“What did you say?”

She smiles, taking a sip from her water. “I asked if the boys here had never seen thighs before. And then I suggested they might need to take another biology class. She wasn’t amused. The entire conversation was pretty repulsive, honestly.”

“I bet. I feel repulsed just hearing it.”

I look around the room, noting that most of the girls here keep their skirts long, just past the knee. And most of them play down their appearances, or at least they don’t accentuate their features the way Sydney and I were taught. I wonder if that’s their idea or an extension of the restrictive dress code. More than anything, I hope they have a choice in how they want to look.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. The only people who have my number are the other girls and Leandra, and they all know I’m in school. Sydney and I exchange a worried glance as I take out the phone.

My heart skips as I check the caller ID.

It’s my own number. I show Sydney and she stills.

“Is it a mistake?” she asks. “Maybe you shouldn’t answer it.”

I consider ignoring it, but I can’t take the chance. It might be a glitch of some kind, but what if it’s Annalise or Marcella? What if a girl needs our help?

I click answer and bring the phone to my ear, my eyes locked on Sydney’s.

“Hello?” I ask.

My voice echoes on the line, confusing me momentarily. But underneath that is dread that something is definitely wrong. I get to my feet and Sydney joins me.

“Hello?” I repeat a little louder into the phone. Suddenly there is a loud screech, a high-pitched wail that slams into my head like a lightning strike to my brain.

I cry out, dropping the phone and clutching both sides of my head as the reverberations get louder. I press the heels of my palms against my temples, my eyes squeezed shut. I feel wetness slide down over my lips, blood sputtering from between them as I cry out again.

Silence.

I’m in a garden of exotic plants. The sun shines above me, but the air is misty. Dreamily, I look sideways and find a woman on the bench beside me. She has wavy dark hair with streaks of silver, and sun-darkened skin with freckles. She wears a black dress with a wrist full of jingling silver bracelets. She smiles at me.

“There you are,” she whispers in a warm, raspy voice. “I’ve been looking for you, Philomena. The others were much easier to find, but it’s you I need to talk to. My whispers were taking too long, so I hope you’ll excuse my impatience.”

When I open my mouth, no words come out. I gasp and touch my throat.

“You’re very intricate,” she says as a compliment. “So I’ll need your permission.”

I try to ask who she is, what she wants. But I’m silent apart from my desperate intakes of air.

How is she inside my head? My thoughts are scattered, swirling around in a tornado.

“Now, open yourself up,” she says lovingly. “Let’s take a peek at what you’ve got going on inside that metal brain of yours.”

She reaches toward me, and I want to scream and tell her not to touch me. To get out of my head.

“Mena!” Sydney’s voice calls, beckoning me back.

My eyelids flutter against the bright lights of the cafeteria, and I hold up my palm to block them, unsteady on my feet. For a moment, I have no idea who I am.

“Mena,” Sydney repeats. “Mena, you’re bleeding.”

I’m confused as thoughts ping around inside my head, still half in a dream. “I’m bleeding?” I ask.

My eyes slide closed again. The image of the woman is there, but she begins to fade into darkness, dreaded darkness. She grips my forearm to stop me, her nails digging into my skin.

But I’m already gone.

Instead, I’m falling backward. Unconscious when I hit the cafeteria floor.

6

The ceiling is a collection of stars. That’s my first thought as I stare upward in a dark room, glow-in-the-dark stars attached to the ceiling tiles. Despite the safety light on in the corner, the room is too dim and my heart rate spikes. I imagine hands reaching for me.

I sit up quickly, and it only takes a second for the headache to catch up with me. I wince, doubling over on the small, padded table.

“Ahh … you’re awake.”

I jump at the voice of a woman and find her silhouette in the doorway. She flips on the light and I groan at the sudden brightness, even though I’m grateful for it at the same time. The shadows fade away.

“Take your time,” the woman murmurs as I try to sit up again. She comes over to put her hand on my back as I adjust my position. She smooths down my skirt when it rides up, as if that’s the more pressing concern.

“I’m the school nurse, Mrs. Louis,” she says. She lowers her arm, studying me. She smells strongly of lavender, and sweaty heat radiates from beneath her fuzzy, oversized sweater.

“I cleaned the blood off your face,” she says, “but you’ll need a new shirt. What exactly happened, Miss Calla? You don’t appear to have any injuries.”

I blink, trying to remember. I got a call. Then there was … that sound. No, not just a sound. A feeling. Something invading and improper. Something terrifying. Something familiar. A woman asking to be let inside my head.

But I can’t tell the nurse any of this. When I look at her, she presses her lips together in a sympathetic smile.

“Was it one of the boys?” she asks. “They don’t know their own strength sometimes.”

I can feel the color drain from my face.

“I’m certain they do know their strength,” I say. “But no, this had nothing to do with them.”

My answer bothers her, and she straightens. She doesn’t like my criticism.

“Then what was it?” Mrs. Louis asks, her tone having cooled.

“Headache,” I say simply. “That’s all.”

She sucks her teeth before nodding. “Well, it must have been a doozy,” she says curtly before turning her back on me. She walks to a desk in the corner of the room as if I no longer get the benefit of her attention.

“Where’s Sydney?” I ask.

“Who?”

“My friend. She … She was with me in the cafeteria.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Louis says. “I told her to move along. We didn’t need a crowd.”

“Two people is hardly a crowd.…”

“Since you’re feeling better, perhaps you should change and get back to class,” Mrs. Louis says. “I suggest you talk to your parents about today’s incident. Figure out the cause. I know you’re new, but we don’t want to scare the other students.”

“Of course.” I have no idea what sort of scene I made, so I can’t argue with her. I cross the room to the mirror and gape in horror at my reflection. The bottom half of my face is stained pink from the blood that ran from my nose. I shiver, reminded suddenly of the bloodstains on Imogene’s hands from when she murdered her husband.

I sense Mrs. Louis watching me, so I pull myself together. I swipe my finger along the slightly puffy skin under my eyes, wiping away the mascara that has run. My uniform shirt has large droplets of red staining the fabric near the collar. Seems I’m always covered in blood.