“Mmm-hm.”

We laugh, because she knows that I am one hundred percent right, and I’ve definitely read her fic and it’s smutty as hell. I know her deep dark kinks and will take them to my grave.

“Excuse me—pardon me—starflame, is it really so hard to get through the bleachers?” a girl with pink hair mutters, her popcorn raised high. Behind her, a tall and lanky boy with dark hair follows.

“Mo, you know we sit on the other side of the field, right?” the lanky boy says, irritated. “With our team?”

“There aren’t any good seats over there. And this side is better—go, Milo!” the pink-haired girl cries, and points to a spot beside me. “Is anyone sitting here?”

“Nope,” I reply, and scoot over a little toward Annie to give them more room. “All yours.”

“Excellent!”

Her companion gives a tired sigh. “Well if we’d gotten here sooner, maybe all of the good seats on the other side wouldn’t be taken.”

“Stop grumbling like a grumpy old man and sit down,” she says, patting the bleacher beside her, and he thumps down. She snuggles up next to him, to the point that I think his grumpiness is mostly an act, and cheers again, “Go, Milo, go!” which earns her quite a few looks on this side of the bleachers. “My brother’s going to kick everyone’s ass.”

She doesn’t seem to care at all who glares.

Annie leans in quietly and says under her breath to me, “I think that pink-haired nuisance is now my mortal enemy.”

“Um, why?”

“Her brother’s Milo Lovelace. The other team’s quarterback.” Fire ignites in her eyes, and she jumps to her feet and shouts, “Go, Keith! You can do it! Knock the Goliath out!”

In return, the pink-haired girl narrows a look at her, then shouts, “You got this, Milo!”

“Keith! I believe in you!”

I sink down between the two of them and pull The Starless Throne from my backpack. Vance was right, it turns out. This book is coming in handy, and I tune out Annie and the pink-haired girl shouting over each other for the next ten minutes until the clock runs down and halftime begins. Our mascot, a Wildcat, grabs a lightsaber from the sidelines and runs toward the other side, where they have a short mock battle with the Blue Devils while the football teams leave the field, which ends in the Blue Devils force-choking the Wildcat to the ground. The score is tied, but I don’t know what any of it means, really. Annie tries to explain to me that the teams are tied because we can’t run the ball—whatever that means—and so we’ve had to take two field goals, and they missed an extra point.

…Whatever that means.

“I still don’t see Quinn, do you?” I ask, to which Annie frowns.

“No, I don’t,” she says, but then she pulls out her phone and selects Quinn’s name in an app, and a pin pops up on a map of the area—exactly where we are. “But they have to be here. Their phone’s here.”

My eyes widen. “Hold up, can you pinpoint my phone, too?”

“You still haven’t found it?”

“…No.”

She rolls her eyes and selects my name, and the exact same coordinates come up. Annie frowns. “Huh…are you sure you don’t have it in a pocket or something?”

I give her a deadpan look. “I’m not that forgetful.”

She just shrugs. “Oh, they’re starting.”

Principal Rogers makes her way out onto the field with a wireless microphone, and the band marches out with her, making a (sort of) cornucopia shape on the field. They play the school fight song, and when they finish the principal looks like she might need new eardrums.

“Well, that was riveting! Everyone give a round of applause to the Marching Wildcats!” she cries, and we all sort of clap halfheartedly in that at least you tried sort of way. “Now what we’ve all been waiting for—one last look at your Homecoming contestants!” Behind her, starting from the left end zone, Bob, our security guard, in his golf cart, pulls a trailer with a HOMECOMING banner. Behind him, a line of students in their formal best walk out onto the field.

The principal introduces all of them, but Quinn still isn’t in the lineup.

I eat a nacho nervously.

“And now, here are the top two students in the running for tomorrow’s Homecoming royalty…” the principal announces, taking out an envelope from her suit pocket. “For our Queens—Myrella Johnson and…Ava Singh!”

The two girls screech and clasp each other’s hands, happily bouncing up and down with each other. Annie snorts. “Well, that’s a surprise.”

