“Best thing for you is to clean your palate with a new girl.”

“Yeah,” Will said with a sigh.

“Serious.”

“Yeah, I know. You keep telling me.”

“It’s not just for you either. It’s for this girl … what’s her name? Luther?”

Will laughed a little.

“You know it’s Lucy.”

“Right, Louis. It’s for Louis too.”

That got another laugh out of him. Will’s sullen shell was cracking.

“Nothing gets a girl interested in you faster than her seeing you with other girls,” Gates said.

“Hmm,” Will said. Gates could see the idea had needled into his brain.

“Besides, you KNOW Louis is in the Sluts, she’s probably getting her ditch dug out by some guy, all day and night.”

Will laughed, and cringed at the same time. “Damn! You’re a dick,” Will said, but he kept laughing.

Gates punched him in the arm. “Ah! You dirty motherfucker, you were thinking it. I know you were.”

“I definitely wasn’t.”

“She’s all unnnghhhh unnghhhh,” Gates said, miming like he was a girl in ecstasy. “What? You want me to do five guys? Okay.”

“Oh, come on!” Will said, smiling. He kicked Gates’s plastic gamer chair over and Gates fell on the floor.

“Please make a line out the door, everyone,” Gates said, “I can only be humped by three guys at a time.”

Will threw an open bag of Reese’s Pieces at Gates and they hit him in the shoulder. Yellow, orange, and brown candies sprayed all over the floor. Gates laughed and scooped a handful out of the package. He chomped them and let the sugary peanut butter filling spread through his mouth.

“For real though. For real,” Gates said. “Are you okay if I go completely real now? I might have to get real.”

“Okay, okay, yes. Get real,” Will said, amused.

“I’m just confused. Why do you have to be a humongous pussy?”

“That’s it, I’m joining the Freaks.”

“No, hold on. I’m fucking with you. What I want to say for real, is you should be fuckin’ happy. We’re on top. Everyone’s coming to us, asking us for stuff. We’re the cool kids.”

“That’s true,” Will said, brightening another degree as he pondered the idea.

“I’ve got dates lined up for the next two weeks,” Gates said, “and I told all of them they had to bring a hot friend.”

“You did?”

“No lie. Now I could be throwing these girls Fowler’s way, or Pruitt, if that’s what you’re telling me I should do.”

“No one said that.”

“Oh, why?” Gates said, torturing Will. “Are you interested in hanging out with new girls?”

Will took a deep breath, and when he let it out he smiled. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

“That’s the dude I’ve been looking for!” Gates said, and threw his fists in the air.

“You have one set up for tonight?”

“Yeah, with a Nerd chick. I heard her friend has a third nipple.”

“Really? Full size?”

“You can only hope.”

“Cool,” Will said.

“This is gonna cheer you up. I’m going to make sure of it. We are going to party so hard for so long that you won’t even be able to remember this Judy girl’s name.”

“All right, all right. You’ve convinced me.”

“Perfecto.”

“I gotta piss,” Will said, and he got up.

“Great, thanks for letting me know.”

Will chuckled as he headed off for one of the bathrooms in the mess hall. Gates put his chair right side up and sat in it. Its curved plastic frame let him rock back and forth. He picked up the controller off the floor and unpaused Will’s racing game. He crashed the car almost immediately.

Gates heard the crunch of someone stepping on a plastic bottle behind him. He turned back.

Colton stood in the middle of the floor.

His skin was gray. He wore his black shades, and full St. Patrick’s attire, a blazer, tie and sweater, slacks, and penny loafers. His brown hair was combed neatly to the side. Black blood dripped from the hole in his forehead.

Colton walked toward him. Gates scrambled out of his chair and into the corner. How was this happening? His dead brother made fists of his hands as he strode toward him.

“Get back!” Gates said.

“Gates?”

Will was standing at the entrance to the mess hall, staring at him, perplexed. Colton was gone. One second he was there and the next he wasn’t. Gates didn’t know if he’d just seen a ghost, or he was losing his shit, but just like earlier when he had seen Will in the gaming chair, just Will’s presence calmed him. He needed to stick with Will. He’d be safe with Will. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he could feel that it was true in his bones.

“Hey, man,” Gates said.

“Are you … messing around? You look all scared.”

“Yeah. You know me. Can’t keep it serious,” Gates said, assuming a relaxed pose. He hoped he wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore.

Will stretched and yawned. “So when does the partying start?”

“Right. Fucking. Now,” Gates said.

