And no doubt whatever Ethan and the rest of the kids who usually lead this kind of thing will want to do is downtown, and I, being the loser that I am, have yet to go unchaperoned below Seventy-Fifth.

I have half a mind to post something in the Hallway Chat. Something about needing a good idea for a low-key place to take a date, or maybe something about prom. Some ridiculous thing that Bluebird can post, so Wolf can see it in the open forum and remember I am, in fact, still alive.

Jesus. I’m trying to play head games with someone I haven’t even technically met.

Another text, this one from my mom.

Did you let anyone touch your phone?

“Oh, for god’s sake,” I mutter.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes,” I snap.

Pooja takes a step back, looking stunned, still a little breathless from her swim. I realize half a dozen heads have swiveled to look at us, and my teeth are gritted like an animal poised to attack.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean to butt in,” she says.

“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I’m fine. Sorry.”

Pooja nods and goes back to her locker without saying anything. I change as quickly as I can back into my uniform, desperate to get out of there—but to go where? To the apartment, where I’ll have to sit like an animatronic puppet and smile at Landon’s dad until my cheeks hurt, until I think I might actually explode into molten lava from the embarrassment of what I’m about to ask him?

Maybe I just won’t. Maybe it’s better if I just let the whole thing go, Landon and Wolf with it. Because what’s on the other side of it, if it really is him? If Landon liked me as Pepper, he had plenty of chances to show it in the last few years.

Or he would if I hadn’t avoided him like the plague for the first two of them, afraid of humiliating myself.

But maybe I owe it to that girl—to the freshman me who was too scared to talk to him. There must have been some reason I felt that way, even if it doesn’t quite feel that way now.

I turn to leave and end it right there, but then Pooja walks past.

“I really am sorry,” I say, following her out. “I didn’t mean to snap.”

I’m expecting her to brush it off again, but then she tilts her head at me and says something that stops me in my tracks.

“It’s Jack, isn’t it?”

Something tightens in my chest. “Huh?”

She smiles at me, this guarded little oh, c’mon kind of smile. It’s weird, but I spend so much time deliberately not meeting Pooja’s eye, I’m surprised to see the warmth in them. Surprised, and then profoundly uncomfortable—because I don’t need her being nice to me. I don’t want to owe her anything, don’t want to tip the scale that’s been teetering between us since the great Mesopotamia mishap of freshman year.

But before I can even parse through that, I have to figure out how the hell she found out about Jack. As far as I know, we haven’t spoken a word about the Twitter war to anyone outside of Ethan at this school.

“I mean, you guys are dating, right? Or like … kind of seeing each other?”

My laugh is so sharp, it pierces through the now-emptying locker room. “Dating?” I manage. “Me and Jack?”

Pooja’s expression doesn’t change. “You guys are around each other, like, all the time.”

“Yeah, because—” Because we’re destroying each other in a virtual battlefield armed with memes and snark. “Because he’s helping Ethan with captain stuff. You know how busy he is.”

Pooja shrugs. “Okay.” She adjusts her backpack straps, still staring at me in this way that lets me know she’s not done talking. “I just … well. If you want to talk to someone about it, I’m probably your best bet, all things considered.”

I let out a huff of a laugh before I can think better of it. Pooja’s lips set in this grim line, like I’ve brought something out into the open, something we both know. Which is why I end up asking, “Wait, what do you mean?”

“Oh, please. Everyone knew about my big crush on Ethan two years ago.”

“I didn’t.”

Pooja flushes. “Oh. Well. I made some very public declarations about it, which was pretty stupid of me, because he was out by then. You’d think I’d know him well enough to know that before I decided to have a massive crush on him, but…” She shrugs.

“Oh.” It’s all I can manage. I feel stupid for not having known, but then again, I guess I haven’t exactly been a social butterfly these last few years.

Pooja waves a hand at me. “Water under the bridge. We’re actually good friends now because of it.”

“Well—that’s good.”

I don’t know what else to say. It occurs to me that, Paige’s antics with undergraduates aside, I’ve never really talked about crushes with anyone before. There hasn’t been much to report on my end, and everyone else already had built-in friends to talk to about it with when I got here.

“Yeah. He’s been using the student council to help me organize the study groups too.”

When she says it, I can hear that same detached caution we usually use around each other starting to creep back in. It feels like there’s some kind of gate starting to close back up again. At the last second, I shove a hand through to stop it.