Across the aisle, our classmates whispered to each other as they worked, casting him sidelong sympathetic looks. Emily's name carried across the room in hushed, worried tones. "Hey," I whispered to Anh. She was labeling glass vials with indelible marker and my eyes watered from the fumes. "Heard anything about what happened to Emily Reinnert on Friday?" Anh's concentration was focused on the lab. She didn't look up as she set the vials carefully into a rack. "People were talking about it on the bus this morning," she said absently,

her voice more than a whisper. "They said she disappeared after the soccer game at North Hampton. She went into the school to use the bathroom and never came back." TJ's chair screeched, attracting everyone's attention. His sweaty brow was furrowed, and I couldn't tell if he was angry or if he was going to be sick. He snatched the hall pass off a hook by the door as he limped from the room.

Anh and I looked guiltily at each other. I donned my goggles and rubber apron, determined to forget about it and get back to work, but the whispers around the room were persistent, and I was having a hard time concentrating.

"Did they find her?" I finally asked.

Anh shrugged. "Yeah. Sounds like it was a team prank that went a little too far. The custodian found her naked and unconscious in the gym under the bleachers. People say it was roofies." Anh shook her head and capped her marker. "Sick. They painted her."

I scrunched up my face. "What do you mean, they painted her? Like Picasso-painted her?"

Anh rolled her eyes. "Nothing quite so sophisticated. This is the soccer team we're talking about. Think paint by numbers." She poured a solution into the vials, recording their

reactions. "They literally painted her. They drew the number ten in permanent marker on her arm and then painted the rest of her body in those creepy oil paints people put all over their faces during the games."

I fought the urge to look over my shoulder at TJ's empty chair, only now beginning to understand the strange shift in the school's collective mood. "Ten? Why ten?"

"No one knows. Probably someone's jersey number." She waved it off. "A bunch of the players were in the store this morning and my brother heard them talking. The Hornets' captain is number ten, but he's pointing the finger at Vince DiMorello." "Wait. Our Vince DiMorello? Vince-Who's-Overly-Fondof-His-Middle-Finger DiMorello?" Vince was number ten for our team, but I couldn't imagine him pulling a stunt like this.

TJ and Vince were best friends. "Why would they think Vince had anything to do with it?"

Anh pushed a fresh pencil toward me, as if to remind me to get my head back in our own game. "Apparently, Vince and Emily have been fighting a lot lately." I remembered the look on his face before the pep rally, when she'd smacked the back of his head in front of all his teammates. "But it doesn't matter anyway. The rest of the team is standing by him. They told the police Vince was with them after the game. And everyone on North Hampton's team was accounted for."

Of course they'd say whatever they needed to in order to protect their star player. But this sounded like more than a prank. Getting drugged, stripped, and marked, and left under the bleachers was a lot worse than stink bombs in your locker or marker on your lab table. Even worse than a dead cat on your porch.

I shook off the news and concentrated on helping Anh, but my mind had a slippery unfocused feeling. The nagging kind that slinks around behind your thoughts like a word on the tip of your tongue. My brain stuck stubbornly on the image of Emily. Her blue cheerleader uniform. Her limp body under the bleachers.

Under the bleachers.

Newton was wrong. We clash with yellow. Find me tonight under the bleachers.

I eased into my chair as the colors of Newton's wheel spun in my mind. Isaac Newton's color theory was based on a wheel.

Colors that appear opposite each other on the wheel are complementary. But if we were talking about school colors, like in the case of Friday's game, the opposing colors wouldn't complement. They would . . . clash. Our school color was blue.

The color directly opposite blue on the wheel was . . . We clash with yellow.

"Their school colors . . ." I muttered, a prickling curiosity creeping through me. I reached for a beaker and kept my voice as matter-of-fact as I could. "Do you know what colors they painted her?"

Anh slipped off her gloves, the lab completed before I'd even had a chance to start. "One side of her was painted blue and other side was-"

Yellow, I thought. Only I must have said it out loud. Anh looked at me, analytical eyes asking all kinds of questions. I turned away. Began clumsily collecting up the tools, knowing I was stuck with the dishes since she'd done all the work. I shrugged as if I wasn't at all surprised before I answered the question on her face. "Just a hunch."

That afternoon, I was still thinking about Emily when I felt the light tug on my sleeve.

"Hey, are you okay?"

I withdrew my arm. I didn't like being touched, but Marcia Steckler was an "artist," and they tended to be touchy-feely like that.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I pushed my glasses up my nose for the six hundred and ninety-seventh time. They slid back down again. I thought about taking them off, but I was unfocused enough as it was. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?" "It's okay." Marcia stretched gracefully. "I'm distracted too.

Opening night is this weekend. Algebra is the last thing on my mind."

She looked like a dancer. Her loose cotton tank drifted over pale willowy limbs. How was she so comfortable exposing so much skin?

"Algebra needs to be on your mind for another fifty-three minutes." I glanced pointedly at the clock.

She leaned close as if she was ready to confess a secret and I pressed back into my chair.

"I've got a sixty-nine percent in algebra. If I don't get it up to a passing grade, the principal can pull me from the show.

And if Principal Romero doesn't, my mother will." "So we'd better get to work." I flipped through the textbook, eager to put a pencil in her hands to keep them away from me. She seemed nice enough, but you can't always judge a person by the parts they choose to show you. Touching someone, getting close, always reveals the darker parts they don't want you to see. And I really didn't want to know any of Marcia Steckler's deep, dark secrets. "You know, the play's the thing and all . . ." I mumbled.