A long silence followed. “You may have something there,” Khail finally said.

“Yes! So you’re in?”

“Let me give it some thought,” he said. “I gotta go shower. I reek.”

“Okay. I’ll be at your house soon, just so you know. I don’t want you to turn around and freak out or anything.”

“Whatever. I’ll just keep pretending I don’t know you, nerd boy.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

I turned onto Sera’s street and pulled into my usual spot just south of the long driveway. Mrs. Hewitt was outside clipping roses. “Jeff,” she said a little tersely. I had assumed that the more I hung around the house the more comfortable she would get with me. Apparently I was wrong.

“Hi, Mrs. Hewitt,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

She looked down at her soiled gardening gloves and then back up at me like she was facing an earth-shattering problem. “Sera’s up in her room. I don’t want to track dirt in the house.”

Oh. Got it.

“I suppose under the circumstances you can go in and get her, but come right back down. Also,” she added, her voice vaguely threatening, “Khail’s up there too.”

I tried to look a little intimidated as I nodded and headed inside.

The house felt particularly quiet as I tromped up the steps. I’d been a little too cowed to tell Sera’s mom that I didn’t actually know which room was Sera’s, so I was hoping there would be one of those signs on her door that said Sera’s Room. No such luck.

I peered carefully into the first open door I came to. It was obviously a guest room. Perfectly made bed, paintings on the wall, two matching armchairs—but nothing personal. The next two doors were closed but the last one was ajar. I poked my head around the doorway and heard the faint sound of water running. The black, masculine furnishings—complete with a messy, unmade bed that could easily have been mine—told me there was no way this was Sera’s room, so it took me a moment to realize that the auburn hair I was staring at was indeed the back of Sera’s head.

Then I noticed what she was doing. She was holding a pair of jeans that were obviously Khail’s in one hand, and she had his cell phone in the other and was rapidly pushing buttons.

“Sera?”

She shrieked as I spoke and jammed the phone into the jeans pocket.

“What are you doing?”

Her face turned bright red and she kept rifling through the jeans in her hands. “You scared me! I was, uh, looking for some gum,” she said. “I was out and Khail usually has some, but nope, okay, let’s go.” She dropped the pants on the floor and pushed me out of the room, closing the door hard behind her.

“What are you doing up here?” she asked, not looking at me as she made her way to one of the closed doors. “My mom never lets guys come up here alone. Actually, she almost never lets guys come up here even if they’re supervised.”

She swung the door open and I fumbled for words as I walked into her room. It was like every stereotypical rebellious-teenager bedroom you see in the movies. The walls were covered in rock-band posters, the bed was unmade, black stars dotted the ceiling, and the only light was from a lamp on a messy desk. “Um, she was doing roses, or something. D-dirt, you know,” I stuttered. “Whoa,” I said when I saw the enormous poster of Cryptopsy over her bed. “Is that . . .?” I just pointed wordlessly.

Sera looked at me funny. “What? Because I’m a cheerleader I can’t like death metal?”

“No, it’s fine, but . . . I don’t know . . . this is, like, all emo and shit.”

“Yeah, well, truth is I’m not really into most of this stuff anymore, but it bugs the hell out of my mom, so I keep it up.”

I just kept looking around. I’m not sure what I expected, exactly, but it wasn’t posters of girls in miniskirts screaming into microphones next to guy-linered, spiky-haired percussionists. It was too weird. Of course, when you go to a school with uniforms, it is a little hard to tell who’s preppy and who’s goth. But I saw Sera almost every day—in and out of school—and she’d always been the semi-preppy, casual type. Not . . . this.

“Speaking of my mom, we better head downstairs before she goes ballistic. Is your mom home?”

“She was when I left.”

“Good enough. I can’t do my homework here; not today.” Sera’s mom had this rule about Sera not going to a guy’s house unless his parents were home. I was starting to believe that Sera’s mom had rules for every situation imaginable. As she’d predicted, the first question Sera’s mom asked was if my mom was home. I hoped I wasn’t lying when I said yes. My parents tended to come and go as they pleased.

As I drove and Sera chatted, I tried to put the picture of her snooping in her brother’s phone out of my mind. I mean, if I had a sister, I’d probably snoop in her phone too. But at the moment Khail was much more than just Sera’s brother. He was . . . I guess you’d call him my first mate.

Turned out my mom was home, but she’s way more lenient than Sera’s mom, so we went up to my room and Sera and I did homework for an hour.

And by homework, I mean we made out.

Close enough.

“Is it safe to come in yet?” Kimberlee asked, poking her head through my bedroom door with her hands over her eyes.

Kimberlee and I had apparently arrived at some kind of truce. She kept her distance when Sera was around and if she wasn’t exactly nice to me, at least she wasn’t actively trying to insult me. She seemed genuinely impressed by our little break-in—that and I suspect she went to the cave and saw how little stuff was left. I guess not even the epically unappeasable Kimberlee Schaffer could argue with results.