He was already turning left down the narrow road. “No, really, I wish I could—”
“It’s just a car.” She cut him off. They were both on edge. She shouldn’t have teased him about the squirrel. He was trying to be more cautious. “They’ll fix it up at Sweet Pea’s. Anyway, the car’s no big deal to me.” Ander hung on her words and she realized she sounded like a private school brat, which was not her style. “Believe me, I’m grateful to have my own wheels. It’s just, you know, it’s a car, that’s all.”
“No.” Ander turned down the music as they entered town and passed Neptune’s, the horrible café where Evangeline kids hung out after school. She saw some girls from her Latin class, drinking sodas from red paper cups and hanging over the railing, talking to some older guys with Ray-Bans and muscles. She turned away from them to focus on the road. They were two blocks from school. Soon she’d be out of this truck and sprinting toward the locker room, then the woods. She guessed that meant she’d made up her mind.
“Eureka.”
Ander’s voice reached her, interrupting her plans on how to change into her uniform as quickly as possible. She wouldn’t change her socks, just yank her shorts on, toss off her shirt—
“I mean I’m sorry about everything.”
Everything? They had stopped at the back entrance to the school. Outside, past the parking lot, the track was shabby and old. A ring of unlaned, uneven dirt surrounded a sad, brown, disused football field. The cross-country team warmed up here, but their meets took place in the woods beyond the track. Eureka couldn’t imagine anything more boring than running around a track over and over again. Coach was always trying to get her to join the relay team in the spring track season, but what was the point of running in circles, never getting anywhere?
The rest of the team was already dressed out, doing stretches or warming up along the straights of the track. Coach was glaring at her clipboard, certainly wondering why she hadn’t checked Eureka’s name off the roll yet. Cat was yelling at two sophomores who’d drawn something in black Sharpie on the backs of their uniforms—something Cat and Eureka used to get yelled at for doing when they were sophomores themselves.
She unbuckled her seat belt. Ander was sorry, for everything? He meant hitting her car, of course. Nothing more than that. Because how could he know about Diana?
“I gotta go,” she said. “I’m late for my—”
“Cross-country meet. I know.”
“How did you know that? How do you know all these—”
Ander pointed to the Evangeline cross-country emblem stitched into the patch on the side of her bag.
“Oh.”
“Also”—Ander turned off the engine—“I’m on the team at Manor.”
He walked around the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. She slid out, dumbfounded. He handed over her bag.
“Thanks.”
Ander smirked and jogged off toward the side of the field where the Manor High team was gathered. He looked back over his shoulder, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. “You’re going down.”
5
STORMED OUT
Cat Estes had a particular way of arching her left eyebrow and parking one hand on her hip, which Eureka knew meant Dish. Her best friend had a splash of big, dark freckles across her nose, a charming gap between her two front teeth, curves in all sorts of places Eureka didn’t, and highlighted hair braided in thick pigtails.
Cat and Eureka lived in the same neighborhood near campus. Cat’s father was a professor of African American studies at the university. Cat and her younger brother, Barney, were the only two black kids at Evangeline.