The fumes from the spray can in my hand spiraled up into my nasal cavity, but I held back the sneeze and turned away from the rage board—as Mckenna lovingly referred to it.

There was some paint on my hand, since I admittedly had no idea how to control the spray path, and I briefly hoped it would come off when it met with water. The last thing I needed was my mom catching onto this. I didn't think she paid a lot of attention, but she had that weird, super-powered sense of smell that seemed to accompany being not just a mother, but a Black mother, sniffing out anticipatory mischief long before it was fully formed. It was why she cornered me the night I went to Roman's party, why she saw how low the neckline of my top was even through my oversized jacket. Despite my lie that I was hanging out with Tate, despite her eventual conviction that I could leave the house, she remained a little suspicious.

In hindsight, I should've gone upstairs the first time she opposed, rather than remind her of how intently she was butchering my social life.

An ache reverberated through my chest. Whatever went down, she couldn't find out about this. What happened in Female Rage stayed in Female Rage.

I met Rain's hardened eyes first, only becoming aware then of how silent the room was. They were all transfixed, eyes darting between me and the absolute monster of an expression I'd just added to their wall, painted over several other outbursts.

A wave of heat hit me smack-dab in the face.

I looked over my shoulder at it, at the paint that dripped from the fierce dark lines of Roman Barbieri, the slight defacement of his first name, because regardless, respect to his ancestors. Then my gaze zeroed in on the little commentary I'd left beneath it.

Hungry like a wolf.

It wasn't little in a literal sense. In fact, you could argue that it was a little too large, bursting from the arrow that curled from his name, telling you that it was for him, just in case it wasn't clear enough.

Aaron reached up to scratch a spot just above his eyebrow, and Rain cleared his throat in tandem.

"That is a statement," he commented, the first time anyone was speaking since Mckenna pressed the can into my hand.

"Certainly larger than yours," Sequoia added.

They weren't smiling, but their voices were devoid of the heaviness I expected. That was one thing I noticed in the first meeting—they moved through discomfort, not hold it until it got too heavy to bear.

My nose tickled, my body reminding me that I was yet to sneeze and let go of the chemicals. Could I get high off of this?

"Does that feel better?" Mckenna asked from where she sat, leaned back in her chair with arms folded across her chest.

I took a glance over my shoulder at the wall again, fiddling with the peeling label on the spray can. When I turned back to Mckenna, she offered me what could've been a smile.

"In my head," I said, "he has one black eye and a half, a broken nose, a split lip, and a one-way ticket to a four-day coma."

"Damn, girl," Aaron commented, and Rain laughed, his eyes still painfully intense.

I wanted to hate it, wanted to hate how in just two meetings, I'd clocked so much. Like how Aaron stayed mostly quiet, but was both the funniest and liveliest member of the group. And how Sequoia rarely showed any emotion—though I told myself that might've just been because she was a little apprehensive of me. Rain stared at you like he could see through your skin and past your soul. Mckenna, however, was the mother hen presence the group needed. She allowed just enough mischief slide by, but also knew when to curb it and get everybody to focus on the task at hand. In an admirable way, too. Compared to what Mckenna was able to achieve with a directed comment or offhand joke, Tate was screaming into a void, practically begging whoever cared to listen to reassure her that she was in charge. And it was unfortunate, but she was lucky enough to get the reassurance she wanted, which only reinforced her behavior.

Mckenna was a presence, not a force.

Then there was me. Curious and doe-eyed, willing to please, but at the same time handed the freedom to be mad, to go off-character, to forget my lines, something I had no idea what to do with.

"This is why we assault the wall." Mckenna finally stood up from her chair. "And if this felt even the least bit satisfying, wait until Rebel Day." She stretched a hand out, gesturing to the spray can.

I handed it over and moved to the side, taking my creation in one more time before they enhanced it. It was what they did. Everybody had a go at hurting what hurt you, redefining the narrative, so to speak. They were far more artistically inclined than I was, as evidenced by the other pieces of art on the wall, but Mckenna most of all.

