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I bite my lip so hard, hints of coppery blood drip on my tongue.

“Fine. Text me the details,” Lucy says, rubbing her temples.

Darcy nods curtly at Lucy. She doesn’t spare me another glance. Good. I’d hate to ruin her day with my one-fingered response to her “traditional values.” It might add a couple of years to her soulless life.

Lucy sighs. “What the hell?”

I shrug. I have enough to figure out about myself. I don’t need to analyze who Darcy Jamison is too.

“I wonder if Rio knows about this latest incident?” Lucy’s already texting .

Rio’s been on radio silence. There was no morning meet-up on the steps outside school. She wasn’t at lunch. I texted her twice after school—no response. Maybe she’s knee-deep in this Mad Tagger stuff. Maybe it’s nothing.

The setting sun peels blue from the sky. It’s pinker, verging on rose-gold. Everything smells like ground coffee and exhaustion. Lucy texts, and people pass our table, and my brain implodes with more thoughts. I don’t add a single word to the Essay of Doom the rest of the day.

* * *

“Hey.” I find Rio ather locker the next day before homeroom. “You’ve been hiding.”

She tucks a lock of amber hair behind her ear. She’s wearing this cool crossbones-print shirt under a denim jacket layered in enamel pins. And she’s strategically not making eye contact with me.

“Rio?”

She sighs, nose wrinkled.

“What’s up?”

“The sky,” she says, her voice clipped.

“Okay, lame.” I tilt my head. “What’s going on? You’ve been missing.”

“Busy.”

“But you—”

“I’m gonna be late.” She slams her locker shut and starts to move around me, but I catch her arm. Her face tenses.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m busy.”

“With the Mad Tagger thing?”

Rio’s eyes cut me like a machete. “Yeah, that whole ‘Mad Tagger thing.’ Thatthingyou’re too busy to help out with.”

“I’m not—” I pause. I guess I have been busy. And maybe I’ve been devoting more time to Lucy because, well, Lucy doesn’t think Ian’s the Mad Tagger. Rio does. But that’s not the only reason I’ve been too busy for Rio. I have homework and family time and an essay that’s eagerly devouring my academic career like a snack. Oh, and that half-sister I still haven’t told anyone about.

Rio glares, pouting impatiently. I don’t have anything to say. I’m drowning in a sea of “who am I?” and I don’t know how to scream loud enough for my friends to hear. “I’m not too busy.”

Riopffts, then shakes my hand off. I let it fall to my side. We stare and stare as students hustle around us on their way to homeroom. I can’t move. It’s as if a thunderstorm is about to crack heaven open and flood the hallway. And my feet have decided this is where I’ll stay.

“Lucy said you’re going to the dance,” hisses Rio.

I suck in my cheeks. “I mean,” I wave my hand at the wall plastered in campaign posters, where mine is smack in the middle of ones for Jayden and Armin and Ford Turner and, surprisingly, Silver, “I kinda have to, don’t I?”

“Nope.”

“But—”