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Something moves at the corner by the stairwell, and there’s a burst of laughter, quickly smothered. I lean out past the door to look, and Paige takes off running.

Kylie goes pink. “Sorry. Do you—” She pulls at the sleeve of her hoodie. “Do you have a minute?”

I step out into the hall and pull the door most of the way shut behind me. I give her a minute, and in the first five seconds, I learn that she’s bad at this. She stands with her weight on one foot, her ankles crossed, pulling the cuff of her sleeve down over her hand and pushing it back up. She keeps looking down the hallway toward the corner where her friends are hiding like somebody’s supposed to be holding up cue cards.

“Sorry, I didn’t really plan how I was—” She stops and starts again. “Okay. So tonight I was at the rink. With Declan.”

I glance down at the Woodbury logo on her sweatshirt, then back up to her face. “I saw.”

“Right. You saw.” She nods too many times. “And the whole time I kept getting this feeling. Like an icky feeling.”

“The ick,” says Rafe, through the four inches of open door behind me.

“Shut up,” I tell the door.

She looks at the door and takes a breath. “It felt like Declan was being fake,” she says slowly. “Like it was all a show. He asked me these weird questions about you. And the whole thing at the library on Tuesday felt like—” She waves a hand. “I don’t know. An ambush.”

I watch her. She won’t stop moving. Her hand goes to her hair and back to her sleeve, and she looks down the hall again without seeming to know she’s doing it.

“And I know it’s none of my business,” she says, faster now. “And I know I’ve been a bitch to you every time I’ve ever seen you, so you don’t owe me anything, and honestly you should probably tell me to go away. But I just got out of a three-year relationship, so maybe I’m—” She presses the heel of her hand against her eye. “I don’t know. Naïve. I don’t think I want to date him. He’s nice. But something feels weird, and I thought maybe you’d know why.”

She lets out a breath like that cost her something. I want to make sure I’ve got it right. “You thought I’d know about your weird gut feeling?”

“Yes. No. Oh my God.” She laughs nervously. “I sound insane. I told Paige this was stupid.”

From around the corner, Paige yells, “It’s not stupid! Tell her, Nash.”

Kylie closes her eyes and goes a brighter shade of pink. I look down the hallway, then back at her. She’s got her arms crossed now, holding her own elbows, looking at the carpet. Two weeks of her, and this is the first time I’ve seen her small.

“He’s using you,” I say.

Her head comes up. “What?”

“He told me. In the kitchen, Saturday night.”

The door behind me opens all the way. Paige comes around the corner at a full clip. “I knew it! I fucking knew it!”

“That’s what he said to you?” Rafe is standing in the doorway now, and he isn’t laughing anymore. “In the kitchen? That’s what the whole thing was about?”

Then the two girls from the diner are there too. I run my hand through my hair and look at the ceiling.

“What did you do, Kylie?” Rafe says to her.

“She didn’t do anything,” I tell him. “This is Greeley.”

“Declan?” Kenzie says.

“Yes, Kenzie,” Paige hisses. “Greeley is his last name. Declan Greeley.”

“Okay. My God. Sorry.”

Kylie has gone very still in the middle of all of it. “So he’s been playing me.”

Paige grimaces. “Sorry, girl. That’s why I made you knock.”

Kylie ignores her. “Wow. Okay. Really? What the hell?”

The stairwell door bangs open at the end of the hall, and Koda comes down from five with a bag of chips under his arm and his headphones around his neck. He stops when he sees all of us.