Does she believe that? I saw the strange way she looked at Jackson in the lab—is that why? She doesn’t think that I can care about him? Or is she worried that he cares about me?

Leandra turns away to look down at Imogene’s body. “Just end the corporation,” she says to me. “Then you can worry about what comes next. Then you can choose how you want to live. Although I’m sure by then, you’ll see that I’m right.”

“Why don’t you just end the corporation?” I ask. “You seem to have all the power.”

She laughs at the idea. “Because I’m where I need to be to keep the other girls safe,” she says. “To leave, I’d have to kill my husband. And I’m not Imogene. I’m not reckless.”

I have no idea what she means by any of that. The room falls quiet until Sydney takes my hand. “Let’s go,” she repeats.

She begins to drag me toward the door, but I watch Leandra a moment longer, fascinated. She stares down at Imogene’s body. Her shoulders sagging, her lips downturned. And she gives away her first true sign of regret.

As I leave, I wonder which parts of her soul are left unbroken.

Obituary

Groger M.D., Harold

Dr. Harold Groger died this past week after a long illness. He’s preceded in death by his son, Harold Jr., and his wife, Priscilla.

Dr. Groger was one of the leading scientists in the field of genetics and enjoyed a long career in the private sector. His work helped save countless lives, and he will be remembered fondly by his patients for his intelligence, courage, and compassionate bedside manner.

Funeral services will be held this Saturday at Cohn Funeral Home.

5

The morning is breezy as I stand at the front doors of Ridgeview Prep, the small private high school Leandra sent us to in Connecticut. The school is well known in the community for their athletics, their elite student body.

Sydney and I registered as seniors last week and then spent the weekend studying up on the school, learning about the educators and administration, and, of course, its history. Turns out, this building was built by men. For men. It took decades for girls to walk the halls here, and even then, it was only begrudgingly allowed.

Which makes our arrival even more fitting.

We’re girls, but not in the way they think. We’re girls on a mission.

It’s been nearly two weeks since we left Imogene’s house, left our lives behind. We’re learning quickly, though, absorbing information faster than we thought possible. But it’s not easy, not easy to step into a world that would destroy us if it knew what we were. We have to be careful.

I pull open the heavy door of the school and step inside. My eyes flash as I quickly assess my new surroundings. I saw the school only briefly at registration, and to be honest, I wasn’t impressed. It’s a downgrade from the décor of Innovations Academy, minus the bars that were on our windows, of course.

The interior of my old school at least had the audacity to look pleasing at first glance. It was opulent in places that would be seen by investors. Ridgeview Prep, on the other hand, is little more than undecorated, unembellished hallways connected by white linoleum floors and white walls. The only exception is the trophy case, where glittering cups proclaim that Ridgeview is the best in the state across multiple sports.

I check the map I was given with my schedule, and then I begin down the corridor toward my first class.

The students all look the same, which baffles me at first. I was surprised to find that outside of Innovations Academy, students in some schools are forced to dress alike. Wear uniforms in differing, but not unique, shades of blue. Comb-smoothed hair and folded socks. I thought outside of Innovations, there would be more freedom. I thought a lot of things, I guess. Because I also thought that most humans would be like Jackson—a bit rough around the edges, but mostly kind. Curious.

That has not been my experience thus far.

“Damn, girl … ,” a guy says loudly as I walk past. I glance at him from the corners of my eyes, realizing his unwanted attention is supposed to be a compliment. I continue forward without responding.

“Fine. Be a bitch.”

His friends laugh and I tighten my notebook against my chest. It’s hard not to react, lash out, but I know that’s an impulse I have to control. Now that we are living without the constant rules and punishment of the academy, the girls and I have found that we can clearly see the bad behavior of men. It’s become intolerable to us, triggering in a way we don’t fully understand. We’ve untrained ourselves, deleted the complacent ideas in our programming.

Right now, this boy’s words in the hallway have made goosebumps rise on my arms and sickness swirl in my stomach. I want to at once fight and run from him. But that sort of reaction could jeopardize my larger purpose here.

And it’s only my first day, so I ignore him.

At the other end of the hall, I catch Sydney’s eye just before she walks into her class. We’d planned to arrive separately, hoping to avoid too much attention. Sydney lifts one eyebrow and I give her a quick nod to let her know I’m okay. Her mouth quirks with a smile, but it immediately drops when a boy steps in front of her to block her entrance into class.

I pause to watch them for a moment. Sydney is an anomaly here. Not just because she’s taller than most students, including the boys, or that she is inconceivably beautiful even in the bland uniform. She pointed out to me when we registered that she seems to be the only black girl at this high school.

“How is that even possible?” she asked later that evening. “I’ve seen the other people in this town and they’re not all white.”

At the dinner table, Marcella turned the laptop screen in our direction. “Apparently, there was a write-up in the paper a few months ago,” she said. “Ridgeview Prep was accused of discrimination and had to be court-ordered to stop blocking applications.”

“We were discriminated against at the academy for being girls,” Brynn said.

Marcella clicked back to the newspaper article. “Well, that and the fact that we’re not …” She paused, uncomfortable. “We’re not human. But Ridgeview is specifically accused of racial discrimination, rejecting applications of students who weren’t white unless they had athletic promise.”

“Great,” Sydney said dryly. “Sounds like a wonderful place for me.”

“Yet another reason to take them all down,” Annalise murmured, stirring the now-cold potatoes on her plate. “At this point, I’m not sure how humans haven’t eradicated themselves yet.”

“They’re trying,” Marcella said, giving us a quick rundown on climate change.

The girls and I spent the rest of the evening looking up the demographics of the area, the minutes from school board meetings, and lawsuits that had been settled out of court, but the concept was new to us.

We had very little interaction with the outside world while at Innovations Academy. Our bodies were made in varying shades and types depending on what our sponsors requested, but we were all grown in the same lab. It never occurred to us that we’d be treated differently based on our skin color.

Now the girls and I research everything with an insatiable thirst for information that the school denied us. But we still have so much to learn about ourselves and about the people who created us. We have so much to learn about society. About the kinds of people who could happily coexist in a world that creates teen girls to abuse.