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“I don’t get it,” said Eli.

“Jules is Martha,” said Jack. “Martha is Jules.”

Everyone stared at him for a long moment, tendrils of late summer sun poking through the branches of the fort.

“But why?” Greer asked at last.

“Because nobody’s on Team Jules,” said Jack.

“Wait,” said Greer. “There are teams?”

Jack shrugged. “You haven’t been in elementary school in a while, huh?”

“Teams are mean.” Greer’s cheeks colored with the pink of righteous indignation. She could never bear cruelty. It was one of the main reasons why, when the You Agains officially formed the year before, one of their core tenets became “menace without harm, unless they really deserve it.” It was one of Jack’s favorite things about her, the way she cared. It made him care more too, and he needed that, because sometimes he forgot to.

“Well, we have to do something,” Greer said, hazel eyes burning with determination, and Jack decided in that moment that whatever that something was, he would do it without question.

The next day at recess, he and the others—except for Greer, who, as a high school student, no longer knew the sweet joy of recess—made their way across the schoolyard to a shaded little corner where Jules was sitting on her own, holding a snail. She was so intently glued to its slimy progress across her index finger that she only looked up when they stood directly in front of her, their shadows falling across her face.

“Oh,” she said when she finally noticed them.

“Hi,” said Jack. “Are you Jules or Martha today?”

Jules froze, a surge of fear mixed with defiance flaring behind her dark eyes.

“It’s okay,” said Jack. “I just wanted you to meet my twins.”

He waved a hand at the others: olive-skinned, curly-haired Eli, squat Dale, and Carter, who was Black. Jack, for his part, was in a lanky growth spurt, with a constellation of freckles across his pink cheeks.

This obvious lie prompted a glare from Jules, who placed the snail onto a nearby leaf and started to skulk away.

“Hold up,” said Jack, hurrying after her. “Okay, so they’re not my twins, but they are my brothers, basically. And if you want some siblings, they’ll be yours too; we all will. You don’t have to be alone here.”

“You don’t mean that,” said Jules as she wiped the snail slime on her cargos.

“Sure we do,” said Jack. “Heck, you’re smart enough to fool half the school into thinking you’re two people. We could use a brain like that.”

“For what?” asked Jules.

“Whatever we want,” said Dale.

“As long as we don’t harm anybody,” said Carter.

“Unless they really deserve it,” said Eli.

Jack nodded at all of this. “We call ourselves the You Agains, because that’s what the teachers say whenever we get detention.”

“And we get detention a lot,” said Dale.

“Especially Eli,” said Carter.

“There’s Greer, too,” said Jack. “She’s cool, I guess, if you don’t mind annoying teenagers.”

“She’s my sister, so we’re stuck with her,” said Eli.

“But she’s cool,” Jack said again quickly, then added. “She knows someone who got expelled for weed.”

“Whoa,” said Jules. She gave her chin a scratch, contemplating. “Well, if you need me, I guess,” she said at last. “I could use some brothers.”