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body—his beauty was completely impervious to his C-grade personality. No matter how tiresome he could be, no matter what he’d done to piss her off, she still felt that bolt of sugar-sweet electricity run through her chest whenever she saw him.
    Something’s wrong , Mary thought. She knew it, immediately; there was just no question about it. Did someone die?
    But it wasn’t that. He hadn’t been crying; he didn’t look stressed at all. He looked fine—rested, even, which was unusual; his telltale reddened eyes usually betrayed his pot-related insomnia and fatigue, marring his classical features in a way that was only visible up close. But not today: he looked like he’d gotten nine hours of sleep and run ten miles. Mary began to feel a tightness in her stomach, as if the day’s bleak chill was seeping into her body and making her shiver with nervousness.
    “Trick?”
    She hadn’t wanted to speak first. She had wanted to stand there and smirk prettily as he unveiled a turquoise Tiffany’s box with a milky white ribbon, or a pair of Fall Out Boy tickets, or even a single daisy from behind his back; she wanted him to kiss her deep and hard in front of the whole school and whisper happy birthday in her ear. But he just stood there, looking at her. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t move.
    “Come on.” Trick jerked his head, beckoning her down the street. “Let’s walk.”
    “Walk?” Mary had completely lost her composure. The sea of kids around them was still jostling her, talking and texting and wandering from place to place, but their voices seemed to change, to dissolve into a mounting roar like an approaching subway … and Mary realized that she was more than nervous: she was frightened. Something was definitely up. “Where do you—”
    The scream she heard next, the desperate, distant voice behind her, made Mary flinch as if jumper cables attached to a car battery had suddenly been jammed against her shoulders.
    “Mary!”
    A high male voice—a teenager’s voice, calling her name.
    “Mary! Mary!” it repeated. The fear, the desperation in the voice nearly made her forget to breathe. Everyone was looking, craning their necks to peer behind her.
    Mary turned and looked. Through the crowd, she could see someone—a small figure—running right toward her, but could only make out thin, sandy blond hair and a dark Windbreaker.
    “Mary, look out!” the boy screamed. “Look out, you’re in danger!”
    The crowd was moving now, pulling back in shock, eyes and mouths wide. Mary finally saw who was screaming her name.
    Scott Sanders.
    In another context it would have been funny: short, plump Scott Sanders, her physics buddy, her savior in so many classes and before so many tests, his plain, kind face distorted in wild-eyed, crimson-tinted fear, his gut visibly swinging up and down as he ran clumsily toward her. His glasses tumbled from his face, clattering to the sidewalk as he rushed at her like a bull charging a matador, his unbrushed hair corkscrewed around his head like he’d stumbled out of bed and run all the way to school.
    But it wasn’t funny at all.
    “Mary, for Christ’s sake —” Scott was no athlete; he couldn’t run and scream at the same time without stumbling and panting. His book bag was flying up and down behind him like a red canvas piston. “Mary, you’ve got to listen—you’re in serious danger—”
    And then they stopped him. It wasn’t the whole Chadwick football team, just a few of the linebackers (who, as usual, had been lounging against the fence punching each other in the arms); they moved fast, darting forward with their muscular arms raised, converging on Scott as he propelled himself down the sidewalk like a runaway train headed straight for Mary.
    “Hey, assface,” Pete Schocken snapped—he had gotten there first, and he moved his tall, thick body directly in Scott’s path so that Scott slammed into his raised arms like a thrown garbage bag smashing