Jacob
out with the senior captains on his very own roof on a random Monday night, he would have died of excitement.
him in headlocks, shut him up in the basement, and gave him so many surprise wedgies and noogies that he walked around his
house on high alert at all times. But after a random sixth-grade growth spurt that put him on the middle school track team’s
every afternoon after school. After coming in third in the four hundred at middle school counties, he’d tried out for the
soccer team on a dare from his friend Kai Gerber and made it.
Half the good things that had happened to Jacob in his life had been the direct result of him accepting dares. Or taking bets. Or orchestrating pranks.
Now here he was with Kai, Tucker, and Cody, eating their way through a jumbo bag of Doritos and trying to peg random targets
with old soccer balls. As usual, they’d crawled out onto the garage roof through the window of the bedroom Jacob shared with
his brother Chad. This was one of their favorite hangouts, at least when Jacob’s parents weren’t around to yell at them about
safety. Soccer practice had been particularly brutal, and they needed to blow off some steam. Thus, the target practice.
“I’m going for the bird feeder!” Jacob declared, pointing at the yellow cylinder hanging off a branch in the front yard.
“You know if you break that, Mom will kill you!” Chad shouted up from the ground.
“Ooh, Mommy’s gonna kill you!” Tucker teased, taking a swig of his energy drink.
“Shut up, Tucker!” Chad called, and Jacob was proud of him for sticking up for himself (though his face did go red from the
effort). Chad was a little chunky for his age and had an odd sense of style that involved graphic T-shirts featuring old cartoons
paired with baggy cargo shorts. He also hero-worshipped Jacob’s and Ford’s friends, even though his talents were more artistic
and less athletic. He’d won the third-grade holiday art contest last year and had his drawing of a dinosaur dressed up as
Santa Claus printed in the local paper.
“Ooooh! You’re in trouble now!” Cody said, shoving Tucker from behind.
As strong as Tucker was, Cody was stronger. Six foot four and broad-shouldered with dark skin and hair his former-military
dad shaved every couple of weeks, Cody could probably take anyone in their school down with a pinkie finger. Which was why
in addition to being cocaptain of the soccer team, he was also captain of varsity wrestling. Tucker stumbled forward, and
Jacob’s heart lurched as he grabbed for his friend. The roof of the garage was almost level, but not totally. His mom was
always telling him it was dangerous to hang out up here, and he didn’t want to prove her right.
“Dude, I’m fine,” Tucker said, shrugging him off.
“Don’t mock Chad,” Jacob told Tucker under his breath. “We need someone to retrieve the balls for us.”
Tucker rolled his eyes. “Fine.”
“All right. Bird feeder time.” Jacob pulled his arm back behind him, palming the soccer ball. “One! Two! Three!”
He hurled it. Kai lifted his phone to film. The kid was practically surgically attached to the device, which meant he’d caught
every embarrassing, triumphant, or hilarious moment the group had lived through over the past five years.
The ball arched through the air and smacked directly into the bird feeder. Miraculously, the thing swung up and over the branch
and back down again without anything breaking or falling off. It did, however, scatter excess bird feed everywhere.
“OH!” his friends cheered, whooping and pounding him on the back.
Jacob thrust both arms in the air. “That’s five for me, baby!”
“This guy can’t miss tonight!” Cody crowed.
Cody wasn’t wrong. So far Jacob had hit a planter full of orange and yellow mums, the basketball backboard, the blow-up ghost,
one of the giant metal pumpkins, and now the bird feeder. Everyone else had one or two points. Jacob was obliterating all
of them.
His mom went all out for Halloween, so there were plenty of targets in the front yard. Hay bales, a cornstalk, a couple of
scarecrows, the air-filled ghost, the metal yard stakes in the shapes of pumpkins and witches, and on and on. With seven kids,
his mother’s life was generally chaotic, but she was hyperorganized when it came to holidays. The Halloween decorations went
up like clockwork on September 20 each year without fail, and everyone chipped in to help.
“Holy crap, she will not stop texting me,” Tucker said, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“Rory?” Jacob asked, glancing over as he crunched into another Cool Ranch Dorito.
“Yeah, she’s tweaking about these cheer tryouts. Like, trying to get me to make people come. It’s cracked. Any senior who
wants to be in a sport is in a sport, and any senior who’s not is not for a reason.”
“Like Kirk Conway?” Cody suggested.
They all cracked up. Kirk Conway was the captain of the chess team, who had been lobbying to make it a varsity sport for the past two years.
“Exactly. Imagine Kirk Conway trying to throw Rory around,” Tucker said.
Everyone winced. It did not paint a pretty picture.
“Why don’t you do it?” Kai suggested to Tucker, flicking his dark hair out of his eyes. “Help your girl out.” He easily caught the soccer
ball Chad threw up to him and pointed at the backyard. “Into the trampoline.” He chucked the ball. It hit the net and unceremoniously
dropped to the ground.
“Chad! Backyard!” Jacob shouted.
“I got it!” Willow appeared from under the eaves. She must have been doing her homework on the patio. She strolled over to
the ball, used her toe to pop it up into her hand, and then tossed it effortlessly up to Jacob.
“Thanks, Will!”
She shook her head at them like they were so immature and disappeared again.
“Dude, your sister’s getting hot,” Kai said.
Jacob’s stomach twisted. He didn’t want anyone talking about Willow that way, but Kai’s attention was especially worrisome.
Every girl he’d ever known had been in love with Kai at some point or another.
