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That gets a snort, and Mrs. Wilhelm covers her mouth, faking a sneeze.

“Get your goddamn hands off me, Walton! You nasty-ass son of a—”

There’s a crack and the PA goes out, breaking the spell Bristal Jamison had very forcefully cast over the entire school.

“I really hope that didn’t go out to the whole district,” MacKenzie says, her thumbs flashing over her phone as she texts her brother in the elementary wing. “I don’t want to sit through Mom and Dad explaining what porn is over dinner tonight.”

“How old is Jude again?” I ask.

“Nine,” she answers, and I wave off her concern.

“He already knows.”

Three

Bristal’s car—a battered and rusty Neon, with four miraculously nonmatching doors—is still in the parking lot half an hour after school lets out. I’m running out of ways to make myself look busy as I sit in my own car, but it’s not like there’s anybody watching. I let the engine idle and the heat run. We’re at the end of fall, when the chill is taking the turn from pleasant to bitter, right along with the mood of our football fans, who are starting to realize we’re not going to win a single game this season—again.

The dead leaves that skitter across the parking lot serve as a reminder that time is running out. All my applications have been spell-checked, spit-polished, and submitted. I’ve been hitting refresh on a tracking app since mid-September, but the little gray box next to the logos of all my dream schools continue to simply read Processing. Every time I check the stats for On the Ground in Flyover Country and I’ve got a listen from any state that holds an Ivy League, I break out into a sweat, wondering if an admissions officer just heard my deep dive into the plucky alumni baton twirler from the class of ’68 who broke her ankle during the homecoming halftime show. She finished her routine anyway, smiling through the pain because—as she told me—twirling ain’t for the weak.

Mom had wanted me to edit the quote graphic and opt for the grammatically correct isn’t. But I didn’t, and had felt a little thrill when I ran the episode with that same title. This woman had splintered a bone to prove that she was still relevant, and to stand as an example to the single baton twirler—freshman Hazel Lawson—that twirling is . . . kind of badass. And badasses don’t have to use proper grammar.

But now, sitting in my car with the heat on blast and my hands shaking, I have to question if the review board of any decent university is going to look at that and realize that I’m going for local color and accurately representing my subject . . . or if they’re going to think the mistake was mine.

“Shit,” I mutter when I spot a listen from Massachusetts. It could be a rando. It could be the dean of admissions from Harvard. It could be a bot. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. That single listen sends my anxiety spiking and a flash of quicksilver through my belly. I might defend seventy-year-old, plucky Henley housewives and their choices, but I sure as hell don’t want to be one. On the Ground in Flyover Country needs some grit, stat. Something that’s going to turn those little gray boxes of Processing into green go-lights of Accepted.

And I know exactly who can help me out with that.

The police cruiser that had been cozied up next to the entrance doors (apparently fire lanes don’t apply to the law) pulls away, and I sit up straighter in my seat.

Bristal walks out a few minutes later, her long dark hair tossing in the wind, her not-quite-warm-enough jacket whipping around her. She’s got her shoulders hunched against the chill and her hands jammed in her pockets, but by the look on her face this girl is far from beaten. If you sat me down across from a police officer I would freeze up at the mere implication that I’d done something wrong. Bristal, meanwhile, is walking away from a chat with the cops looking slightly amused, even as her cheeks redden from the cold.

I pull up next to her Neon, and she glances at me through the windshield. I get an up-nod of recognition, but that’s it. I’ve got to roll down my window to really get her attention.

“Hey,” I call. “Want to get in?”

She pulls a vape pen out of her pocket and considers me for a second, taking in a long pull before speaking.

“Why?”

She exhales, the vapor pulled from her mouth and torn away by the wind, as she holds my gaze impassively.

“Because it’s cold,” I tell her. “And because I also got screwed.”

She pulls open the door and slides into my passenger seat, bringing with her the smell of wind, river water, and the faintest hint of strawberries, which must be from her vape. She doesn’t ask if she can smoke in my car, but she does crack the window before taking another pull. I decide to keep this conversational instead of confrontational and let it go.

“What’d they offer you?” she asks. “Did they just say, we know you’re really smart, so we’re going to let this slide? Or do you have to go directly to jail and not pass go and collect your two hundred dollars?”

“I’m not going to jail, like, ever,” I tell her. “Mostly because I don’t assault people.”

“Assault is just one way in,” she says coolly. “And you didn’t answer me.”

“Independent study project,” I tell her, my eyes trailing her exhalation of vape that she doesn’t bother blowing toward the cracked window.

“Of the appropriate depth and scope,” I add mockingly.

“Sounds like a trigger warning before a porno,” she says. “They told me the same thing, but I told them where to stick it.”

“Sounds like the script for the same porno,” I shoot back, and she turns to face me for the first time.