“I’m not kidding, you guys need to sit down. Coach Chavez is headed this way.”

My eyelids shuttered. We were standing just as we had been, with me in between the two cage fighters. I realized Brooklyn had been talking to us. Coach Chavez was on his way to our table.

“Sit down, hurry,” I said to the boys, trying to snap back to reality. They obliged reluctantly.

“Hey, Coach,” Glitch said, standing to head him off.

As they spoke, I sat in stunned silence, wondering what had just happened. Jared suddenly seemed way more interested in the pattern on the table than in me. Did I just have a vision? Or would that be considered wishful thinking?

“If you guys are finished, I suggest you clean up and go cool off outside,” the coach said. He was a brawny man with thick black hair and a graying beard, and everyone liked him, including me. I didn’t want to get on his bad side.

“Okay,” Brooklyn answered, the forced nonchalance in her voice plain.

As we rose to clean our table, Cameron leaned in to me. “And, yeah, he can do things like that, too.”

TEAM SPIRIT

“Where is he?” Brooklyn raised her brows in question as she scurried up the bleachers. The homecoming pep rally would start soon.

I was still in a state of dazed confusion. Cameron had seen it, the exchange between Jared and me, so it had to be real. But how had he done it?

“Uh-oh,” Brooklyn said. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

Oh, that was the other thing. Nobody but Cameron heard what Jared said to me. Not Brooklyn, not Glitch, not the weird chick at the next table drooling into her lunch tray. Nobody!

Could Jared have done something where only I could hear him? But Cameron heard him. Blondie got an earful, then snorted and strode out the door. Not that I cared. My feet weren’t anywhere near the ground. Brooklyn said she’d been talking to Glitch, but honestly, how could anyone have missed such a speech?

“So?”

I blinked at Brooklyn. “So, what?”

“Where’s lover boy?”

“Oh. Tabitha and Amber stole him,” I said absently, referring to Jared’s recent abduction by the sugar lumps.

“I wonder what they’re up to.”

“I wonder what it’s like to have the intelligence of squirrel feces.”

Brooklyn whistled. “Wow, I’m impressed. You go with that.”

“I know it’s wrong, but I just dislike them so much. Ever since they put toothpaste in my hair on the way back from camp, I’ve hated them.”

“Right there with ya, babe. You know what I’ve noticed?”

“That deep down inside I’m really jealous of them, which makes me a lonely and pathetic loser?”

“Um, no.”

“Oh,” I said. “Then what?”

“I’ve noticed that ever since Jared saved your life, you haven’t had to use your inhaler. Not once.”

“Wow,” I said. She was right. I hadn’t even thought about it.

Brooklyn scanned the crowd. Glitch turned and waved from the front, where the football team sat. She waved back, then spotted Cameron sitting alone at the very top of the bleachers, apparently in the farthest corner he could find.

“You were right,” she said. “That boy is just plain antisocial.”

I turned and motioned for him to join us. He shook his head. I glared at him and waved again. Exhaling visibly in annoyance, he pushed himself off the bleachers and maneuvered through the crowd to where we sat.

“Happy?” he asked when he arrived.

I smiled. “Very.”

The pep rally progressed with the usual antics and silly games. The pep band played and the crowd cheered. Each class tried to out-yell the other three for the honor of leaving school ten minutes early. The seniors usually won, their experience and impending release date—otherwise known as graduation—lending them a ruthlessness the other classes lacked from the get-go.

In one of the more amusing moments, volunteer tag teams from each class had to wrap a different teacher in toilet paper then race back to the finish line for the win. I laughed at the sight of Ms. Mullins being toilet-papered into a mummy.

But soon afterwards, I began to worry. The pep rally was coming to a close, and still no Jared.

“Where could he be?” I asked Brooklyn. “Do you think Principal Davis has him cornered somewhere? Or maybe the sheriff arrested him after all.”

“I doubt it. Tabitha’s up to something.”

I watched absently as the cheerleaders acted out a final skit. Apparently, two members of team spirit weren’t spirited enough. They stood back with their arms crossed, looking sad and despondent. So—in the crucial interest of school pride—the others escorted one of the two to a huge decorated box marked SPIRIT INFUSER.

They placed her inside and closed the lid. After a few seconds, the cheerleader jumped out of the box, full of life and an annoying, nails-on-a-chalkboard kind of joy.

“She’s like a gerbil on Ritalin,” Brooklyn said.

I beamed and continued to survey the crowd for Jared.

In the meantime, the cheerleaders—having had such great success with the first dispirited teammate—did the same with the second. Again, after the girl was placed in the box, she jumped out almost immediately, springing with happiness and energy.

“Hmmm,” Tabitha said into the microphone. “Whatever’s in that box sure causes a lot of excitement. What could it be?”