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stop. Even at the sale price, I have never, ever bought something this expensive. I don’t even want to think about my mother’s reaction when she sees it. And my sister’s. There is no way I’m going to tell them Cyn bought it for me.
    I carefully take off the cardboard part of the price tag, leaving the plastic string that attaches to the jacket. Then I find the price tag from the T-shirt I got at the thrift store. The tag is stamped New . At seven bucks, the T-shirt was a good price. It is unbelievable that the thrift store would price such a nice jacket that low. But I have to hope it’s believable enough for my mother and sister. I thread the thrift-store tag onto the jacket and hang it in my closet. The shopping bag I roll up into a ball and jam in the bottom of my pack. I’ll get rid of it at school tomorrow.
    School. I yawn. I am going to be so tired. But then I think about seeing Cyn, about how I will put my arm around her in the hall, how I’ll kiss her and she’ll kiss me, how everyone will know we’re a couple. When you have a girl like Cyn, everything feels possible.

Chapter Four
    I don’t see Cyn before classes start. I hang out near her locker, but she doesn’t show. I check my phone about a hundred times in case she texts, but there is nothing from her. When she’s not at Bio, I drag myself to the lab station I share with Maxwell. He gives me a shove and says, “Don’t be all needy, my friend.”
    The girls at the next lab station laugh. Is it that obvious? It’s just that with Cyn, I don’t know if it is real, what we have. I want to think it is real. I just need to see her again. To hold her. To know.
    And then she is there, walking into the classroom. She tosses a late slip on the teacher’s desk and slings her book bag down at the lab station with the girls. She’s wearing my hoodie.
    Maxwell flips his book open to the instructions for the experiment and starts to read. “What?” he says, rubbing his chin. “We’re supposed to do what? With what?”
    Cyn’s hair is pulled back. Tiny strands of hair curl at the nape of her neck.
    One of the girls, Mila, says, “Could there be more cops in the school today?”
    Cyn’s hands pause on her textbook, but she doesn’t look up.
    Another girl says, “I know! It’s like they’re interrogating us.”
    Mila says, “It’s like they think we’re all criminals.”
    Cyn closes her book and slides it down the table. She moves to where Maxwell and I still haven’t started the experiment. “Okay if I join you guys?”
    One of the girls mutters something. Mila says, “Whatever.”
    Cyn smells like the outdoors, like the morning air has followed her in. I feel my face grow warm. Maxwell looks at me and rolls his eyes. When I don’t say anything, he turns to Cyn and says, “You can absolutely work with us. But full disclosure—we suck at Bio.”
    The girls seem to watch us, their heads together, talking softly. I move closer to Cyn. I don’t know why, but I feel like I need to protect her. Cyn focuses on setting up the experiment. She actually knows what she’s doing. Maxwell says, “Oh! That’s what that gizmo is for.”
    She laughs. “It’s called a pipette.” She points to the diagram in Maxwell’s textbook. “You just have to set up the experiment exactly like in the book. Then it should work.” She watches as Maxwell assembles the equipment. “That’s perfect,” she says.
    Maxwell smiles. “Thanks.”
    “Just be careful with the iodine,” she says. “It will stain your clothes.”
    Maxwell works through the steps of the experiment. I don’t have to do anything but watch Cyn, which is fine with me. I like how she moves so sure and confident, how when she makes notes her handwriting slants backward, as if the letters are caught in the wind.
    The girls at the other station are still talking about the cops.
    I look at Maxwell. “So what’s with the cops?”
    He nods. “Because of the shooting at Meridian Park last