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“Okay, well—” I stood in front of the window. I’d never managed getting out of here in a skirt before.

Lacey grabbed my hand before I tried. “She took an Ambien. It’s safe to use the front door.”

“Then why did I have to come in this way in the first place?” I looked from the window to her, and saw her with a tiny grin.

“Old time’s sake. Also I was still a little mad at you.”

CHAPTER 24

Igot home and locked the door behind me before making a round of the house. Allie was still in bed and my mother wasn’t lurking anywhere, ready to spring out and ask me how my ‘date’ went, so I hopped into bed and pulled up Juicejam on my phone.

I’d always been good at it—as good at it as it wanted me to be, up until it wanted me to spend money. Playing it now, though, I could sense where the next plays would be and watching pears and bananas squish under my thumbs felt particularly cathartic.

Then I stopped using my thumbs entirely and the game went on.

I saw a group of cherries in a corner and without thinking I squashed them. Or rather, with thinking, because the only thing that had squashed them was my mind. One second I’d been staring at it, the next, pixels of cherry juice everywhere. I’d known I wanted to squish them, and so I had, with, telepathy? No, what was the one where you could move things without touching them—telekinesis? But not that, either—electrokinesis.

Fruit danced across the screen, shaking as the counter ticked down, trying to tempt me into playing more.

I focused on a grape. It went flat beneath my attention, ‘juices’ squirting out on either side. I focused on a kiwi—and the same. Then I widened my attention—and flatted out half the screen with all my kinesising. The sound was off on my phone, but I knew it’d be making a whomp-whomp sound right now. I’d defaulted the game.

There was nothing wrong with that, though. Some games just weren’t worth playing. I set my phone down and turned off the light.

The next morning, it felt like a weight had lifted. I was still angry—life was unfair and the universe still had shit to answer for—but Lacey being OK was the important thing. As long as we were still friends, everything was going to be all right. I pulled on my clothes, got breakfast, and got Allie out the door, then went to wait at my own bus-stop, praying to the God Ms. Harper believed in to fix her in time so that Lacey could drive me in.

When that didn’t happen, I just took the bus.

Shannon, Emily, and Kortney were clustered at the back. They were doing that annoying thing where they were clearly gossiping as fast as they could text, and laughing at one another’s comments, but otherwise not making a sound. Made them seem like some sort of eerie robots.

I pulled up ZB on my phone and looked up Lacey’s tags. Her nickname on there was Jewlz1313—carefully selected when we were 13 and going to start a band. The photo of her in apparent repose had stifled the endless stream of animal butts. And if she just waited roughly twelve more hours, then the slate would be swiped clean of both, electronically.

I stared at the photo. I didn’t want to zap my phone either, but it really seemed like there ought to be a way to trace theimage and figure out who’d posted it. I let myself slide-sideways, letting go of the real world around me—humidity, cracked vinyl, sweat—and went for the light and coursing power—but instead of going into my phone I caught another firefly text instead.

U go talk to !

No, you!!!!

Before I could do anything else, I felt the seat dent beside me.

“Hey Jessica!” Emily was there. Apparently I was the goat.

I turned toward her, lips pressing flat. “Yes?”

She leaned forward. “How did the rest of your night with Liam go?”

“It went.”

She smiled like she knew something I didn’t, so I felt compelled to be snide. “He just bought me a Diet Coke. I don’t put out for anything less than a twenty.”

“What’s Lacey cost then? A five?”

I made a sour face at her, but then the bus parked, and she and the others flooded off before I could ask anything.

I walked onto campus, heading straight for our lockers, hoping that the janitors had stopped by and done a better job than I had of cleaning LOSER off only to find that they had—it’d been replaced by the word SLUT.

I—didn’t like that. I went and got paper-towels and came back to smear the word into one big red blur. Between Emily this morning, and this now, there was something different in the mood. I just knew it. Long before acquiring my electronic skills, my super-power had been knowing when my mother was goingto blow. I could sense a mood change at fifty-paces—I was like her personal geologist.

And this, now? I scrubbed until the front of Lacey’s locker looked like a Picasso.