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VIOLET

Violet tried not to zone out as Mr. Fieldstone talked on excitedly about the six functions of an angle—sine, cosine, tangent, co-whatever whatever. She scribbled dutifully in her notebook.

Could someone please explain why math? What people would ever use any of it ever again after they took the AP exam? Mr. Fieldstone was famous for saying, There is no why in math. It just is. Relish in that simplicity. Because for too few things in life is that true.

Which made no sense at all to Violet. Because that was all she ever thought about: Why? Why did she have to get her period? Every single month? Why was her skin breaking out? Why were boys all so vacant, staring only ever at their devices?

Why was everything so…hard?

She used to enjoy Mr. Fieldstone and the geeky thrill he seemed to get out of numbers. Even if she didn’t share his enthusiasm exactly, it was contagious. It reminded Violet of her dad and how excited he was about everything, especially science, especially any project she or Blake was working on. He was into it. He’d get this gleam, and his hands would fly when he talked about chemistry or geology, when they had to build something. And that energy made them excited, too. But then he was gone.

Her mom tried ; she really did. But school projects were just another stressor after Dad left them broke, alone. Sometimes it seemed like he’d taken all the joy with him. All the fun, too. But Violet never said that to her mom because she knew how much that would hurt. Her mom was fun, too, in different ways. When Violet finally accepted that her father wasn’t coming back and what everyone said about him was probably true, Mr. Fieldstone’s math joy started to make her sad. She wasn’t doing well, barely clinging to her low B.

To Violet’s right, her best friend Coral, whose jet-black hair was tipped with hot-pink this week, was leaning her cheek against her fist, and her eyes were closed. Was she sleeping? Coral was doing even worse than Violet, despite her extraordinary aptitude, and Mr. Fieldstone had gently suggested that Coral either start paying attention or drop down to Honors or even Basic. Which she could not do because Coral’s mother was the original bulldozer parent, still clinging to the idea that Coral was going to be a concert pianist, a professional soccer player, and an Ivy League student. Coral, it was pretty clear, would be none of those things.

Violet kicked her friend’s stool, and Coral sat up blinking.

“Is it over?” she said too loudly, earning a frown from Mr. Fieldstone.

“No.” Violet nodded toward the clock. Unbelievably they still had fifteen minutes to go. Had time stopped completely?

“For frack’s sake,” said Coral, who was trying to swear less since a guy she was talking to on Pop said that girls who use curse words was a turnoff for him. Which Violet thought was misogynistic and small-minded, and that was a major turnoff for her. But Coral was into him—though she’d never spoken to him, or even seen him on FaceTime. Sharif was a long boarder in Morocco according to his Photogram profile. Of course, he could be a housewife in Tacoma, or an incel in Miami, for all they knew. Still, it was a kind of fiction that worked for a while, since real, actual, flesh-and-blood boys seemed barely conscious—into VR or whatever girl they were talking to online or lost to Red World or some other game.

Mr. Fieldstone had stopped talking. Shoot. What had she missed? Now he was handing back quizzes. From the groans and heads slumped into hands, Violet deduced that things weren’t going to go well. She hustled to scribble down the last of the notes on the board since she’d missed the end of his lecture.

“Oh, fraggle,” said Coral, holding up her quiz emblazoned with a big red D.

Mr. Fieldstone handed Violet her paper. He was tall and doughy, wearing a perpetual sweater-vest in any weather, even though he was always perspiring a little. He stared at them menacingly over his round wire specs. “You can both do better.”

She squinted at her paper, afraid to look. Finally, she focused her eyes. It was just a B, which once upon a time would have been surprising, even upsetting. Now she was just relieved that it wasn’t worse.

“My mom is going to murder me,” said Coral miserably. Glitter from the purple tutu she was wearing over black leggings and lug-soled Mary Janes was getting everywhere. She really did look like she might cry, even though Violet suspected that Coral enjoyed her mother’s rage. Like it was some kind of theater performance in which they participated together, and maybe the only time her mother paid full attention to her.

“You can come live with us,” offered Violet, a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“Okay, yeah,” said Coral, nodding as if this was an actual option. “Can I spend the night tonight? Watch the challenge with you guys?”

