"A skull fracture and brain bruising isn't exactly a normal beating."
“He wasn't using his brain anyway.”
Jinx barks out a laugh. "Vicious. I fucking love it." He grins at me, and my heart stutters a little. "Speaking of vicious, I got you something."
"Wormsanda surprise? You really know how to treat a girl."
His cheeks go pink, and he ducks his head so his hair falls into his eyes. I want to ask why he's blushing—want to ask a lot of things, actually. Like why he sometimes stares at me like I'm a puzzle he's trying to solve. Or why he gets weird when the girls at school flirt with him but lights up when Ken from his English class talks to him.
I'm pretty sure Jinx likes boys. Have been sure since we were twelve and he spent an entire summer obsessed with that lifeguard at the public pool. But he's never said anything outright, and I'm not about to push. He'll tell me when he's ready. If he ever is.
"Better than worms," he says, pulling something from his back pocket with a flourish. "Ta-da!"
Three tickets. Glossy, official-looking tickets with SYNTHESIA printed across them in that distinctive neon font that's been plastered all over town for months.
"Holy shit." I grab them from his hands, examining them like they might disappear. "Jinx, these have been sold out for months. They're like four hundred dollars each!"
"More like five hundred now," he says with a grin that's pure pride. "Resale's insane."
"How the fuck did you?—"
"Five-finger discount." He waggles his fingers at me. "Digital edition. Courtesy of our resident computer genius."
My stomach drops. "Cyrus hacked the ticketing system?"
"Something like that." Jinx's grin falters slightly. "Look, he says it's fine. Says he covered his tracks and?—"
"This isn't like him fucking with the school's grading system or stealing WiFi from the country club." I stare at the tickets like they're evidence in a crime. Which is exactly what they are. "This is actual fraud. Federal fucking fraud if it crossed state lines, which everything on the Internet technically does."
"Cy knows what he's doing."
"Cy's fifteen and thinks he's invincible because he hasn't been caught yet." I shake the tickets at him. "This is exactly the kind of shit that gets kids like us tried as adults. And then instead of juvie, it's real prison with real criminals who eat skinny nerds like him for breakfast."
"You're being dramatic."
"Am I? Because last I checked, two-fifths of our friend group is already behind bars." The words come out harsher than I intend, and Jinx flinches. "Sorry. I just... if he gets caught, it'll just be the two of us."
"Yeah," Jinx finishes quietly. "That would be a total bummer."
Something about the way he says it makes me look at him. He's picking at a loose thread on my comforter, avoiding my eyes, and there's a tension in his shoulders that wasn't there before.
"Jinx—"
"The concert's tonight," he interrupts, back to his usual chipper self so fast it leaves me wondering if he was wearing the same mask he wears when he's shrugging off our questions about his brother. "Eight o'clock. Hour drive to the venue, so we should leave by six-thirty to account for parking and?—"
"I can't leave the bird that long."
He looks at me like I've lost my mind. "El, that bird could fly to fucking Mexico if it wanted. It doesn't need you."
"But what if?—"
"What if what? It gets lonely? It's a bird. It'll shit in its box, eat some seeds, and sleep. Just like it does when you're out of the house." He reaches over and takes my hand, and his fingers are warm and callused from years of bike chains and monkey bars. "Come on. We never do anything fun anymore. Everything's been shit since Tank and Kade left. Let's have one good night."
I stare at our joined hands, at the way his thumb brushes over my knuckles like it's nothing, like it doesn't make my heart race. "You guys planned this. The tickets, the timing. You're trying to force me to let the bird go."
"Maybe." He doesn't deny it, which I appreciate. Jinx might hide things, but he rarely outright lies to me. Not unless it's something ridiculous meant to make me laugh. "You've been kind of obsessed, and I'm pretty sure you're using the bird as a proxy for Kade and Tank, so we might have planned an unofficial intervention. Is it working?"
Before I can answer, there's a crash from my window followed by creative cursing that can only belong to one person.
