But no one seems to know, if that’s what you’re asking. They all think you broke up a senior party.”

“Technically, I did,” Lacey said, mostly to herself. Everything about her was dampened, like someone had turned her dial down from ten to three.

“That’s not why that happened.”

She shrugged a shoulder.

“What was that at the bus stop?”

She sighed and took out her phone, tapping on the screen and handing it over to me. “Here.”

I made to touch it, and then stopped myself. I couldn’t break hers like I’d broken Sarah’s, she wouldn’t have backups. “I can’t, Lacey?—”

“Why not?”

I looked nervously over my shoulder. “Because if my mom comes out and sees me with your phone, I’ll never get my phone back.”

Lacey looked at me like that was absurd, because it was, but then said, “Here. I’ll do it for you,” she said, and then acted like a hand model, scrolling through pictures for me on ZoomBoom, all tagged as her.

They were all assorted buttholes. Dog, cat, giraffe, cow, horse, dog, dog, cat—I suspected I was looking at the buttholes for every house pet from the entire senior class, with more being added every second. I wondered if I knew Sprite’s well enough to spot his, after having gone through approximately 4 million of his pix on Sarah’s phone.

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Emily texted me to tell me she’d started it. Which was why I had to go and stare her down.”

“It’s bullshit,” I said, as she took her phone back.

“And then there’s this.” She flashed me the screen again.

u know you liked it

I felt sick. “Oh, God.”

Lacey nodded and kept nodding.

“Who sent that?”

“Who do you think sent that?”

It took all the power I had to not rip the phone out of her hand.

“Hedid. Whoever he was.”

“But—”

“Heused ZB.”

I groaned. ZB had a chat function. I hardly ever used it, because it was generally awful and full of people looking to hook up—or talk about hooking up, at least. You could chat with anyone on ZB from anywhere, but they could block you at the drop of a hat. It was generally catfishing central, with everyone lying to everyone else.

But that—it felt real. Even when I wasn’t the one holding the phone. “What’s his name?”

“On ZB? MysteriousAzzho1e,” she said with a snort. “Does anyone at school, I meananyone, know?”

“I didn’t hear anything—they think you broke up the party by getting too drunk to go home—your mom’s a bitch who called the cops, that’s all.” I could see the muscles in her jaw clench and unclench. “Lacey, take this to the cops! This is a clue—let them figure it out!”