With his dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and lanky-but-athletic frame, he had the innocuous good looks of a boy bander that apparently attracted all the ladies.
At least that was what Jacob’s older sister Laura—now a sophomore at UMass—had told him a couple of years ago.
It must have been true, because Kai had gone through more situationships than anyone else he knew.
“If you so much as look at her, I will end you,” Jacob replied, and Kai raised his hands in surrender.
“Me? On the cheer squad?” Tucker said, bringing them back to the topic at hand. “Yeah, right. Can’t you just see it?” He lifted
his arms. “Gimme an L!” he said in a high voice.
Cody, Kai, and Jacob all shouted, “L!”
“Gimme a U!”
“U!”
“Gimme a . . . wait.” He tilted his head and looked quizzically at the sky. “What comes after U?”
The guys collapsed in groans and laughter, but Jacob was mostly faking it. It was such a cheap shot. Why did anyone think
cheerleaders were stupid? Rory had better grades than everyone on his roof right now. Including him.
Tucker and Cody each took their turns with the ball. Tucker hit the scarecrow with the weird red-and-orange hat, and then
Cody missed the dead patch of grass in the front yard that never grew, no matter how much seed they put there.
“Good thing you’re the goalie and not a striker,” Tucker mocked him.
Cody flicked Tucker’s ear.
“Ow!” They started to wrestle until Jacob whistled as loud as he could.
“That’s it! I’m going to put this through the basketball hoop!” he shouted.
The announcement had the desired effect. Tucker and Cody stopped wrestling and therefore did not roll off the roof.
“You’ve got no shot,” Tucker said, scrambling to his feet and dusting his hands off on his shorts.
“Zero shot. Less than zero shot,” Kai amended, nodding as he ate a handful of chips.
“Oh yeah?” Jacob asked, feeling confident. He’d hit the backboard, after all. Why couldn’t he get it through the hoop? “How
about we make this interesting?”
“A wager?” Cody asked, popping open a lukewarm Sprite and taking a swig. “I like it.”
“If I make it, you do my math homework for a week,” Jacob suggested.
“Wait, which one of us?” Tucker asked.
“Kai, obviously,” Jacob replied. Kai was the only one of them in honors-level math, plus he’d just been recruited for the
math spot on the academic decathlon team.
“No can do, man. I got way too much on my plate right now,” Kai said. It would have been convincing, except they could all
see him scrolling through TikTok videos of girls in bikinis as he said it.
“Oh, I know!” Tucker said, his eyes lighting up. Never a good sign. “If you don’t make it, you have to try out for cheerleading.”
Cody and Kai both cackled. “Yes! Oh man, yes! Please do that. Please!” Cody gripped Jacob’s shoulder.
Jacob hesitated. He couldn’t try out for cheerleading. Other than having watched his sister do it for years, he knew zip about
the sport. Plus, there was no way he, or anyone else, for that matter, could participate in two varsity sports during the
same season. All the teams practiced every day after school, and there would definitely be overlaps in game times. It was
logistically impossible. So even if he landed a spot on the squad, he’d have to immediately quit. And if he did that, Rory
would hate him forever.
But then again, it didn’t matter, because A) he was going to make this shot and B) even if he did have to try out for cheerleading,
it wasn’t like he’d make it and, oh yeah, C) he was going to make this shot.
“You know what, fine!” he said. “You’re on. But if I do sink this, all three of you guys have to try out.” Jacob tossed up the ball and caught it again.
Kai, Cody, and Tucker looked at one another and came to some sort of silent agreement.
“Deal,” they said in unison. They all shook on it.
Jacob palmed the ball and turned toward the basketball hoop. He could see the ball sailing through the air and swishing right through. Could feel the heft of it leaving his fingertips. Could hear
his friends’ groans as he jumped up in victory. He couldn’t miss. And he couldn’t wait to watch them try to learn whatever
cheer routine Rory would choose for the audition.
“Three! Two! One!” Jacob shouted.
He lifted his arms. The ball soared. Everyone held their breath. Kai had left his TikTok scrolling to follow the arc of the
ball with his phone. The ball smacked into the backboard, clanged against the rim of the hoop . . . and ricocheted off toward
the street.
“Noooooooo!” Jacob cried.
“Yeeeeeeesssss!” Tucker shouted.
Kai had a monster grin on his face as he turned the camera to Jacob. “Jacob Reilly, what do you have to say for yourself?”
Jacob tried to quell the pounding dread in his chest. “Gimme that phone!” He made a grab for the evidence, but Kai was too
quick. He slid out of the way and dived for the open window to Jacob’s bedroom. Jacob dived after him and was halfway through
when something snagged his feet. It was Cody and Tucker. Each one had a hold of one of his ankles.
“No way you’re getting out of this, Reilly!” Tucker shouted. “You made a bet, and you never go back on a bet!”
“Let go of me!” Jacob said, struggling.
“Never!” Cody cried out.
But even as he said it, Jacob felt his shoe coming off the foot Cody was pulling on.
The second his foot was free, he gave an instinctive kick and his heel collided with something—from his position, he couldn’t quite tell what.
But then Tucker shouted, “Oh, shit!” and released Jacob, who went tumbling into the room, landing safely on his mattress.
“Cody!” Tucker shouted.
Outside, Chad screamed.
Heart in his throat, Jacob scrambled up and around and looked out the window at Tucker, who was staring over the side of the
house at the ground. He was alone.