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to talk about, but he didn’t want to sound too eager to discuss it. “So what’s the story with the preacher’s daughter?” he asked, as if he really couldn’t care less. If Ariel could do it, he could, too. “Every time I talk to her, she brushes me off.”
    Woody wiped some grease off his forehead. “Back in the day, she used to be a Goody Two-shoes. Now she’s frontin’ like she’s some hell-raiser. Wears her jeans all tight …”
    â€œYou could put a quarter in her back pocket and tell if it’s heads or tails,” Willard added, sounding like a man with some experience looking at her back pocket.
    Ren shrugged it off so they didn’t get the wrong idea. Or the right one. “I was just curious. It’s not like I was going to take her out dancing.”
    Willard laughed like Ren had just made a joke. “That’d be pretty hard, being that it’s illegal.”
    â€œWhat? Dating a preacher’s daughter?” This was a very, very strange town indeed.
    â€œPublic dancing is against the law,” Woody said.
    â€œJump back.” It was even stranger than Ren imagined.
    â€œIt’s been that way for three years,” Willard said.
    They had to be joking. Messing with the new kid. But the looks on their faces told Ren they weren’t making this up. “You’re serious about this? You mean Bomont High doesn’t have school dances?” That didn’t make any sense. How could an entire town agree not to dance?
    â€œThere’s what they call the Fall Ball,” Willard explained. The way he said it made it sound like it wasn’t much of a party. “That’s held at the church. The whole town shows up. Everybody’s eyes on you. And for one song they make you dance with your mother.”
    That last part didn’t sound so bad to Ren, but the rest of it was not his idea of fun.
    â€œThe schools don’t want to have dances on their property,” Woody added. “They don’t want to be held liable.”
    â€œLiable for what?” Ren asked.
    Willard shrugged. “Not much to do in a small town after a dance except get drunk or get pregnant.”
    â€œOr get killed,” Woody threw in with all seriousness. “That’s what started this whole thing. Five seniors got killed at this kegger party after a homecoming game. That’s when the whole town went crazy, blaming it on the liquor, the music, the dancing. Pretty soon everybody started thinkin’ dancing was a sin.”
    That explained the memorial in the middle of the school hallway. Ren had walked by it plenty of times since his first day, but he never thought to ask anyone what it was all about. It seemed obvious enough that the teens had been in some tragic accident. He never guessed that it had led to something like this.
    â€œA sin?” Ren asked. “We’re talking about the law, not Heaven and Hell.”
    Willard nodded. “Take it up with Reverend Moore.”
    Ren didn’t imagine that happening anytime soon.

Chapter 9
    After a few weeks of being ignored, Ren was about to give up on Ariel entirely. But old habits must die hard, because somehow his hand just had to wave to her one last time as he and Willard left school on Friday afternoon.
    He nearly tripped over his own feet when she waved back. Okay, play it cool . Now that the door was open, he wanted to go over and say hi to her, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Better to just leave it at a wave and hope for more next time.
    The rumble of an engine behind him clued him in to his mistake. Ariel wasn’t waving at him. She was waving at the driver of the oversize truck pulling into the parking lot.
    The guy behind the wheel was even louder than his engine when he called out to her. “Afternoon, little school girl. Hop in. You can tell me all about algebra.”
    Ren watched Ariel slide into the truck. Then, to make the