A Geek girl walked out onstage swinging her purse in a circle and smacking her jaw open and shut like she was chewing gum. She wore a blonde wig and a white dress and when she started telling boys in the front row that a blow job would cost them a sandwich, Lucy couldn’t control herself. She knew who it was.

“Hooker Hilary!” Lucy said, way too loud.

Bart cringed with a laugh. “Oh, boy. We got a live one.”

Lucy cackled. She knew it might lead to trouble, leading the crowd on this one, but Hilary deserved it. Sam had gotten his comeuppance for what he’d done, but somehow, so far, Hilary had managed to get off, unscathed. A laugh at her expense was the least Lucy could do.

Hilary stood up in a huff, like Bobby did. She was in the front row with a bunch of Pretty Ones. She was livid.

“I refuse to sit through this trash!” she shrieked.

“Then get the hell out!” Lucy shouted at her, and others in the crowd echoed her.

Hilary glared at Lucy with pure hatred. Lucy was unbothered.

“What are you looking at?” Lucy said, leaning forward in her seat.

Hilary sneered at Lucy, then widened her gaze to all the kids shouting at her. She looked uncharictaristically rattled. Lucy wasn’t sure she had seen her blush before. She started pushing through her row in a huff. A string of Pretty Ones trailed her. As they reached the aisle and hurried for the exit, people whistled at them and shouted catcalls. They looked miserable, but Lucy didn’t feel an ounce of compassion for the other girls. This was the life they’d chosen. If they didn’t like what it had amounted to, then too bad.

“You’re a wild one,” Bart said with a grin.

Lucy fixed Bart with a charged stare.

“What?” he said.

Nobody had ever said that to her before. And she liked it. She planted a heavy kiss on him.

“Yee-ha!” somebody shouted from a few rows back. She had a pretty good idea who it was. Raunch. “Get it on, girl!”

Lucy laughed through her tongue dance with Bart. Her whole gang must have been watching her now, maybe others too. It was a rush. She pushed Bart down in his seat, then hopped over the armrest into his lap, facing him. She straddled him like he was a horse and looked over to her gang. She threw up a fist.

“WHOO!” Lucy shouted back. They threw up fists and cheered for her while the play continued on stage.

Lucy leaned down and kissed Bart more. He couldn’t have been happier. They made out for the rest of the play. It felt crazy just putting on a show for everybody around, but she was tired of being the prude all the time. Besides, Will seemed to be having a PDA marathon all over the school, so why should she hold herself back?

When the play ended and the lights came on, people got up from their seats and started to mill about the auditorium. Lucy and Bart didn’t move. They were in their own little world. She wanted to stay close to him. There, on his lap. He couldn’t look away from her. The stage lights sparkled in his eyes. He smiled his perfect smile. She wanted him. It was decided in a moment. Naturally. Just like Violent had said it would be. Bart was the one. He’d be her first.

Someone whispered in her ear.

“Make him wait.”

Lucy turned and looked over to see Violent. Already moving on. She couldn’t see Violent’s face. It made her anxious. She didn’t understand.

“What do you want to do now?” Bart said.

Lucy looked back at Bart. He had a mellow grin.

“Uh …”

28

WILL WOKE UP WITH ANOTHER CRUEL HEADACHE. He felt like someone had spent the night standing over him and beating his face with a rake. It probably wasn’t the best idea to mix booze with his medication, but he wasn’t dead yet. It had been three weeks of this, something like that, partying day in and day out. In the mornings, it felt like it had been three years. Each night, once the alcohol hit his system, he felt ready to do it all over again. By then, the morning misery was long forgotten. Being bros with Gates was a full-time job.

With bleary eyes, Will lifted his head and charted his surroundings. He was on his back, on the floor in front of Gates’s school bus. All around him was a terrible mess. It wasn’t just the wrecked bus stuck in the wall, or the rubble around it, it was the week’s worth of party waste that littered the floor. Food was spilled everywhere. Twinkies with footprints in them. Cold cuts that had been thrown on the wall and had stuck there. A huge puddle of milk that someone had poured over a pile of cigarette butts. Dirty dishes covered in a brown crust of microwaved burrito filling. A soda-soaked pair of boxer shorts. Crushed beer cans and plastic party cups were everywhere. A knocked-over television played a porno, and there were two gaming chairs in front of it, but no one there watching. A series of croquet wickets were duct-taped to the floor, with mallets and balls strewn around. Gates had designated one corner of the room the “smashing corner,” and it was where they threw glass bottles when they were done with them. Breaking bottles had bored Gates pretty quickly and he’d encouraged the gang to start destroying other things. In addition to the piled-up broken glass, the smashing corner had an eviscerated beanbag chair, bent lacrosse sticks, a bashed-up bicycle with slashed tires, and a pinball machine that had been set on fire.

