“You don’t get anywhere thinking small, Lucy,” Raunch said. “You think this guy can really pull it off? Do you think the parents are gonna deliver?”

“Honestly?” Lucy said. “Sam’s parents didn’t come this far to keep us safe. They came to keep him safe. I think they’re gonna try. I’m pretty sure my mom and dad would.”

“Yeah,” Raunch said, wide-eyed and smiling. “Mine too. This is gonna rule.”

“You are evil,” Lucy said.

Raunch cackled, “No, Sam is. We’re just finally getting something good out of it, thanks to Gates. I heard that before the quarantine, he took over an airport and threw a three-day party.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I heard he punched, like, eight cops,” Raunch said.

“I heard it was one. At a Kmart.”

Raunch looked Lucy up and down. “You think he’s bullshit, huh?”

“I’m just not convinced he’s the school’s savior like everybody else is, that’s all,” Lucy said.

“Well, I heard those St. Pat’s kids were snobs, but after today, I think I like rich kids. Especially ones that like to spread it around. I wonder if Gates has got a yacht.…”

It went on like that between Lucy and Raunch for the rest of the walk back to the cafeteria. Lucy had stopped arguing with her when she realized Raunch wasn’t ever interested in resolving any points she brought up, she just liked to talk. Lucy had found her first real friend in the Sluts.

Lucy wondered if Will had gotten close with anyone in the Saints. In spite of the way he’d talked to her in the Stairs, she still worried about him. She couldn’t help it. It was hard seeing him standing with a bunch of strangers. They didn’t know him like she did, and she wasn’t sure they’d be a good influence. But he had people looking out for him, and that was something. And as hard as she knew it was to ask for his epilepsy medication in front of everyone, she was proud that he was brave enough to do it. For a split second out there she had wanted to run to him and wrap him in her arms. In that moment she missed him like crazy. But that was pointless. They lived in different worlds now. He’d made his decisions and she’d made hers.

As Lucy walked into the cafeteria, Raunch was doing an impression of Sam with his face taped like a mummy. This was the third time she’d done it on the walk back from the market, but it got Lucy each time.

“Stop … stop …,” Lucy said between laughs.

Raunch said in her best Sam voice, exaggerated and fierce, “How dare you! How … dare … you …” then she mimed being struck by the hammer. “Bwuh—”

Raunch fell into Lucy so she had to catch her trim little frame. They walked into the cafeteria and Sluts began to unload bags of food and supplies at the doorway to the pantry hall, while others started stripping down out of their food drop armor and hanging up their larger weapons.

Every Slut carried a knife. Lucy kept hers sheathed in a water-warped paperback that she tied around her thigh with cooking twine. It was a normal metal cafeteria knife, but the rounded tip had been ground into a nasty point, and the cutting edge had been hammered until it was paper thin. The metal was cloudy and scuffed from countless trips through a dishwasher, but an S painted on the base of the blade, in a curving, hair-thin line of red nail polish, gave it character. She hadn’t pulled it on anyone yet, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to, but most likely she would.

“C’mon,” Raunch said, eyeing Lucy’s bloody forearm. “Sophia’ll fix you up.”

Raunch and Lucy walked over to a long table where a bunch of Sluts were comparing injuries.

“Some Skater clotheslined me with a board,” a flat-chested girl said. “I’m gonna need a boob replacement.”

“You wish,” another said, and the whole crew laughed.

“Check this out,” one girl said and held up her middle finger with a strained grin. It was bent sideways at a sharp angle, a nasty-looking break but nothing a splint wouldn’t fix. “A Skater stepped on it.”

“Gimme your elbow, honey,” Sophia said to Lucy from the other side of the table. She was the gang’s Band-Aid girl.

Sophia was a perfect specimen. Everything on the girl seemed to push out; her cheekbones were round, her lips were pink pillows, her eyes gorgeous ovals with an elegant swoop. Her hair was a long shimmering auburn with bounce that defied gravity. She looked like the slow-motion girls in shampoo commercials.

“Am I going to need stitches?” Lucy said.

Sophia narrowed her eyes at the gash and twisted her lips in thought.

“Nah,” Sophia said.

