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whenever you’re mooning over him from a distance.”
    The thought of anyone giving a crap about wearing a fakey rhinestone princess crown in a badly decorated gym was laughable to me. I wished I could have delivered one of those cutting one-liners that I always managed to think up hours after the fact when I replayed the conversation in my brain. Instead, the left portion of my fake mustache had chosen that exact moment to slip down over my lips. I forgot I’d been wearing it and now felt even more foolish. Beth smirked, grabbed her plastic trident, and sashayed out of the classroom. As she exited, the red felt tail attached to her belt swung like a decisive pendulum.
    â€¢ • •
    Old Burny’s ancient branches cast an appropriately eerie shadow over the quad as I made my way toward the school parking lot. I was eager to get home and see my baby bro, Oliver, dressed up like Yoda. My dad was a rabid
Star Wars
geek and had found the cutest pair of costume Yoda ears online, but I knew my brother was likely to keep them on for all of two minutes before he’d start to get fussy and recalcitrant about the whole thing. I wanted to get some pictures of him before that happened. The sky was beginning to turn the color of a bruise. Purples and grays swirled together as the sun glowed red behind the clouds. Already the days were getting shorter. By December we’d be down to only five-and-a-half hours of daylight. The wind cut against my cheeks and I pulled up the lapels on my oversized men’s suit borrowed from Dad’s closet. I think he’d worn it only twice: to a funeral and to a job interview. It still smelled new.
    â€œHey, tramp!”
    I glanced over and saw Cat unlocking the trunk of her car. Tess and Kaya tossed in their boulder-sized backpacks. All three were wearing nylon witches’ hats, the kind you might pick up in the costume aisle of a drugstore. Apart from that, they were decked out in their typical dark denim jeans and ironic T-shirts layered over thermals, the epitome of hipster nonchalance. I felt overdressed in my suit.
    â€œCharlie Chaplin,” said Tess, grabbing for my pocket hankie and teasingly waving it at me. “Nice ’stache!”
    â€œWe’re going to the midnight showing of
Rocky Horror
over at the Regent tonight,” said Kaya. “Want to come?”
    â€œThanks for the invite, but my dad is still into the militant curfew thing on school nights.”
    â€œHow charmingly provincial of him. Well, the offer’s out there if you can bust outta Alcatraz.”
    â€œThanks,” I said with laugh, before retrieving my hanky.
    As Cat shut her car trunk, a posse of our school’s A-listers walked past surrounded by their various groupies and hangers on. Oh God … was Beth right? Did I look like those chumps fawning over Craig? In the middle of the pack, I noticed him, his hair combed into an outrageous pompadour. He wore a white bejeweled bell-bottomed jumpsuit with a huge collar, and he sported the trademark gold-rimmed shades.
    â€œHey, hey, li’l darling,” he drawled, pointing in my direction and striking a wide-legged stance. “Why don’t you go on and make me a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich?”
    Tess and Kaya had already gotten into the car, and as Cat opened the driver’s side door, she remarked on Craig’s costume.
    â€œLooks like we had you pegged. You
were
destined to be ‘King.’ That Yup’ik mask, man — it doesn’t lie. Let’s hope, for your sake, the predictions end there.”
    She entered the car, slammed the door shut, and all three girls gave us a friendly wave as they pulled out of their parking spot. They were still wearing their witch hats, which were bent over under the roof of the car.
    Craig removed his sunglasses and watched them drive down the road. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and since I’d already been feeling awkward