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van.
    Someone has clicked a key fob remote. Someone close by, getting closer by the second.
    We spring apart and duck.
    “Oh shit,” says Brit. Her eyes have tightened.
    I’m still gasping for air. “Okay. Uh. I think we should probably go.”
    In the far distance, voices.
    “I think you’re probably right,” she says, and snorts.
    Brit Means snorts!
    I pull the door handle and slowly slide it open. We slink out into the street. As quietly as I can, I slide the door shut, but it needs one good shove to latch closed. Usually I can getQ’s mom’s van to shut with barely a sound. But I guess it must be my heart dropping beats or the fact that my arms feel like they’re in zero-g, because the best I can manage is a crisp, clearly audible chunk .
    “Ei,” says a voice. “Inch dzhokhk yek anum?”
    “Go go go,” I hiss.
    “Sorry, can’t understand you,” yells Brit.
    We sprint into the darkness, leaving a trail of giggles behind us.
    Just bad enough.
    But so good.

chapter 5
plane crash
    I’m in class the next morning, struggling to keep my eyes forward. I know Brit is too. I can feel it. We are like two horse statues facing the same direction.
    Horse statues?
    Q’s eyes rally between Brit and me. I smile back with derp teeth. He knows something is up.
    What the hell is up with your stupid face? say his eyebrows.
    “Frank and Brit, nice work with the volumes,” says Mr. Soft. “Could you draw a little tinier next time?”
    I am barely listening. I like hearing him say Frank and Brit like that. Like we’re officially Frank-n-Brit . Frankenbrit.
    Brit smiles. She glances at me and bites her thumb, breaking the first Rule of Being a Person.
    “Q and Paul, you turkeys ready?” says Mr. Soft.
    Q gives me a parting eyeroll, gets into character, and stands. “Yes.”
    He and Paul approach a lumpy cloth spread on a table and lift it to reveal six grapefruit-sized geometric forms done in KlayKreate.
    “Behold,” says Q. “The new Platonics.”
    For the first time in my short life, I want Calculus to never end. But it does, and after we leave the classroom I find myself doing something I never normally do: walk and text.
    Meet me behind the greenhouse at lunch?
    My phone buzzes back.
    Okay, says Brit, with a little purple heart.
    The day passes. AP Bio, AP English Lit, and finally my favorite, CompSci Music, where I get some serious time hammering out live beats on the flashing Dotpad made up of the samples I recorded at Lake Girlfriend. I think about the coins in the water there.
    Thank you, Lake Girlfriend.
    Physical performance is the future of electronic dance music, I believe. As good as my timing is, I am still human and therefore prone to being off by a few milliseconds here and there, which is why performed music will always have a warmth and intuition that perfectly sequencing computers can’t match. Next I want to try making electronic dance music with acoustic instruments, in a band with other people, no amplification. Call it chamber step , maybe.
    I’ve got the room nodding their heads. I’ve got Ms. Nobuyuki nodding her head.
    But I feel phantom buzzes in my back pocket the whole time. It takes all my effort to stay focused until the final measure of the song.
    Class ends and finallyfinallyfinally it’s lunch. Just gotta check in with Q before going off on my own.
    I find Q waiting for me by the elephant tree: this big melted biomass of spiny leaves and branches oozing its way out of a rectangle in the concrete. Apparently it’s not a tree, but a giant yucca evolving along its own isolated vector.
    Q’s already got his miniature hero figurines—a tiny wizard, elf, and paladin—standing in delta formation on a lunch table. His dice are lined up and waiting: a four-sided pyramid, a cube, an octahedron, dodecahedron, and finally the twenty-sided icosahedron. Paul Olmo’s sitting next to Q with his graph paper, ready to start mapping dungeons and marking the locations of dragons.
    “Hey,” I