Yep. There it was. I didn’t need to know what the “Sneak” was to figure out her game—stealing a boy from under Scout’s nose. If I’d had any interest in Michael, it would have been hard for me to avoid clawing that superior look right off Veronica’s face. But Scout did good—she played the bigger girl, crossing her arms over her chest, her expression bored. “That’s great, Veronica. If you think Michael’s interested in you, you should go for it. Really.”

Her enthusiasm put a frown on Veronica’s face. Veronica was pretty—but the frown was not flattering. Her mouth twisted up and her cheeks turned red, her features compressing into something a little less prissy, and a little more ratlike—definitely not attractive.

“You’re bluffing,” Veronica said. “Maybe I will ask him.”

“Do you have his number?” Scout asked, reaching around for her messenger bag. “I could give it to you.”

Veronica practically growled, then turned on her heel and headed for the cafeteria door. Mary Katherine, lip wrinkled in disgust, followed her. Amie looked vaguely apologetic about the outburst, but that didn’t stop her from turning tail and following, too.

“Nicely done,” I complimented.

“Mmm-hmm,” Scout said, straightening in her chair again. “See what I mean? TBD.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “TBD?”

“Total brat drama,” she said. “TBD is way too much drama for me, especially at seven thirty in the morning.”

Drama or not, there were questions to be answered. “So, who’s Michael Garcia? And what’s Montclare?”

“Montclare is a boys’ private high. It’s kind of our brother school.”

“Are they downtown, too?”

“In a roundabout way. They have more kids than we do—nearly four hundred—and their classrooms are scattered in the buildings around the Loop.”

“What’s the Loop?”

“It’s the part of downtown that’s within a loop of the El tracks. That’s our subway,” she added in an elementary-teacher voice.

“Yes,” I responded dryly. “I know what the El is. I’ve seen ER.”

Scout snorted. “In that case, you’d better be glad you’re hooking up with me so I can give you the truth about Chitown. It’s not all hot doctors and medical drama, you know.” She waved a hand in the air. “Anyway, Montclare has this big- city immersion-type program. You know, country mouse in Gotham, that kind of thing.”

“They clearly don’t have a Foley,” I said. Given what I knew of her so far, I guessed she wouldn’t let us out of her sight long enough to “immerse” ourselves in Chicago.

“No kidding,” Scout agreed. She pushed back her chair and picked up her tray. “Now that we’ve had our fill of food and TBD, let’s go find our names.” Although I had no clue what she was talking about, I finished my orange juice and followed her.

“Our names?” I asked, as we slid our trays through a window at the end of the buffet line.

“A St. Sophia’s tradition,” she said. I followed her out of the cafeteria, back into the main building, and then through another link into another gothic building, which, Scout explained, held the school’s classrooms.

When we pushed through another set of double doors and into the building, we found ourselves in a knot of plaid-clad girls squealing before three rows of lockers. These weren’t your typical high school lockers—the steel kind with dents on the front and chunks of gum and leftover stickers on the inside. These were made of gleaming wood, and there were notches cut out of both the top and bottom lockers, so they fit together like a puzzle.

An expensive puzzle, I guessed. Slurry or not, St. Sophia’s wasn’t afraid to spend some coin.

“Your name will be on yours,” Scout shouted through the din of girls, young and old, who were scanning the nameplates on the lockers to find the cabinet that would house their books and supplies for the next nine months.

Frowning at the mass of squirmy teenagers, I wasn’t sure I understood the fuss.

I watched Scout maneuver through the girls, then saw blond hair bobbing up and down above the crowd, one arm in the air, as she (I assumed) tried to get my attention.

Gripping the strap of my messenger bag, I squeezed through the gauntlet to reach Scout. She was beaming, one hand on her hip, one hand splayed against one of the top lockers. A silver nameplate in the midst of all that cherry-hued wood bore a single word: SCOUT.

“It says ‘Scout’!” she said, glowing like the proud parent of a newborn.

“That’s your name,” I reminded her.

Scout shook her head, then ran the tips of her fingers across the silver plaque. “For the first time,” she said, her gazing going a little dreamy, “it doesn’t say ‘Millicent.’ And only juniors and seniors get the wooden lockers.” She bobbed her head down the hall, where the lockers switched back to white enameled steel with vents across the front—the high school classic.

“So you’ve upgraded?”

Scout nodded. “I’ve been here for four years, Lil, squeezing books into one of those tiny little contraptions, waiting for the day I’d get wood”—I made an admittedly juvenile snicker—“and G-Day.”

“G-Day?”

“Graduation Day. The first day of my freedom from Foley and St. Sophia’s and the brat pack. I’ve been planning for G-Day for four years.” She rapped her knuckles against the locker as girls swarmed around us like a flock of birds. “Four years, Parker, and I’ve got a silver nameplate. A silver nameplate that means I’m only two years from G-Day.”