"Fifteen bucks," he said, rolling his narrow shoulders and looking Oleksa in the eye. I wondered if Eric would've been so ballsy if Oleksa had been standing up. Eric looked like maybe he was having the same thought. He took a small step back and looked away.

"We're in too." Four others dropped their own money on top of Eric's.

Part of me wanted to get closer to see what they were doing, but I stayed back.

Oleksa's clear gray eyes revealed nothing as he glanced at their faces, then at the cash.

"Deal," he said. He didn't move. Simply inclined his head and gestured with a quick curl of his long fingers. "Give to me."

Eric withdrew a Rubik's cube from the pockets of his baggy shorts. He grinned, twisting the sides of the puzzle until it was a jumble of random colors. Another boy drew up a sleeve and poised his watch in the air, fingers twitching over the stop mechanism. Oleksa's eyes met theirs. He didn't blink.

"Ten seconds," the timer said, shuffling from foot to foot.

"Starting . . . now!"

Oleksa caught the cube and his fingers flashed over the surface in quick successive turns, each pass aligning the colors with increasing accuracy. My heart sped up as I counted down in my head.

"There's no way . . ." Eric clenched his hands, glancing at his money. "The world record is just under seven." I rocked forward, inching up on my toes for a better look.

The timer looked from Oleksa to his watch. "Five . . . four . . . three . . ."

Oleksa gave the cube a final turn and slammed it down on the desk between them.

"I win," he said.

The class bell shattered the silence. Mouths hung open, but no one spoke. The watch's alarm rang, rubbing in Oleksa's victory. Students filtered into the room and took their seats, but my feet were glued in place. Oleksa could give Anh and me both a run for our money for the scholarship. And probably win.

I'd chalked Oleksa's poor grades up to laziness, a lack of competitive edge, but the steel in his eyes told me I was wrong. He clearly had the edge. So why wasn't he leveraging it? Oleksa turned his cold stare on me, that same gouging look I'd seen in Sunny View on Friday night. Then his hand shot out, smooth and quick, palming the money just as Rankin came through the door.

I hustled to my desk, feeling Oleksa's eyes on my back.

The blue ink letters were lighter today, as if the custodian had tried unsuccessfully to scrub them out. I covered them with textbooks, but the words dead or alive felt like more

than random graffiti and only intensified the feeling of being watched.

"Attention, people," Rankin called the class to order. He stepped through the aisles, pausing to count off sheets of paper. He dropped a stack in front of me and I took one before pushing them to Anh. "You have forty-five minutes to complete this assignment."

The room was quiet as we all read the instructions for today's lab. "We will be identifying mystery solutions. If you completed your homework assignment, then you have already researched the sixteen solutions you will correctly identify today."

Eric groaned. "Hydrochloric again? When do we get to work with something cool, like hydrofluoric?"

Half the room turned to stare at him. Oleksa uttered something in Ukrainian and looked annoyed to share a lab table with him. Rankin raised an eyebrow at Eric. "You are quite obviously behind on your reading or you'd know that hydrofluoric acid is lethally toxic and highly corrosive." His gaze drifted down to the orange juice stain on the front of Eric's white shirt. "And given that you are infinitely clumsy, you would do well to stick with the assignment at hand." Rankin leaned over his desk and stared around the room, waiting for our laughter to hush. "I'll take a moment to recognize our top three scholarship candidates: Anh Bui, Nearly Boswell, and Thomas Wiles, in that order." He nodded to the seat behind me. "Does anyone know if Mr. Wiles plans to join us today?"

We all turned to TJ's empty chair. As if summoned, his blue-and-white letterman jacket appeared in the door. "I'm sorry I'm late." He eased into his chair, leaving his stiff left leg protruding into the aisle.

"Do you have a tardy slip?"

TJ frowned. Sweat pinned his dark curls to his forehead and trickled into the neck of his jersey. He didn't have a car and varsity football players wouldn't be caught dead on the bus, no matter how long or hot the walk from Sunny View, or how hard it was on a bum leg.

"No, sir," he said quietly. Rankin nodded gently. No sarcasm. No witty admonishments. He simply said, "Don't let it happen again." Then he looked at the wall clock. "Forty-two minutes."

A flurry of activity and whispers broke out around me.

I looked down at the assignment and started to write my name.

"Miss Boswell," Rankin spoke over the heads of students as they gathered Bunsen burners and titration equipment from the cabinets at the front of the room. "A quick word if

I may?"

The tip of my pencil snapped, scattering lead over the page. Beside me, Anh bit her lip and glanced at the clock. I pushed back my chair and walked with my head down. Students in white lab coats hunched in circles, talking in low tones behind cupped rubber gloves as if the odd heaviness in the hall had followed TJ into the room.

Rankin spoke quietly. "You won't be tutoring Emily this afternoon. Miss Reinnert was involved in an unfortunate set of circumstances on Friday. The principal informs me she won't be returning to school for a while."

"Is she okay?"

Rankin's eyes flicked to TJ and he lowered his voice, apparently as aware as everyone else that TJ and Emily Reinnert were dating. The small show of sensitivity was out of character and I suspected Emily's situation was worse than he let on. "Marcia Steckler is on the waiting list for a math tutor. I'll arrange for you to meet with her on Mondays so you don't fall behind in your community service. I'll send a note to her second period class and ask her to confirm. If you don't hear from me otherwise, please plan to meet Marcia here at two forty-five." I opened my mouth to ask what had happened to Emily, but he gestured to my desk with his coffee mug. "That is all." My eyes drifted to TJ as I returned to my table. He looked lost in his own thoughts, absently massaging his leg brace while his partner worked double time to set up their lab.