CHAPTER 6

      An icy, crystalline mist slicks the pavement that night as I head over to Jek’s house just after nine. I knock on his door, still wondering what he wants, why he invited me, when a thought suddenly filters up from my unconscious: I don’t know if Jek ever got his phone back. He must have, right? There’s no way Jek’s been walking around for days without his phone and not noticing. Hyde said he was going to return it, and he must have done so. Besides, why would Hyde steal someone’s phone and use it to invite people to the real owner’s address? That doesn’t make sense.

      I’ve almost 100 percent convinced myself of this logic, but I’m just enough unsure that a little thrill pulses through me as I wait for the door to open. The thought that Hyde might be the one who texted me—that he’s the one who wanted to meet me here—settles in the back of my mind. What will I do if the door opens and it’s not Jek waiting for me, but Hyde?

      The door opens.

      It’s not Jek.

      “Hey, Lulu!”

      Before I can respond or react, long arms are flung enthusiastically around my neck. “Long time no see. Glad you could make it.”

      It’s Lane. Lane’s been friends with Jek almost as long as I have, so I’ve been friends with him awhile, too. He’s tall and wiry with rosy cheeks that make him look perpetually cheerful, which he basically is—a great big puppy, in human form. Even though I still think of him more as Jek’s friend than mine, I’ve always liked him.

      I greet Lane with slightly more reserve than he showed to me, then head to Jek’s bedroom to drop off my coat with the others, taking stock of the scene as I return to the main room. Jek’s apartment feels cozy and familiar to me, but to a stranger it would probably seem a bit odd. His aesthetic is a weird mix of druggie burnout and mad scientist, with walls covered with a mix of hip-hop posters, black light-sensitive abstractions and gently undulating mandala tapestries. The furniture consists mostly of hand-me-downs from his mom’s old place, which were already threadbare and falling apart when we were kids. And where the apartment’s freestanding kitchen once was is the most high-tech laboratory you could probably find outside of a legitimately funded lab. Unlike the comfortable decrepitude visible throughout the rest of the place, Jek’s workspace is meticulously clean and well-ordered, with his test tubes and pipettes lined up in gleaming rows, and a centrifuge and sterilizer tucked away into neat corners. His ongoing experiments and sensitive chemicals are carefully labeled according to his own unfathomable system and stored in a locked glass-front cabinet. And in the center of it all, Jek’s pride and joy: the strange, sleek machines his mother light-fingered from London Chem’s retired equipment storage for Jek’s personal use.

      Tonight, a handful of people are milling around the sitting area of Jek’s apartment and a few more are in his kitchen/lab. Of course. Not a date. Not an apology or a confession. And not a movie sleepover, like when we were little. It’s Friday night, and Jek is hosting a party.

      I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been to quite a few of these gatherings in the past, though I’ve skipped out on the last couple. They’re not parties like the kegger I went to with Camila, where half the school shows up to get wasted and trash someone’s house. Jek’s parties are much smaller, never more than twenty people, with the music low and unobtrusive and an emphasis on shared experience.

      These little get-togethers, which Jek calls his clinical trials, are really just his way of testing out whatever new compound he’s been working on. I remember when we were kids and his trials were more innocent. In early elementary school it was pretty basic stuff—baking soda volcanoes and the like. As he got older, though, it wasn’t enough for Jek to repeat experiments people had been doing for years. He wanted to do “real” science, like his mom and the other researchers at London Chem. He wanted to develop new compounds for the betterment of mankind. He worked on cleaning agents at first, sometimes with mixed results. Like the concoction he created to remove rust—it worked perfectly, except for the fact that it ate right through the metal.