Will didn’t know how he’d ended up on the floor. The last thing he could remember was blending up mudslides with Gates and some Freak girls. He had a vague flash of hooking up with one of the girls in the supply closet across the room, but then things got fuzzy. That was pretty standard these days.

“There you are.”

Will sat up and saw Lark walking toward him from the hall of containment cells.

“I have to talk to you,” she said. She looked too serious for Will to handle right now. His head was murdering him.

Poor Lark. She was cute and clever and she liked Will. A lot. It wasn’t hard to tell.

“What’s up?” Will said to her.

Lark sat down in front of him and took his hands.

“I’m here for you,” she said.

“Okay …”

“And it’s not even that bad. Really, it’s for the best. It’s high time you moved on.”

Will felt a twinge of panic. “What are you trying to tell me?

Lark sighed, “I know how hung up on you are on that girl, Lucy. And I saw her last night at the Geek show. And I don’t know, I just feel like you can do better. ’Cause, you know, sometimes it’s easy to make too much, like way too much, about the past, when the future is literally wide open. Right in front of you—”

“Lark. What are you talking about? You said you saw Lucy.”

“Yeah. At the Geek show. I think she’s got a new boyfriend.”

What was it with Lucy and making out with guys at Geek shows? Unbelievable. Even though it wasn’t David this time, it still hurt. Last time this happened, Will ran away crying. He wasn’t about to do that again. He had to go talk to her.

Will pulled on clean clothes in his room, and headed out into the hall of containment cells. He passed Sam’s cell. Sam paced in his locked cell like a tiger at a zoo. He froze when he saw Will and charged the clear door. He spat on the thick plastic between them.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Sam shouted. Will could only read his lips; no sound passed through the door.

Will ignored him and continued on toward the closed metal door to the white room. Sam continued to beat on his cell door. The air in this hall had never lost a pungent chemical smell, and it made Will feel more ill than he already did. Will hit the red door button on the wall, and the door to the white room slid open, disappearing into the wall.

The white room was a pool of two-foot-deep water. A folding table had been laid on its side and duct-taped against the other side of the doorway, and towels had been stuffed under it to keep the water from flowing out. Another table sealed up the doorway to McKinley on the other side of the white room. The water’s surface reflected the bright ceiling and the white tiled walls. Water poured down in continuous streams from the eight hoses of the sprayer contraption on the ceiling. Saint boys and girls in their underwear cavorted in the water. Some floated around on inflatable mattresses. Gates and Pruitt stood in the middle of the room. Gates wore mirrored aviator sunglasses that shined with the same bright white of the rest of the room. He was shirtless and he’d cut his pinstripe suit slacks into board shorts. A tie was wrapped around his head like a headband, with the knot off to the side. Pruitt was the only person who was fully clothed, with his trousers rolled up above his knees. He had his giant hands on his hips, and loomed over Gates.

“Why do we have to talk about this now, Pru?” Gates said. “Can’t it wait till, like, a group powwow or something?”

“Dude, we haven’t had a powwow in I don’t know how long. When’s the last time we even all ate together?”

“I don’t know.”

“Months. Since before we got Sam. No matter what was going on, we used to all at least gather around the campfire and say what’s on our mind.”

“What do we need a campfire for? The lights are on.”

“You know what I mean,” Pruitt said.

It was weird seeing Pruitt upset. He never talked this much. But it was a big enough event to keep Gates occupied, and that was what Will needed. He’d never get to the cafeteria if he got sucked into Gates’s orbit. Will pulled off his shoes and socks and rolled up his jeans to his knees.

“Party pooper,” Gates said to Pruitt.

Pruitt poked Gates with a fat finger. “I don’t have a problem with having fun, I got a problem when there’s no time for anything else.”

Will stepped over the table dam and into the pool, hoping to walk out unnoticed, but Gates saw him right away.

“There’s the guy! Get over here, Will! Isn’t the water great?”

The water was freezing cold against Will’s skin.

“Pretty great,” Will said.

Gates walked toward Will.

Pruitt threw up his hands. “So, is that it? I’m just supposed to walk away now?”