After school, Tamaya waited by the bike racks for Marshall. The racks were empty. Most of the students at Woodridge Academy lived too far away to ride their bikes, and there were no school buses for the private school. A line of cars extended from the circular driveway up Woodridge Lane toward Richmond Road.

As Tamaya watched the other kids climb into cars and drive off, she wished she had a ride too. She was already dreading the long walk home. It would feel even longer with a backpack full of books.

Her face still burned with shame every time she thought about what had happened in the lunchroom. She was mad at Hope for saying what she’d said, and even madder at Monica, who was supposed to be her best friend and who should have stuck up for her.

So she was a good girl? So what? What was wrong with that?

Being good was partly what Woodridge Academy was all about. The students all wore school uniforms: khaki pants and blue sweaters for boys, plaid skirts and maroon sweaters for girls. Embroidered on each sweater, right under the name of the school, were the words Virtue and Valor .

Besides learning about history and math and all that, the students at Woodridge Academy were also learning to be virtuous . The school was supposed to teach them how to be good people. When Tamaya was in the second grade, she had to memorize a list of ten virtues: charity, cleanliness, courage, empathy, grace, humility, integrity, patience, prudence, and temperance. This year, she was learning their synonyms and antonyms.

But if you actually tried to be good, Tamaya thought bitterly, everyone acted like you were some kind of freak!

Marshall came out of the building. His hair was a mess, and his sweater, stretched out of shape, seemed to hang crookedly.

She didn’t wave. He came toward her, then trudged on past with hardly a glance.

Marshall had a rule. They weren’t supposed to act like friends around school. They were just two kids who walked to school together because they had to . They definitely were not boyfriend and girlfriend, and Marshall didn’t want anyone thinking they were.

Tamaya was surprised, however, because he wasn’t going the usual way. Normally they headed up Woodridge Lane and then turned right on Richmond Road. Instead, Marshall was heading toward the side of the school.

She adjusted her backpack, then caught up to him.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” he said, as if she’d just asked a really stupid question.

“But—”

“I’m taking a shortcut,” he snapped.

That didn’t make any sense. They’d walked the same way every single day for the last three years. How could he suddenly know a shortcut?

He continued around the side of the school toward the back. He was taller than she was, and was walking quickly. Tamaya struggled to keep up. “How do you suddenly know a shortcut?” she asked.

He stopped and turned on her. “I don’t suddenly know about it,” he told her. “I’ve known about it my whole life.”

That didn’t make any sense either.

“If you want to take the slow way home, that’s up to you,” Marshall said. “No one’s making you come with me.”

That wasn’t really true, and he knew it. Her mother didn’t allow her to walk home alone.

“I’m going with you, aren’t I?” Tamaya said.

“Well, then quit being a baby about it,” said Marshall.

She stayed with him as he crossed the blacktop, then went out onto the soccer field. All she’d done was ask how he knew a shortcut, she thought. How was that “being a baby”?

Marshall kept glancing behind him. Every time he looked back, Tamaya instinctively did too, but she didn’t see anything or anybody.

Tamaya still remembered her first day at Woodridge. She’d been in the second grade, and Marshall had been in the fourth. He had helped her find her classroom, pointed out where the girls’ bathroom was, and personally introduced her to Mrs. Thaxton, the headmistress. The new school had seemed like a big, scary place to her, and Marshall had been her guide and protector.

She’d had a secret crush on him all through second, third, and fourth grades. Maybe it still lingered a little bit inside her, but lately he’d been acting like such a jerk, she wasn’t sure she even liked him anymore.

Beyond the soccer field, the ground sloped down unevenly toward the chain-link fence that separated the schoolyard from the woods. As they moved closer to the fence, Tamaya could feel her heartbeat quicken. The air was cool and damp, but her throat felt dry and tight.

Just a few weeks before, the woods had sparkled with bright fall colors. Looking out the window from her classroom on the fourth floor, she’d been able to see every shade of red, orange, and yellow, so bright some days that it had looked as though the hillside were on fire. But now the colors had faded and the trees looked dark and gloomy.

She wished she could be as brave as Marshall. It wasn’t just the woods that scared her—and what might or might not have been lurking within. Even more than that, Tamaya was scared to death of getting in trouble. Just the thought of a teacher yelling at her filled her heart with fear.

She knew that other kids broke the rules all the time, and nothing bad ever happened to them. Kids in her class would do something wrong, and then her teacher, Ms. Filbert, would tell them not to do it, and then they’d do it again the very next day and still not get in trouble.

Still, she was sure that if she went into the woods, something horrible would happen to her. Mrs. Thaxton might find out. She could get expelled.

A dip in the rocky ground created a gap big enough to crawl through under a section of the fence. Tamaya watched Marshall take off his backpack, then push it through the gap.

She took off her backpack too. Ms. Filbert had once said that courage just meant pretending to be brave. “After all, if you’re not scared, then there’s nothing to be brave about, is there?”

Pretending to be brave, Tamaya shoved her backpack through the gap. There was no turning back.

Now who’s the goody-goody? she thought.

She wiggled under the fence, careful not to snag her sweater. KdnWr9xN7jItzL6HCtNr8lzSRNYut6x2TxnCThSsEoVFoSANKfqOYf7HVAIre1Ao