“Trouble!” Heather yelled, pointing ahead.
It was the Chapman students, rushing to the side of the road.
“Thieves!” yelled Trevor—who, to Courtney’s credit, actually did look like a weasel, small and furrow-faced. “Those assholes stole our float!”
“No shit we did!” Frankie pointed to the banner we’d left hanging up front, crossing out Chapman Hall Champions and writing East House Seven.
“You destroyed ours first!” Heather shouted.
“Caroline!” That shout came from Charles, who stood on the sidelines in a red-and-white lacrosse jersey, blinking up at her. “I trusted you!”
“Uh-oh,” Caro said, ducking behind me.
“We won’t let you use our float to win!” One of the Chapman students broke through the parade barrier and ran into the street, directly in our path, followed quickly by more. They were trying to block us from reaching the finish line at Blackwell. If they stopped us, we’d hold up all the floats in line behind us. The entire parade would come grinding to a halt.
Jack leaned over, shouting from the driver’s seat. “What do we do?”
“Just hit one,” Coop yelled, still throwing confetti in wild handfuls, the red and white paper everywhere, but mostly strung like tinsel through his hair. “The rest will learn!”
In a flash of desperation, a thought seized me. It was crazy and might lead to nothing but trouble, but there was something about being surrounded by Coop and Frankie, Mint and Heather and Caro, that made me feel like nothing bad could really happen.
“The fireworks,” I said. “Shoot the fireworks to scare them.”
Frankie didn’t ask questions; he simply ran to where we’d hidden them behind the palm trees.
“Aim up,” Mint called. “And be careful, you don’t want to—”
How it happened, none of us would ever figure out, no matter how many times we replayed it. One minute, Frankie was fumbling with the Roman candle; the next, his bathing suit was smoking, the firework was whistling upward, we were all shouting, and Frankie was doing what he later swore was the only thing he could think of: yanking his burning bathing suit off his body. He kicked it away right as the Roman candle exploded in the air, cracking like gunfire. The crowd gasped; the Chapman students ran, fleeing the street.
“Someone cover Frankie!” Mint yelled. Frankie was wide-eyed, frozen in shock, hands cupping his middle. For once, Coop was obedient, tearing a giant leaf off a palm tree and shoving it at him. For a second, Frankie just looked at the leaf. Then, slowly, he shook his head.
“Let’s hear it for the Crimson,” Frankie yelled, darting forward around the perimeter of the float, hands high in the air, while Coop chased him with the leaf. The crowd lost it when Frankie turned his back to them.
“Show-off!” Jack yelled from the driver’s seat. He put his foot to the gas, and the float lurched forward.
It was utter chaos.
“More fireworks!” Heather called. I whipped around, pulled by the laughter in her voice, and sure enough, she was beaming, looking out over the running Chapman Hall students and the shrieking crowd like this had all been perfectly executed.
“Are you crazy? We’ll burn down the float!”
Ignoring me, she lit a Roman candle. It sailed into the air in a perfect arc, cracking open into a sparkling flower. She shrugged. “I shoot fireworks with my dad every Fourth of July.”
Of course. Father-daughter time, that mysterious thing.
We turned the corner, revealing Blackwell Tower—and, in front of it, the massive stage where the chancellor gave his Homecoming address. We were so close.
Coop stepped to my side, his face wreathed in a halo of confetti.
“You look like a maniac,” I told him. “A school-spirit angel.”
He handed me a lighter. “Come on, we both know you want to.” When he glanced at me, the look was back, and it was just the two of us, the rest of the cheering, laughing, exploding world fading into the background. It was the return of that look, more than anything, that had me flicking the lighter, touching flame to the firework.
“Jessica the rebel,” Coop shouted, as the Roman candle shot up.
I watched through my fingers as it crested and opened, raining light like glittering gemstones.
The float neared the stage. And, for the first time, we came face-to-face with the chancellor, standing in the center of it, gripping a tall microphone. Even from here, I could see his face was purple.
“Will all students,” he bellowed, “who wish to remain enrolled in this university kindly cease fire.”