“And for Homecoming King,” the principal goes on, “Garrett Taylor and…Quinn Holland!”

Ohmygod.

Ohmygod. Quinn is in the top two—Quinn is in the top two! Annie and I grasp each other’s hands and jump to our feet, cheering, “YES! GO QUINNIE!”

On the field, however, Garrett Taylor doesn’t feel the same way, and grabs the microphone from the principal. “Rosie, I’m pretty sure you’ll go with me tomorrow,” he says.

I sit ramrod straight.

“Rosie?” the pink-haired girl mutters, exchanging a look with her boyfriend.

I can feel Garrett glaring at me, and a chill curls down my spine. I curl my fingers tightly around the book in my hands. The people around me begin to stare. “I didn’t get it at first,” Garrett goes on, “I didn’t understand why you’d turn me down. But now I know. I should’ve seen the signs. You’d rather be with an asshole. You like the villain type, not the nice guys. You never liked nice guys—”

Suddenly, the mascot breaks out across the field, Wildcat-head bobbing in the wind, and takes a flying leap toward Garrett and tackles him to the ground. The mascot wrenches the microphone from him as its head goes rolling, revealing—

Quinn pushes themself to stand over Garrett and says into the microphone, “Sorry, I’mma let you finish but Rosie isn’t like that. And just because she doesn’t want to go out with you doesn’t mean it’s because she’s being pressured or brainwashed or whatever. I doubt anyone could pressure Rosie into doing anything she doesn’t want to do. Maybe—just maybe—she doesn’t want to go out with you because you’re a spineless nerf-herding Noxian scumbag and she just doesn’t like you. Oh, and those thirty votes to tie you? They came from the football team, because they all know I’m a bigger person than you’ll ever be.”

Then Quinn, my friend, my confidant, my Patronus, outstretches the microphone and drops it onto his chest.

The bleachers are quiet for a moment.

Then they erupt with applause.

I would, too, but my mind is reeling, because what did Garrett mean by I’m pretty sure you’ll go with me tomorrow? I don’t have to wonder long, because Annie puts a gentle hand on my knee and leans into me.

“Rosie, we’ve got a problem,” she mutters, and shows me the TMZ headline on her phone—

VANCE REIGNS IN ANOTHER UNSUSPECTING VICTIM!

Along with released video footage of the night I met Vance and fell into the pool, complete with the town and home address.

“Oh, no,” I mutter.

I’m growing cold all over. Garrett. When I bumped into him on Monday, I must have dropped my phone. “How long has that been live?” I ask her.

“Thirty minutes.”

Half an hour.

I think I might be sick to my stomach.

The pink-haired girl beside us gives me a wide-eyed look. “Wait—you’re Rosie? Vance’s Rosie?”

Has word gotten around that fast that even a stranger knows my name? I can’t think about it. I need to get back to Vance before this becomes a narrative I can’t control. I don’t have my phone, so I can’t call him. And I don’t want to imagine what sort of lies are spreading across the internet, festering like poison.

I just know I need to get to Vance.

Now. Before it’s too late.

THE DOORBELL RINGS.

I turn the page in The Trials of the Marked. “Elias, can you get that?” I call, but when the doorbell rings again I shout, a little louder, “Elias!”

He doesn’t answer—and the bloody doorbell rings again. I sigh and shove the bookmark into my book. There better be a good reason why someone’s at the door, it was finally getting good. Sond was on trial for his transgressions, and I want to see if Amara will come to his rescue like the previous book, or if Carmindor will finally send his best friend to prison—again.

I bet Amara’ll come and save the day. That’s usually how these sorts of stories go.

The doorbell rings again.

“Okay, okay,” I call, rubbing the back of my neck. What a pain. Where is Elias anyway? As I step into the foyer, he comes down the stairs drying his wet hair with a towel.

“Is someone at the door?” he asks.

“I guess,” I reply with a shrug, but I doubt it’s Rosie, since she usually just lets herself in with the key under the mat, and neither of us ordered any food to be delivered.

So, my curiosity is piqued when I look through the peephole in the door. I realize the moment I do, I’ve forgotten one important rule over the course of the weeks: