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“It’s not protecting him,” I say, before he gets there. “If I say it, it’s my word against six guys and a video that starts in the wrong place. And then I’m a freshman who’s been in Berwyn’s office twice and told on somebody.”

“So we do nothing,” says Koda.

“We beat him. On the ice. Our line. In October, in front of everybody.”

Koda thinks about it for about three seconds. “That’s so slow.”

“Yeah.”

“I want blood.”

That lightens my mood more than it should. Rafe pushes off the wall and slings his bag over his shoulder, and as he goes past me, he says, “Then don’t let him get to you.”

We come out into the parking lot, and it’s clear. Greeley is at his car with the trunk open and two guys with him, and he looks up when the three of us come out the doors. He doesn’t say anything. I walk past him at about fifteen feet, close enough that either of us could say something, and neither of us does. I get to the end of the row before I hear his trunk close.

“One day,” Koda says.

“One day,” I say, and we keep walking.

19

Ice Cream Is Not the Point

Kylie

In my ten o’clock, Dr. Nakamoto spends fifty minutes on whether a strike counts as a protest if the people striking don’t want anything except money. Elias and I end up on the same side for the first time in three weeks, which neither of us enjoys. I spend my two-hour gap in the library, get through most of a reading, and buy the good coffee from the place across the street, because it’s Thursday and I’ve earned it.

At one, my sociology professor hands back our papers. Excellent synthesis in the second section, in blue pen, and then, next to my conclusion: The prompt asked you to compare — this is one example. Points off here. I sit there looking at it and think about Declan in the library saying it says an example in a very confident voice, and me saying that’s what I thought, and then going home and writing it exactly the way he told me to. An eighty-nine, because I asked a boy who had no idea what he was talking about. I put it in my bag and go to my next class.

Tessa is on her bed when I get back at four, sitting up against the wall with a book and her hair in a low bun. There’s an apple on her desk that she cut into slices with a knife she keeps in its own little case. I drop my bag and pull off my shoes.

“How was your day?” she asks.

“Good. Yours?”

“Good.” She reaches over for an apple slice and holds it without eating it. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Where did you go on Tuesday?”

“Tuesday?”

“There was banging on the door. Your friend sounded like she was panicking.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I look at her.

“Is everything okay?”

I mean to give her the version I gave Kenzie, which is that some hockey guys got in a fight and Paige dragged me out of bed for no reason. But Tessa asks one question and then another, and she turns out to be good at keeping me talking, and somewhere in the middle, I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed telling her almost everything. About Declan. About the party two weeks ago, where a guy handed me a drink while everybody else laughed at me. About blocking him, and how he invited Nash to his house Tuesday with six of his friends in it.

“He hit him with a hockey stick,” I say. “From behind, while he was trying to leave.”

Tessa doesn’t gasp, and she doesn’t say oh my God. She stops, completely, and looks at the wall over my shoulder.

“And there was a whole fight,” I say, “and somebody filmed the part where Nash was—”

“Really?”

“—and now Declan has this video and he’s using it to make Nash give up his spot, or something like that.”

I don’t tell her about the scar on Nash’s side. I notice myself not telling her. It isn’t mine to tell.