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I inhaled and exhaled firmly, and as I calmed down the show jumped back to where it was supposed to.

I was so angry at him, whoeverhewas. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. And because of how awful and unfair life was, he might just get away.

What if Lacey wasn’t the only girl? Or—what if she were just the first?

She had to do the right thing for her. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to involve the cops, not when doing so would essentially alert the entire school.

But Lacey wasn’t the only one who’d changed.

I carefully dried my hands and joined Allie on the couch. During the next commercial break, I nudged her.

“What?”

“Go get the laptop.”

CHAPTER 14

It’d been painful to talk my little sister through the act of logging onto ZoomBoom, coming up with a lie about why there were so many pictures of dog butts on it, and then watch her slowly pick out the letters of Liam Lewis’s screenname. The only key she found quickly was the ‘enter’ key, and after that it was too late. My request to be his ‘ZoomBuddy’ was off on its way. At the time, it’d felt like I could feel it jetting off into the ether, a tiny green streak of information, like a miniature bottle rocket—then I’d rubbed my eyes and the feeling was gone.

This morning on the bus, I had a different feeling entirely—the hovering impression of having acted on an incredibly bad idea.

“So which one do you think looks most like Lacey?” Emily asked, holding up her phone to show me an image of a dog’s butt. “I think it’s this one. Something about the color of the hair matches her eyes.”

“Grow up, Emily.” I said, and slumped into a seat to ignore them. I wanted Lacey to get better for her own sake—but I also wanted her to drive me to school again, because riding the bus, ugh.

The bus pulled into park and opened the doors. Shannon said something to Emily who cackled madly as she left, all the while looking pointedly at me. I waited as long as I could, and then followed after her.

The typical crowd was in the hallway—only instead of standing around Liam’s lockers, they were all in front of mine. I pushed through, listening to snark, and a wave of sulfur hit me. Oh man—no matter how much I hated the bus, I hoped Lacey’d stayed home today, because I could smell at twenty paces out that her locker’d been egged.

Egging involved putting eggs in front of the locker vents and expertly smashing them hard and fast so that egg contents spewed inside. Judging from the smell, and because the smears of yolk on the locker weren’t still sticky, someone’d come by yesterday afternoon.

As my locker was over Lacey’s, it’d taken some collateral damage and the smell was—the school hushed around me and I turned around.

“I assumed I’d have a target on my back. I forgot about my poor locker.” Lacey walked into the ring of people waiting for her reaction like a prize fighter, head swiveling slowly to see who was waiting to laugh.

“Bitch!” someone shouted, from the back, where they couldn’t be seen.

She cast a withering look in their direction. “Always.”

I stared at her as she walked closer, taking step after deliberate step. Where had this person even come from? Who had taken my best friend and dipped her spine in steel? She nodded at me, and then bent over to undo her lock. By now, the congregated crowd was thinning—if there weren’t shouting/tears/fights to be had, they had better, more interesting, placesto be. She tugged after entering her combo, the lock opened, and together we surveyed what was inside.

Most of the egg had landed on a binder she’d wedged in over her books, and slid down, sealing her geometry book to the locker’s wall. She tugged it out with a sticky sound, leaving a tear from the cover’s cheesy clip-art behind.

“Ugh,” she said, with the right kind of tone to imply her disdain, not that this had been done to her, but at whatever half-wit had done a poor job of it in the first place.

I took her cue and shrugged. “You didn’t like that class anyhow.”

She looked up at me and smiled. “My thoughts exactly.”

In the periphery of my vision, even more kids dispersed. We were doing this.Shewas doing this. I watched her calmly inventory the rest of her locker’s contents in silent awe.

All this time, Sarah’d always thought that she was the cool one—but Lacey was a fucking Frigidaire.

“Hey, I saw your message on ZB—when can we meet up to study?” Liam asked from right behind me.

My eyes were still on Lacey and so I saw it—the way she went still, frozen solid, looking forward and not to either side.

I frantically waved him off. “We’ll figure something out in class?—”