I MET MITSUKO in the hall after her psych eval and filled her in on Hanna.
She scoffed. “If she’s not getting kicked out, I hope she leaves.”
“Why?” I was still reeling from Emilio’s words. Ask yourself why you don’t care. That kept running circles around my head. He’d made me feel like a terrible human being, absent of empathy.
No, I corrected myself; he hadn’t made me feel that way. My actions had.
“‘If they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be here,’” she quoted in a mimicry of Hanna’s voice. “Remember? And it seems like someone can’t handle it.” We headed to our room to change into running clothes.
She didn’t get to finish whatever admonishment she was preparing, because Hanna was standing in the middle of our room.
“Pissed off at me?” Hanna asked. She was back in her own clothes: jeans, a vaguely pink tank top and cotton jacket, her face scrubbed clean of makeup. She looked smaller than normal, like a child playing dress-up.
“Only returning the favor.” Mitsuko breezed past Hanna to plop herself down on her bed. “Are you here to say good-bye?”
“No.” Hanna crossed her arms over her chest. She’d pulled her hair back into a low ponytail and her face was impassive. “I’m going to go talk to them now. I was just changing.”
“Well, good-bye,” Mitsuko said. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Hard.
Hanna stared at the door for a few seconds. Her fists balled up and then relaxed. Her eyes fell on me.
I didn’t have any clue what to say. So I shrugged.
Without a word, Hanna walked past me and out the door.
“Hey, hotties!”
Emilio slipped out of the classroom door at precisely the moment Mitsuko and I walked by, on our way back from the track. He wriggled his way around a handful of other classmates and butted in between us.
He put his arms around each of our shoulders and I cringed away. “Sweaty,” I said by way of explanation. “We’ve been running.”
“Oh, is that why you’re wearing running shoes? Funny how I didn’t notice.” He jerked his head toward Mitsuko. “Is she all caught up on the gossip?”
“I am,” Mitsuko said haughtily. Emilio still had his arm around her. Funny—she never seemed to get sweaty. Why couldn’t my parents, when picking the genetic traits they wanted in their future daughter, have thought, “Oh, and let’s have her sweat slightly less than normal, too”? But no.
And now I was thinking about my parents again. I mentally shoved those thoughts away.
“Hey, Cass? You coming?” Mitsuko and Emilio were poised at the door to the cafeteria, waiting.
“Uh, no. I need to go take a shower real quick, I think. But I’ll meet you later.”
Mitsuko shrugged and they headed in to dinner.
Once alone in the hall, I surreptitiously tried to figure out if I smelled as bad as I looked. Mitsuko popped her head back out and I jumped.
“Sorry.” She looked like she knew what I had been doing and was trying to keep from laughing about it. “But I thought you would want to see the leaderboard, like, immediately.”
My heart leaped. I followed her through the door into the cafeteria and craned my neck above the buffet line. And I stared.
Cassandra Gupta. Number four.
Luka was still ahead of me. But four. From ten.
“And that’s not all,” Mitsuko said drily.
My eyes slid down the boards, noting Mitsuko’s name now resting comfortably at nine.
And Hanna, at rock bottom.
Oh man. I hope she did go home. If she sees this, we’ll have to have her committed.
Some names had disappeared completely. So if Hanna was still there, that meant they thought she actually had a chance. Guess Emilio was right—it wasn’t time to discount Hanna just yet.
I stood there in shock, drinking in the pleasure at seeing my name so high, until I felt a tug on my sleeve.
“Lola, just come eat with us. You don’t smell that bad.”
I smacked his shoulder pretty hard, but he only rubbed it and grinned. “Fine,” I said, getting in the buffet line with them. “I was really just trying to be polite, but whatever.”
After dinner, Hanna was coming out of the door to our room just as Mitsuko reached for the doorknob. All three of us froze.
Mitsuko broke the standoff by walking right past Hanna and slamming the door. I stayed.
Hanna turned her eyes to me as if dreading my reaction. “Do you hate me now, too?” She sounded tired.
“No,” I said automatically. Emilio’s words still bounced around my ears like echoes. “Not your biggest fan at the moment, but I don’t hate you.”
The corner of Hanna’s mouth twitched downward. She’d never looked so unlike herself.
“What’d they say?” I asked. “The NASA people.”
She shrugged. “I’m not kicked out. Not that it matters. I know I’m in the bottom now.”
I couldn’t seem to find the anger I’d had earlier. She just looked so defeated. “Some people have already gone home over this. If they didn’t think you could make it, you’d be gone, too. You still have a shot. You have to fight for it.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t seem convinced.
“I’m not sure why Suko was so mad. When you were in the pool for so long, we were all really worried about you. That was probably . . .” My hand, unsure of what to do with itself, found the edge of the door frame. “Probably really scary.”
The whites of her eyes were almost pale blue; they seemed to swallow her irises. Her throat worked, up and down.
This awkward encounter stretched on a little too long. “Well, I’m glad you are okay and all.” I moved to pass her.
“Hey, Cassie.” She caught my wrist. “Thanks.”