“I’m sorry, Tru.”

He glances back over his shoulder. “It was nice knowing you, Sloane Whitaker.”

Then he’s jumping off the corner of the roof, landing in our yard with a soft thud. A few seconds later, I see him climbing over the fence between our yards.

If this is the right thing to do, then why does it feel so wrong?

After the weekend I’ve had, I’m actually looking forward to school on Monday. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way in any of my previous dozen years of education. It’s a testament to the sad state of my life.

“Are you okay?” Mom asks, her voice gentle.

I give her a not-too-fake smile. “Yeah, actually.”

This time the silence on our drive is more comfortable, more…normal.

While she focuses on the road, I pull up my portfolio on my tablet and flip through the pages. I’m hyper-inspecting everything. The layouts. The labels. The art itself. Every nitpicky detail I can possibly study that might send up a red flag or give the scholarship committee a reason to put mine aside.

I am vaguely aware of cars zooming by. Traffic and concrete. Then trees. Then the brightly colored facade of NextGen.

Mom hits her brakes so hard that my tablet flies to the floor. Only my quick-reaction seat belt keeps me from slamming forehead-first into the dash.

“Mom, what the hell?”

She just stares straight ahead. Eyes wide, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

That should have been my first clue. She totally let my swear slip by unpunished.

“Mom, what?” I ask, starting to get a really bad feeling.

She doesn’t blink. Her voice is soft, weak, when she asks, “Sloane?”

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end as I turn to follow the direction of her stare.

“Oh my God,” I whisper.

My heart thunders, pulse pounding in my ears, and I can’t breathe.

Instead of the regular glass and primary-colored metal panels, the entire front of NextGen has been transformed. Swathes of blood red plastic crisscross the building. From roof to foundation. Spelling out three words.

Art. Saves. Lives.

Oh my God.

Chapter Fourteen

“Sloane?” Mom repeats after several frozen seconds.

Her voice knocks my thoughts loose, and suddenly they are racing everywhere.

“Mom, no,” I say. “This wasn’t me.”

“It’s…” She shakes her head, can’t tear her gaze away from the school. “Exactly the same.”

“I know,” I whisper.

And it is. Every detail, from the shapes of the letters to the spacing between them to the faint translucency of the plastic. It’s as if someone took the exact plastic from The Incident and glued it up on the NextGen facade.

Mom closes her eyes, lowers her head. “Did you—”

“No!” I blurt. “God no, why would I? Mom, you have to believe me.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“All I want is to get back to New York,” I reason. “You know that. All I want is to keep to our deal and go home after this quarter. Why on earth would I do this”—I gesture at the school—“when it would only prolong my sentence?”

Mom turns, looks me in the eye. “Swear,” she says. “Swear to me on your art that you had nothing to do with this.”

“Mom, I swear.” I keep my gaze as steady as possible. “This wasn’t me.”

She studies me for a moment, considering, and then nods. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I echo.

“You may have done one stupid thing.” She pulls the car ahead into a visitor parking spot. “But I trust you not to lie to me.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Before I can get too relieved, she adds, “But know that if you break my trust this time, it might be impossible to get back.”

I’m not sure whether to be relieved or insulted, but at this point I will take what I can get. I had absolutely nothing to do with this recreation of The Incident. But I know that convincing anyone else—and most especially Principal Ben—will be practically impossible.

“Come on,” Mom says, grabbing her purse from the backseat. “Let’s go face this head on.”

Two minutes later, we are sitting in the red faux-leather chairs in the main office, waiting for Principal Ben to finish with a phone call. Any hope I had that no one had noticed the sheets of red plastic covering the building—hahaha, delusional much?—evaporated when we walked into the office.

Agnes and Kyle gave me twin looks of disappointment. Like I had let them down, let the whole school down.

There is no point trying to convince them otherwise. In their minds, I am clearly guilty. Judged without trial. I can only hope that Principal Ben will at least listen to my side of the story—which is utter cluelessness.

“You can go in,” Agnes says.

I feel her eyes on me as Mom and I make our way to the door. The angry part of me—the part that feels somehow violated, like someone is using my own art against me—wants to flip her off behind my back. How dare she just assume that I’m to blame?

But the part of me that knows I’m innocent, that wants this all to go away the right way, keeps my hands safely in my pockets.

When we walk inside, Principal Ben leans back in his chair.

“So, Sloane,” he says, giving me a sad look, “it looks like we have a problem.”

“I didn’t do it,” I insist, lurching forward to lean on his desk, as if getting closer will convince him. “I swear, Principal B—Haverford, it wasn’t me.”

He turns his computer monitor to face me, and I see a photograph of The Incident. The one that ran on the front page of the Arts section of the New York Gazette.

“You have to admit,” he says, “that they are virtually identical.”

“I know.” I plop into my seat.

“Other than circumstantial similarities,” Mom says, “do you have any evidence that Sloane is the perpetrator?”

“Isn’t that enough?” he asks back.

“Not in any court in the country.”

Mom is in full-on lawyer mode. Normally I hate seeing her like this, all cutthroat and unrelenting. But today I’m relieved to have her on my side.

No matter how this goes down, at least I have that.

“Luckily, we are not at trial here,” Principal Ben says, leaning his elbows onto his desk. “The question I am left with is who else could have done this?”

“Anyone who reads the Gazette,” Mom offers.

“Or social media,” I add. “The artsaveslives hashtag was trending for three days.”

“While I am sure that the potential suspect pool is quite large,” he says as he pulls his monitor back to face him, “the question is who at NextGen in particular both knew about the incident and knew that the perpetrator was within our student body?”

I open my mouth to argue that anyone could know, but I snap it back closed just as quickly.

“Her identity wasn’t released to the public,” Mom whispers, all the steam gone from her fight.

Principal Ben nods, as if to say, Exactly.

Mom turns to me. “Who did you tell?”

Here comes the double-edged sword. If I reveal that I told anyone—not that I told, precisely, more that Aimeigh guessed—I will not only be ratting on my only friends here, but also violating Rule Two: Don’t tell anyone about The Incident.

If I don’t, I might go down for something I didn’t do.

“Sloane…” The warning in her voice tells me that breaking one of The Rules is the least of my problems at the moment.

“Aimeigh Mullins,” I say reluctantly. “But I didn’t tell her. She guessed.”

“Anyone else?” Principal Ben asks, and for the first time since driving into the parking lot fifteen minutes ago, I’m optimistic that he’s actually considering the possibility that I’m innocent.

But my heart sinks as I realize the only other name on this very short list.

“Tru,” I say. “Tru Dorsey.”

Mom makes a disapproving sound while Principal Ben pushes his lips together and nods once. Maybe Tru hasn’t snowed the administration as thoroughly as I thought.