“Of course.”

Just a few hours to go, Violet thought excitedly. Win or lose, her mom would be home tomorrow. Maybe they’d be richer and things would be easier for Adele. Her mom wouldn’t have to worry so much every month as their expenses constantly outstripped their income. Or maybe they’d be poorer with more bills to pay. They’d run up Adele’s credit card getting her the gear she needed. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money , Adele had told her in REI. Again, this made no sense to Violet. Didn’t you have to earn money to make money? Or save money to make money? But what did she know?

Her phone pinged, and she pulled it from her pocket.

There was an update from her LifeTracker app: Blake has left East Tanglewood High School.

Violet stared at it. Huh? It was not even noon.

Violet had dropped her exhausted brother off at the lower school this morning. He had been super cranky and had eaten four doughnuts, which he definitely did not need. She knew the look of cybersickness when she saw it, when too many hours on a screen became a kind of illness.

“Were you up all night on Red World ?” she’d asked him in the car.

“Not all night,” he’d answered.

He’d slumped in the passenger seat looking like he was going to puke.

“Well, these are the consequences of your actions.”

“Shut up, Violet.”

While Blake was in the shower this morning, she’d loaded the tracking app on his phone, accepted her own request to track, and then removed the app icon from his phone’s home screen. He had no idea she was tracking him. Mom tracked them both with the Find My Peeps app that came with the phones. For safety reasons only, Mom was quick to say, not because she didn’t trust them. Violet and Blake both knew how to trick that app, with another app called Teleporter that let you mask your true location.

But LifeTracker was more comprehensive, including things like whether you were driving or on foot, how much charge your phone had left. Violet only thought to put it on Blake’s phone because of what happened last night. Who had he been with? Where had he gone? she asked him multiple times over the course of the morning until he’d stopped speaking to her altogether.

She held up the phone to Coral.

“That little brat,” said Coral, outraged. “How does he get to cut?”

“He’s in someone’s car,” said Violet, a kind of hole opening in her middle.

Blake is moving at fifty miles an hour on Oakhurst Road , the app announced.

Panic had her stomach tumbling, her throat dry. She started to call him, but Coral put a hand on her arm. “If you call him, he’ll just lie. Maybe he’ll find the app and turn it off.”

“What do I do?” she whispered. Mr. Fieldstone was talking to students at his desk about their quizzes. He got up to the whiteboard and started writing. “Tell the office? Call the cops?”

“I’m sorry,” said Coral, dark eyes wide in inquiry. “Are you a narc now?”

“No,” said Violet. Coral didn’t get it, an only, the worshipped center of her intact, two-parent universe, she’d never been responsible for anyone else. And Violet’s mom was trusting her, counting on her to keep them both safe while she went to try to make life better for all of them. Her mom had only done this at all because Violet convinced her that she was up to the task. “But what if he’s been like abducted or something?”

Coral rolled her eyes. “No. Who would abduct Blake? He’s like six feet tall already. He’s off getting high somewhere.”

“With who?” Violet said. “He doesn’t have any friends. He’s only fourteen. Who does he know with a car?”

She remembered what he said last night. That guy Gregg with the Bronco from Lakewood?

Coral shrugged. “The kid is a dark horse. He’s got way more going on than anyone knows.”

“What does that mean?” Violet was pretty sure that wasn’t what dark horse meant. But whatever. Violet got the point. And Coral was right. What did her brother have going on? Something.

The bell rang, and Coral stood up, shoved her quiz in her tattered denim pack. “Let’s go find out what he’s doing.”

“You mean…follow him?” asked Violet, rising. Next to her friend, Violet looked like a boy, in torn jeans, Converse sneakers, and the tattered sweatshirt that used to belong to her dad.

Coral leaned in close. “Why should that little turd be the only one who gets the afternoon off?”

Cutting class. That was a new low for Violet. Her mom would flip.

But what else could she do?

She didn’t want Blake to get in trouble. She just wanted to throttle him with her own bare hands. And she wanted to—no, needed to—find out who the frack he was with.

Meanwhile, the game was starting in a few hours.

Violet and Coral didn’t speak another word to each other, just marched toward the side door and exited into the bright afternoon sun.