"Whatcha thinking about?" Neil asked, dropping a small pile of textbooks onto the table, inches from my blank sheet of paper.

"Nothing." I replied. How do you explain to anyone, roommate or not--that you've been blackmailed into the position of "club dog" for a group of rich boys because they found out that you weren't the gender you were pretending to be? And from there, how do you explain the reason you're a girl at an all-boys' school, or that the reasons the Four Lords found out was because of a girly laugh and a Twilight conversation?

"Liar." Neil sat down beside me. "You seem to have a lot on your mind."

"You don't know the half of it." I murmured under my breath.

"I guess not." He opened one of his books. "You know, you don't have to keep everything to yourself. You can rely on your friends."

I shook my head and changed the subject. "Are you going anywhere for spring break?" It started after school on Wednesday, and lasted until Tuesday morning, when we had belated classes and started school again at noon. Way too short, in my opinion, but lots of students were going places like Europe and the Caribbean.

"Yeah. I'm going on a business trip with my father." He made a face like he was in pain. "I guess it can't be as bad as last year, though."

"What happened last year?"

"We went to Colorado and climbed mountains for 'fun'. What about you? Got any plans?"

Truthfully, I had only briefly considered going home, because all my siblings had school that week and Cecelia was at her grandmother's until next Friday. "Maybe I'll go home." I told him. "I might just stay here though."

"I see."

I tried to concentrate on my homework, but today's events kept popping into my mind when ever I paused to check an answer in the back of the book, or had to look up an equation. After about five minutes, in which I completed half of a problem, I asked, "Neil, what do the Four Lords do?"

He laughed, closing his book. "That's a good one. I'm pretty sure that they don't do anything, but no one knows for sure. They might sneak girls into the school, or just watch movies, but nothing productive ever comes from that club, and the only thing it produces are four arrogant boys with delusions of grandeur."

"You sure aren't complementary." I joked.

"I know." Neil set down his pencil. "I was asked to join it at the beginning of the year. After I rejected them, they asked Edmund, who also refused. They finally found a fourth member, Alex, I think his name was. But why do you ask about them?"

"No reason." I didn't know why I was lying to him, only that I didn't want him to think less of me because I was forced into that club. I closed my textbook with a snap, gathered up my TI-84 and pencils, and tucked them under my arm. "See you."

I tried to leave, but Neil grabbed my wrist. "Seriously." He said, "Friends have to be there for each other, don't they?"