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I looked up at him. “English?”

“No.” He gave me a bemused look. “The baseball game. You going?”

I was perhaps the only student at the school who didn’t have the playing schedule memorized. Not that I’d need to, if I were willing to read all the glittery pep-squad posted signs in the halls.

“If you go, I can get you a party invite afterwards.”

It felt like I’d been waiting to hear him say those words for half my life and under any other circumstances I’d have started screaming like a BTS fan.

But.

“Thanks, but no thanks.” I said, attempting a charming grin.

“Your loss,” he said, unruffled. And as he walked down the aisle and out of the classroom some small and traitorous part of me thought he might be right.

I was practically hiding in the front of the bus when I finally got my text from Lacey.

Can I come over?

My thumbs reached for the keys, but then I slowed down. Lightning Land, population me.

YES!

I typed with my electrokinesis, feeling smug. Kortney said something cruel from the back of the bus, I could tell by the tone, and Emily laughed uproariously. I quickly sent another one:

U don’t want to be waiting at the bus-stop today—meet me at my house?

Within seconds I got back:

K

I slunk off the bus and practically ran to my house to find Lacey waiting for me on the steps with Allie, who was beaming from ear to ear.

“So after you find them all,” she was saying. She’d pulled out one of her old treasure maps for Lacey, and was explaining all the X’s. My arrival interrupted her, and she was visibly disappointed.

“How are you?” I asked Lacey.

“I’ve been better.” She stood, extracting herself from Allie’s attention. “Can I keep this?”

“Sure!”

Lacey carefully folded the map up and put it in her pocket. I was just about to drag us around the trailer to go out back, when my mother rapped at the window, startling all of us. “I made lemonade!” she shouted through the glass.

Lacey gave me a look, but we all dutifully tromped inside.

“You feeling better now?” my mom asked Lacey solicitously.

“Much,” Lacey said.

“Good. Appendicitis—Barbara got that once, it knocked her on her ass for a week.” She poured our glasses expertly, out of habit, handing them over our kitchen bar one by one. “Did you hear?”

Lacey looked back and forth between us for clues. “No?”

“Jessica went out with Liam.”

I could feel my face turning beet red. “Mom, it was a study date.”

“Was it now? You were already in bed when I got home, and I didn’t want to wake you.” She looked pointedly at me, waiting for me to share. When I didn’t she prompted, “So? How’d it go?”