12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0x8tTaU60y
The carnival lights had dimmed to memory by the time the cicadas took over the soundtrack of summer—their electric hum filling the spaces between Oakley’s thoughts as he kicked a pebble across the empty school parking lot. The pebble skittered past a crumpled El Diablo chip bag, its logo grinning up at him like a dare he’d already lost.
Three weeks. That’s how long it had taken for the fallout to settle—for Tyler’s fryer-fried phone to become legend, for Ethan to vanish into the basement with his Xbox and a silence thicker than Amberly’s abuela’s hot sauce. Oakley’s fingers twitched toward his own phone, the screenshot still buried in his camera roll: Ethan’s terse text (“tell ur friend thx for the assist”) followed by a single thumbs-up emoji. The closest thing to gratitude his brother had ever managed.
Across the lot, Valerie balanced on the curb like a tightrope walker, her shadow stretching long in the August twilight. She’d stopped wearing eyeliner the day after the carnival—some unspoken pact with herself, like she’d shed a layer of armor along with the Kohl’s smudge. Now she squinted against the sunset, tossing a gummy bear at Oakley’s forehead with practiced aim. “Stop brooding,” she said, as if it were that simple. “Your brother’s not the first guy to kiss a dude near a locker.”
The gummy bear stuck to his eyebrow. Oakley peeled it off, sticky with sweat and dust. “Yeah, well.” He rolled it between his fingers. “Most guys don’t get caught by their little brother’s mortal enemy.”
The sound of Jovie's scream echoed off the gas station's fluorescent-lit ceiling as she dunked her entire head into the Slurpee machine's icy depths. Walker, still faintly glittering from his rainbow forehead debacle, blinked at the spectacle. "Okay," he said slowly, "either she's having a religious experience, or—"
"House rules," Joel interrupted, grinning as he wiped milk off his chin. He'd just finished recounting Amberly's *El Diablo* chip dare—complete with dramatic reenactment of Jovie's subsequent milk-fountain routine—to Walker's mounting horror. "Amberly's got this whole system. Basically, if you're within fifty feet of beef jerky when someone asks, the dare's gotta be gas-station themed."
Jovie emerged from the Slurpee machine with a wet *schlorp*, her bangs frozen into stiff blue spikes. She gasped like a drowning victim, shaking Slurpee droplets from her eyelashes. "Never," she wheezed, pointing an accusing finger at Amberly, "again."
Amberly, perched atop the ice cooler like some sort of red-haired gremlin queen, tossed another chip bag—this one labeled Reaper's Revenge—from hand to hand. "Relax, chica, I ran out of the good stuff." She winked at Walker. "Unless you wanna play?"
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and then Add to home screen.