I chanced a look at him. Even though we were friends now, looking at him hadn’t stopped feeling dangerous, like each time I was skimming too close to the sun. But he wasn’t looking anywhere except at the painting, even with Courtney standing so close behind him, her shoulder brushing his every time he moved. It seemed Mint and Courtney were an inevitable pairing—like to like—so I tried to ignore the way their closeness rubbed at me, stirring old, bitter feelings.
But something was wrong with Mint. In the two months I’d spent watching him, I’d never seen his face look like this, with tracks of scarlet blooming down his cheeks and neck. His skin looked painful, hot to the touch. His eyes darted around, taking in the snickers and soft laughter.
Coop rested a hand on Mint’s shoulder. “You’ve been immortalized. And here I thought it’d be your name on a building or something.” His mouth quirked. “The likeness is chilling, you have to admit. I told you to double down on leg days. Those calves are looking a little thin, man.”
Mint wrenched his shoulder away. “Get thefuckoff me.”
His anger was a lightning strike, completely unexpected. Coop took a half step back and raised both hands in surrender. “Okay, easy.” Behind Mint’s back, he found my eyes, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
It was a message for me alone, a look to make a private space between us. He was always doing that. It didn’t matter if we were at a party, packed wall to wall; or if I was leaving a lecture hall, adrift in a sea of people, only to spot him reading on a bench; or if we were having lunch and he was the last to arrive, setting his tray at the opposite end of the table. He always found me, and for that first, single moment when our eyes met, we existed in a separate place. A private room he’d built to tell me something I could never parse before the moment was over.
“It’s not funny,” Mint said sharply. I looked away from Coop, drawn to Mint’s hands, which he’d clenched into fists. “It’s a lie.”
“Obviously,” said Frankie, ever loyal.
“Fuckinglosers.” Mint kicked the float, right in the center of the painting, and it cracked, wood splintering. “Liars.” A hush fell over the group as he kicked again, still red-faced. And then Frankie was kicking, too, until the side of the castle gave away completely and the painting turned into a gaping hole.
For a few seconds the only sound was Mint’s hard breathing. Then Jack said, “I guess we’re not salvaging the float.”
One of the girls from my floor sighed. “I can’t believe I wasted so much time on this. What a disaster.” She tossed her hair, turning to walk away.
“Where are you going?” asked Caro, her face the portrait of betrayal.
The girl gave her an incredulous look. “It’s the night beforeHomecoming, Caro. I’m not missing parties just to cobble together some pitiful makeup float and lose tomorrow anyway.”
“Me either,” someone else said, and that was the death knell, the curtain falling. There was murmuring, and then everyone was shifting, adjusting backpacks over their shoulders. In twos and threes they walked away, muttering about Chapman Hall and dick-swinging contests and pranks gone too far.
It left only the eight of us, doing our best not to look at the hole in the float.
“Can you believe them?” Caro asked. “One setback and they jump ship. Where’s theirloyalty?”
Jack sighed and sank to the ground, perching among the dead leaves. “I hate to be the one to say it, but I think we’re screwed.”
Heather dropped beside him and leaned in close. Jack’s cheeks turned rosy, and he glanced around to see if we were watching. After two months of being friends, I knew that particular shade of pink meant Jack was happy with Heather’s affection but would melt if anyone mentioned it. Heather called this shynessJack disentangling from years of repression, a line she’d cribbed from one of her Intro to Psychology books. At night when she and Caro and I sat around talking, waiting for our face masks to dry or watching mindless TV, Heather told us secrets Jack had told her, like that he’d never been kissed, never been allowed to have a girlfriend. But she was patient; she made the first move with him, over and over, fresh each day. Heather was like that. She was a girl who did things I’d never known were an option.
“Come on, there has to besomethingwe can do to fix the float. Or at least a plan to get back at Chapman.” Heather dropped her head on Jack’s shoulder. He sat straight as a rod.
“Let’s just burn Chapman to the ground and be done with Homecoming,” Coop said. “Shit’s lame.”
“Coop’s right. I still can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” Courtney turned to Heather, her red-painted mouth pulling into a frown. “I told you from the beginning that winning a glorified arts-and-crafts contest wasn’t going to put us on top of Chi O’s list. And now we’re not even going to win. It’s humiliating.”
Like Phi Delt, Chi Omega was the best on campus. The sorority boasted a perfect rush record. Every year, each girl they offered a spot took it, gratefully, knowing a place in Chi O meant four years breathing rarefied air. It was rumored none of the other sororities came close to their record, not even the second-best, Kappa.
I’d learned quickly that social life at Duquette revolved around two things: football and Greek life. Winning a football championship was life or death, the stakes only outmatched by getting in to the right house. In some ways, it was antiquated—the football and Greek life like something out ofPleasantville—but in another way it was timeless: these were just more ways of being sorted. And as every student who’d fought or sunk their way to Duquette knew, life was nothing if not a constant cycle ofcompete, rank, sort. Hierarchy, that was normal. What was strange was how deeply you could come to need it; how eventually, over enough time, you would long for someone to come and put you in your place.
“Courtney,” Frankie snapped, “can you shut up foronesecond and let us think?”
Courtney’s eyes flew open. No one talked to her like that.
I slipped away to where Mint stood, arms folded tight over his chest, and—taking a quick, steeling breath—brushed a hand over his shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”
He didn’t pull away from the touch, but he didn’t look at me, either. “I overreacted. It’s just that Charles’s family knows my family, and I thought—”
My heart drummed.
“You know they’re just jealous, right?” I decided to chance it, leaving my hand on his shoulder, my eyes on his face.
He turned to me, the movement sharp. “Jealous?”
