“R.D., sixth grade. Forty-one dollars.”
“M.T., tenth grade. Ninety-five dollars and fifty cents.”
“A.B., eighth grade. Twenty-two dollars.”
Someone near the doors made a sound like a hiccup.
A tall girl in a green dress covered her face with both hands.
“C.V.,” Mr. Lombardi read. “Ninth grade. Two hundred eleven dollars and forty cents.”
Beside Skylar, Colton Vickery went the color of paper.
The grin he had worn all night slid off his face like water.
I felt something against my hip.
Something small and stiff, inside the pocket Skylar had yanked.
My fingers closed on it.
I pulled out a slip of paper, folded in quarters, gone soft from five months of being carried.
I unfolded it.
My father’s handwriting.
C.V. — 9th — $211.40 — paid.
I read it out loud.
I didn’t mean to.
My voice came out cracked and small, and the microphone picked up none of it, but the whole gym heard anyway.
