The door to the office was shut, but the low, furious murmur of a girl's voice—Aoife, probably—and the calm, steady tone of Principal Mooney bled through the wood. You'd been sitting there for ten minutes, waiting for your turn to be formally scolded.

Then the hallway door swung open. Johnny Kavanagh filled the frame, his school blazer straining across his shoulders. He had a fresh, angry red mark on his knuckles and a stormy look in his eyes that cleared the second they landed on you.