“Get away from her,” Sydney tells Jonah in a low voice. “Get away or I’ll bash your head in.”

Jonah gulps, but then puffs up his chest to hide his initial worry. “What are you doing?” he asks Demarcus, ignoring the threat. “Take the—”

“What am I doing?” Demarcus repeats angrily. “Question is, what the fuck are you doing? Now you’re kidnapping girls and shit?”

“No,” Jonah says, shaking his head. “I … She recorded me talking about Garrett. She’s going to report him and—”

“Good,” Demarcus says. “That guy belongs in jail.”

“Thank you,” Sydney says, nodding her agreement. “Took you long enough.”

Demarcus presses his lips together, a quick show of shame. Although he said something in the cafeteria, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t demand change. He may have turned his back other times, but he’s showing up now. Like Mr. Marsh, he’s finally showing up.

I get to my feet, but Jonah pushes me back down. Sydney readies her bat, but Demarcus comes to stand in front of me, making Jonah take an unsteady step back.

“Hey,” Jonah says, sounding nervous. “Relax, it’s okay.”

Sydney meets my eyes. Funny that he’s worried about the guy when she’s the one with the bat. In a way, Jackson was right. Men tend to defer to the opinions of other men.

“You can’t just let her leave,” Jonah says. He even laughs. “Look, man,” Jonah tells Demarcus. “My dad will be here soon. He’ll know what to do. I mean … she found posts that some of the guys put online. They admitted to everything like a bunch of idiots. I mean, even Lyle isn’t that stupid.”

For his part, Lyle stands silently. He must see that he’s still not accepted by the group he coveted.

“Wow … ,” Sydney says, tapping her lower lip as she thinks it over. “You’re exactly how I thought you’d be. What’s it like to be so vile that you can’t even beat the lowest of standards?”

She says all of this with an eerie calm, a statement of fact rather than opinion.

“If your father wasn’t rich,” she says, “you would have nothing. No one cares about you. A few fear you, sure. But no one admires you. Why would they?”

“Shut the fuck up!” he shouts back. She’s gotten under his skin.

“That’s what you rely on,” Sydney continues, taking a step toward him. “Telling girls to shut up so they can’t tell you that you’re average, maybe even slightly below. Insecure men seek power to make up for their shortcomings. And you, Jonah Grant, will never have power again.”

There is a small moment of worry in Jonah’s expression before he shakes his head. “I’m not scared of a couple of girls,” he says.

Sydney smiles. “You should be,” she whispers. When Jonah backs down, Sydney gives him one more look of disgust and moves past him to reach out her hand to me.

I take it, but as we start to leave, Jonah darts over and snatches the bat out of Sydney’s hand. He holds it at his side, eyes wild, as he blocks the door.

“Are you both insane?” he asks, his voice shaking. “You think you can just … walk out of here? No.” He glances once at Demarcus, seeming to dismiss him. “There are other guys down there. Ones who aren’t fucking weak. Once I tell them what you were planning … well, I can’t stop them from what they’ll do.” He laughs, but it’s forced. He’s betting that the threat of violence will make us endure more of his violence.

Sydney drops my hand and takes a step toward Jonah. She tilts her head, looking at him.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use this,” she says. She looks back at me and smiles. “Leandra told us to always be prepared.”

Sydney takes a small object from her purse. At first, I think it’s a phone, but there is a blue light and I realize it’s a Taser. She jabs it into Jonah’s ribs, and he shouts before the sound reverberates in his chest, echoing around the room.

He hits the floor.

“Damn, girl,” Demarcus says under his breath. Sydney shrugs. Demarcus steps over Jonah’s trembling body and opens the door for us, standing aside so we can walk out. When Lyle starts to move, all of Demarcus’s nicety fails.

“Stay,” he warns Lyle, telling him to go sit down.

We watch as Lyle nervously takes a seat at the desk, his bravado completely deflated. When we turn back to Demarcus, he nods in Lyle’s direction.

“He and I are going to have a talk,” he says. “Whatever brainwashing, macho shit he’s been fed, it needs to be cleared up right now.”

“And will you help the girls at school?” Sydney asks. “Back them up? Report these creeps?”

Demarcus scoffs like it’s a ridiculous question. “Yeah,” he says. “My mom taught me to respect women. I don’t want any part in this shit.” He motions around the room. “I had no idea it was this bad.”

Sydney nods. I wonder if it’s strange for us to be grateful when people are decent, as if we’re always expecting the worst. Confronting the other guys will make Demarcus a hero, even though us standing up to them led to our expulsion from school.

The system works differently for different people. We’ll have to change that if we want different results.

Sydney and I head down the stairs, my hip sore from where I fell on the roof. When we get to the bottom floor, I see the rest of the party has broken up. As I limp onto the front porch, Sydney looks sideways at me.

“You okay?” she asks, concerned.

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her. “Uh … by the way, where’d you get that?”

Sydney holds up the Taser to examine it. “I wasn’t sure it would work,” she says. “It was in that bag Leandra gave us back at Imogene’s house. I took it. Kept it just in case.”

“Good,” I say.

Sydney slips it back into her purse and takes out her phone. “Also, I recorded that entire thing.” She smiles.

That means we got Jonah holding me against my will, the guys posting confessions online. There will be plenty for the newspaper to work with.

“It sounds like Mr. Marsh finally came around too,” I say. “I’ll contact him and see if we can get him to file a complaint against the students and administration.”

We’re quiet as we get onto the street, the cool night air blowing around us.

“I think we got them,” I say. “And I think we protected the girls of Ridgeview.”

“And now we focus on saving ourselves,” she replies.

Sydney puts her arm around my shoulders, leaning her temple against mine. Her phone begins to buzz, and when she looks at the screen she immediately straightens.

“It’s Marcella,” she says. We move away from the house, walking toward our apartment, as she answers.

“Hi,” Sydney says. “You girls okay?”

She listens for a moment and then stops walking abruptly. “What?” she asks, sounding shocked. “Hold on. Mena’s here too.” She clicks the speaker button and holds the phone out in front of us.

“I said it’s not them,” Marcella repeats, slightly out of breath.