Sophia wiped the blood off Lucy’s arm with some dampened toilet paper, and picked up a box of salt. Sophia tipped the box’s metal spout over Lucy’s arm and poured a long pile of salt across the cut. It stung a little, but Lucy was focused on her nurse. She had actually been looking for an excuse to talk to Sophia for a while now, but had never found a natural opportunity.

Sophia embodied sexual confidence, and that fascinated Lucy. The name “the Sluts” was misleading. Violent had chosen that name for her gang, for her own reasons. The girls in the Sluts weren’t slutty, so to speak. It wasn’t as if they slept with anyone and everyone who came along. They dated aggressively, and it was usually the boys who were the ones asking to make things exclusive.

“I like that Gates,” Sophia said. “He’s sexy.”

“If you like pink eye,” somebody said.

“Whatever, I’ll just borrow Raunch’s goggles,” Sophia replied.

“Sophia, please go on a date with Gates and wear my goggles,” Raunch said, laughing. “That would be so hilarious if you just never mentioned them, and acted like you looked all sexy and everything.”

When Sophia laughed, she laughed with her whole body, twisting around and closing her eyes like she was savoring it. “You guys, I’m saying, I like a man that can take charge. That’s hot. If he gets out of hand, whatever, I’ll stab him.”

The other Sluts laughed.

“Why do I think you’re not kidding?” Lucy said.

“You’d be right,” Raunch said. “Did you see those two Skater boys she was messing up in the market today? Soph, what are their names?”

“Rod and Tyson,” Sophia said, concentrating on folding toilet paper into a neat rectangle for Lucy’s cut. “Total assholes.”

Raunch pointed at Sophia. “They’re both her ex-boyfriends.”

Lucy did a double take. “Wait, I saw them. You practically tried to kill them. You dated them?”

“How do you think I found out they were assholes?” Sophia placed the TP bandage on Lucy’s cut, and began covering it with masking tape. “What about you?” Sophia said to Lucy. “When’s the last time you got laid?”

“Um …”

It was the secret that had kept her from joining in conversations like this when she heard them. She still didn’t want to say.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t gotten your rocks off since David,” Raunch said, and with that comment, the girls nearby simmered their conversation and edged toward Lucy.

The other girls didn’t know about David’s death, she hadn’t told them, so she couldn’t blame them for bringing him up, but it still hurt her heart to hear his name.

“How big was he?” Lips said.

The girls leaned in. Sophia narrowed her eyes at Lucy and made the same face she’d made when she was deciding what was best for her wounds.

“Pretty big?” Lucy finally said.

“Was he good at giving head?” Sophia said.

“He was …”

“Tell us! You have to! Come on!” others chimed in.

Lucy couldn’t think of what lie to say. All these girls asking her about the sex she never had with her dead boyfriend was making her mind spin.

“I bet he was rough,” Lips said. “He was so nice all the time, the nice ones are always mean in bed.”

“Did his missing eye make him fall over?” Raunch said. “Did you have to always do it on your side?”

Raunch scored more laughs with that one. Lucy stood up. She couldn’t take any more of this, and she wasn’t going to cry in front of them.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lips said. “Just tell us.”

Lucy saw Violent walking into the bathroom on the other side of the cafeteria. She walked away from the table of Sluts without a word.

“Hey, what the hell?” Raunch called after her.

Lucy ignored them and rushed to the bathroom. Inside, Violent was washing her hands. Lucy still trusted Violent the most of anyone in the gang. She was only able to get short and infrequent moments alone with Violent, so she always tried to make them count. The Sluts’ leader had a way of putting things in perspective that Lucy was coming to depend on.

“Um …”

Violent rolled her eyes. “Just spit it out.”

“How do you know when you’re ready to have sex?”

“I figured you were a V.”

Lucy couldn’t help but feel disappointed that she was that easy to read.

“What, is it written on my forehead?” Lucy said.

“It’s not a big deal, chill. You’re ready … when you meet someone you want to do it with. That’s pretty much it.”

“Yeah, but what if I don’t meet anyone like that? Will I get kicked out of the gang or something? ’Cause … I really like it here.”

That made Violent laugh. “I haven’t come across that yet.” Violent stepped away from the sink and wiped her hands on a towel. “You’re telling me there’s no hot boys who turn you on?”

“Well, sure there are, I’m a human being.”

Violent’s amused grin hung in place. There was affection in her eyes, Lucy could swear it.