27

LUCY WATCHED A NAKED GIRL DO PUSH-UPS over broken glass. Her name was Frida. She’d been a Freak since the gangs formed, but now she was fed up. She’d hooked up with Bobby last year, but it wasn’t that great and she’d tried to move past it. Bobby wouldn’t let her. He hounded her with requests for dates, gave her creepy gifts, and got more mad each time she turned him down. Finally he told her she couldn’t be in the gang anymore if she wouldn’t date him. Frida decided enough was enough and she came knocking on the cafeteria door.

Now that she was staring at a pile of broken glass, with Lips yelling at her in her ear, Lucy wondered if Frida regretted her choice. The girl was on her sixth day of Naked Week.

“Thirty …,” Frida grunted out, as she pushed up and locked her arms in place.

“What are you stopping for, bitch?” Lips shouted. “I wanna see forty! I’ve been listening to this thirty crap for days.”

Sophia walked away from the group of Sluts next to Lips to join Lucy, Raunch, and some others that were watching from a distance.

“God, part of me just wants to tell her how to make it stop,” Sophia said, shaking her head.

“I’m so glad you said that,” Lucy said. “Me too.”

“She’ll pull through,” Raunch said. “She’ll figure it out soon, I can see it in her.”

Sophia nodded. “I know. It’s just so hard to watch.”

“That’s what we have Lips for,” Lucy said, and the others laughed.

The girls settled back into watching Frida struggle through more push-ups as Lips jabbed at her ribs with her foot. Frida began to lower herself toward the glass again. Lucy could remember that moment vividly, making the decision to push beyond her limits when she didn’t know how it was humanly possible.

“Come on,” Sophia whispered to herself, but it was meant for Frida.

“Fight back,” another girl muttered.

Lucy never would have thought something so vicious would have warmed her heart. When it had been her in Frida’s place, she’d thought all the girls around her were monsters. She couldn’t understand how someone would treat another person in this way, but now that she was on the other side, Lucy knew how much love there was in this room. Each one of these girls had suffered through similar trials and they were stronger for it. They only wanted the best for Frida, and none of them, including Lucy, had any intention of letting her fail.

This was Lucy’s family now. Her life. She belonged. It was everything she’d hoped for when she’d joined up. So, why had she been thinking about Will every day since the bonfire party?

It still bothered her that their conversation that night hadn’t gone the way she’d expected. Being in the Sluts had felt thrilling before she saw him at the party. And the look on Will’s face when he comprehended completely that Lucy was a badass Slut had been the cherry on top. She’d wanted to see him eat his own words, feel horrible for the things he’d yelled at her in the Stairs. And he did, and he’d apologized, and he’d told her he missed her. That should have made her happy, but instead, it had only upset her.

“Hey, Virgin!” one of the guards at the cafeteria entrance shouted. “Somebody here for you.”

Lucy swallowed hard. She wasn’t expecting anybody. She looked to the other girls, who shrugged. Lucy walked toward the cafeteria entrance. When Lucy laid her hand on the door handle, she took a deep breath and hoped that it wasn’t Will. Lucy pushed open the door.

Bart stood alone under a bright hall light. He had a crooked smile and his pompadour looked a little bigger than she remembered from last time. He gave her a big, friendly wave. Lucy felt her body relax at the sight of him.

“Hi, Bart.”

“Yo.”

So goofy. So cute.

“Wanna go on a date?” he said.

“Yes, she does!” Raunch shouted from somewhere behind Lucy.

Lucy laughed and stepped out into the hall.

When Bart had told Lucy they were going to the Geek show, she didn’t know what to say. The last time she’d been to one was on a date with David. Those few hours she’d had with him, before everything went wrong, were immortalized in her mind. She could only recall the sights and sounds of that night as part of a perfect bliss. And so, Lucy was afraid that tonight Bart could only fail. She wouldn’t be able to help but compare, and everything he did would only pale in comparison to how David did it.

She liked Bart, and she didn’t want that. Thankfully, he was one step ahead of her.

Lucy’s legs dangled over the metal ledge of the lighting catwalk, where Bart sat next to her. It was one of three catwalks that ran the width of the auditorium, each one mounted with powerful lights aimed at the proscenium stage at the far end of the room. A partying crowd, populated with heads of different colors, swirled below. Gangs mixed freely, in a way Lucy had never seen before, at least not from this perspective. Kids mingled. Pairs and threesomes from different gangs drank together, played games together, laughed together. The bonfire party had greased the wheels and started a phenomenon of impromptu parties that were happening nearly every day now. She’d heard about them, but this was the first one she’d been to since the bonfire.