She created loops and curves around his name, splatters here and there, a carelessly stylish X over the O of his name in a different color. Then Rain joined her, picking up one of the stray cans in the corner and pushing a hand through his dark locks as he rose to his full height.

Aaron and Sequoia watched for a moment longer, before the former's chair scraped across the floor as he rose to the feet, broad shoulders flexing on an exhale.

Then I was watching them take apart what little piece of Roman I'd put up, and as I listened to every whoosh and rattle of the can, as the air grew pungent with the smell of the paint, I put myself back in the hallway, right when Roman was supposed to bump my shoulder with his.

But this time, he wasn't smug. His face was bloody and bruised, and my knuckles were the same, as everyone watched on in horror.

Fletcher was in the parking lot when I finally stepped out, flanked on both sides by a bickering Rain and Mckenna, Aaron trailing behind with a squealing Sequoia on his back. His presence stopped me dead in my tracks.

The strap of my backpack slipped off my shoulder, and I pushed it back up as I regained my footing. "King?"

Fletcher eyed the group for a moment, confusion darting across his bright eyes. Then he slipped his phone into the side pocket of his backpack and leaned away from his car as his eyes settled on me. "Hey." His eyes briefly moved to Rain, who did nothing but swagger past without so much as a glance or a goodbye.

"Hey." I looked over my shoulder as the others breezed past me, and returned Mckenna's slight wave over the sound of Aaron and Sequoia still fooling around with their piggyback ride. "What are you doing here? I thought you left."

"I've been trying to talk to you since the hallway this morning. Are you okay?"

I shuffled my feet. "Yeah," I said too quickly. "I, um, just needed to get away from . . . all of that."

He watched me for a second longer, and I could just tell he was contemplating asking me the question that kept him out here for over an hour. "What those guys did wasn't cool."

I nodded, averting my eyes to my feet. "Yeah."

"Thought you might need a ride."

"How'd you know I was still in?"

"Aspie, you're, like, 5'4". How hard can you be to spot in a crowd?" I allowed myself a chuckle, lifting my gaze back to him and telling myself to stop feeling so ashamed.

"I'm gonna get you back for that one."

He gave me a smile. "Also, you enabled location on Snap, and there's nowhere else in Crenshaw you'd be at 3:15 on a Monday."

"Ouch. Two strikes, King."

"With pleasure, peanut."

"Oh, you did not—" He was dodging before I even moved to get him for the insult to my length, his laugh echoing across the half-empty parking lot as he walked around the car to the driver's side. Students still loitered, and there was a weird still that existed here now that school had let out. It almost felt like an entirely different place.

"That's Rain Blackrock, by the way," Fletcher said once I'd settled into the passenger seat, and I paused halfway into lowering my backpack to the floor. Acting oblivious had never been his strong suit. I wasn't in love with it. Not even the King-scented air of his car could get my pulse to slow down.

I chuckled like I didn't know where this was going. Then I started to pick at the remnants of the spray paint on my index finger. "What about him?"

"Bad rep," he offered as he turned the key in the ignition. "Word has been going around."

"And, apparently, you listen to Wyland gossip?" I asked, a little too defensive based off of what Rain shared in the meeting today. It was a classic case of the misunderstood brooding character, and I wasn't going to enable talk about him from Fletcher, of all people. Maybe I was getting too committed—and too fast—to this thing I promised myself I was only trying out. Maybe I was just operating on the high of taking Roman's name apart on a concrete wall.

Fletcher looked at me with a sigh. "You stayed back an hour after school, hanging out with people I've never seen you with, and Rain Blackrock happens to be one of them?"

"Where else in Crenshaw would I be on a Monday afternoon, right? You said it. You don't think I have a social life outside you or Tate or my mom?" I didn't, but that wasn't the point.

"That was a joke, Aspen," he said, serious. "And I never said you don't."

I released a sigh of my own and turned to face the windshield, unwilling to go anywhere close to explaining myself or what it was I was doing after school. "Look, let's just go home, okay? I had a terrible day and don't need anything making it worse."

For a moment, Fletcher didn't move, and in my peripheral vision, I saw him watching me, intently. Then he nodded, put on his seatbelt, and put the car into drive.