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cereal?”
    “Did he bring home any of the little green germ monsters who lived in his closet at Camp Crazypants?”
    I tensed.
    Over the years, I’d vented to Lia and Shani about Grayson more times than I could count. And, sure, I’d made some pretty snide remarks about him behind his back. Sometimes it was the only way to keep from blowing up at him at home. Sometimes it was just a way to clear my own mind. Sometimes it was just a way to break the tension and get a laugh.
    But even though I know they only thought it was okay because I’d done it so many times before, I kind of hated it when Shani and Lia made fun of him. I could do it because he was my brother and I was the one who had to deal with him. When they said mean things about him, it just felt mean. But I tried not to act upset by it. I didn’t need that battle on top of everything else.
    And I guess some part of me believed he deserved it in a way. Like, people wouldn’t make fun of him if he’d simply act normal every once in a while. If he’d just be the Graysonwho played CSI with Zoe and me down in the creek behind Zoe’s house. Or the Grayson who ate superlarge jalapeño-and-cream-cheese pizzas with Brock and who stuck an alarm clock under my ear.
    But, honestly, I didn’t think
that
Grayson even existed anymore. I hadn’t seen that Grayson in so long. That Grayson had fallen into the black hole Zoe left behind. For three years he’d been scrabbling at the sides of that hole—sometimes coming oh-so-close to getting out—but he always fell back in. It was like watching someone you love be buried alive.
    I waved my hand dismissively at Shani’s and Lia’s questions. “I haven’t really talked to him since he came back,” I said. “I’ve mostly been avoiding everyone.”
    “Speaking of avoiding,” Lia said, holding up her left hand to block that she was pointing to something at the far end of the cafeteria with the fork in her right hand. Both Shani and I looked toward the doors, where Tyson, Shani’s belligerent boyfriend, was entering with his muscles-for-brains crowd of friends, including Tommy, my jerk ex-boyfriend.
    Shani made a face. “Whatever. Idiots.”
    “You guys still fighting?” I asked.
    “Hello, check your texts every now and then,” Shani answered, wadding up her napkin disgustedly and tossing it onto her plate. “Ew. I can’t look at him. I just lost my appetite.”
    “They broke up last night,” Lia said. “Again.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
    “Duh. Because you don’t read your texts, like, ever.” Shani glared at me and then took a deep breath, her face softening. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’ve got family issues right now.”
    I let out a puff of air. “When don’t I?” I murmured, even though I knew that my “family issues” were the least of my worries. For a change, my life wasn’t being dominated by Grayson’s problems. But it was just easier… and safer… to let my friends believe that was what was going on with me.
    All three of us were silent for a minute—Lia scraping the last bits of fruit from her plate, Shani tearing little pieces off her napkin and dropping them into her soda can, and me gazing at the muscles-for-brains gang. Three of them—including Tommy and Tyson—could be in big trouble, too, if Bryn was right.
    When Tyson caught my gaze and nodded in my direction, his face serious and determined, my hands seized the sides of my tray.
    “I should go,” I said. “I’ve got to turn in a paper.”
    And before either of my friends could say a word, I was gone. My uneaten orange chicken and rice were at the bottom of the giant gray wastebasket by the kitchen conveyor belt, and the two pieces I had eaten were floating in the toilet water of stall three in the science hallway before Tyson could even get to our table.

CHAPTER
SIX
    It happened right after the final bell rang. I rounded the corner by the library, my plan being to grab my jacket and