Thirty minutes later, after what felt like some major literary déjà-vu, the bell finally rang, everyone suddenly pushing back chairs, gathering up their stuff, and talking at once. As I reached down, grabbing my own backpack off the floor, I couldn’t help but notice that, like me, it looked out of place here—all ratty and old, still stuffed with notebooks full of what was now, in this setting, mostly useless information. I’d known that morning I should probably toss everything out, but instead I’d just brought it all with me, even though it meant flipping past endless pages of notes on David Copperfield to take even more of the same. Now, I slid the FAMILY slip inside my notebook, then let the cover fall shut.

“You went to Jackson?”

I looked up at Olivia, who was now standing beside the table, cell phone in hand, having just hoisted her own huge backpack over one shoulder. At first, I was confused, wondering if my cheap bag made my past that obvious, but then I remembered the JACKSON SPIRIT! sticker on my notebook, which had been slapped there by some overexcited member of the pep club during study hall. “Uh, yeah,” I told her. “I do. I mean . . . I did.”

“Until when?”

“A couple of days ago.”

She cocked her head to the side, studying my face while processing this information. In the meantime, distantly through the receiver end of her phone, I heard another phone ringing, a call she’d clearly made but had not yet completed. “Me, too,” she said, pointing at the coat she had on, which now that I looked more closely, was a Jackson letter jacket.

“Really,” I said.

She nodded. “Up until last year. You don’t look familiar, though.” Distantly, I heard a click. “Hello?” someone said, and she put her phone to her ear.

“It’s a big place.”

“No kidding.” She looked at me for a minute longer, even as whoever was on the other end of the line kept saying hello. “It’s a lot different from here.”

“Seems like it.” I shoved my notebook into my bag.

“Oh, you have no idea. You want some advice?”

As it turned out, this was a rhetorical question.

“Don’t trust the natives,” Olivia said. Then she smiled, like this was a joke, or maybe not, before putting her phone to her ear, our conversation clearly over as she began another one and turned toward the door. “Laney. Hey. What’s up? Just between classes. . . . Yeah, no kidding. Well, obviously can’t sit around waiting for you to call me. . . .”

I pulled my bag over my shoulder, following her out to the hallway, which was now bustling and busy, although at the same time hardly crowded, at least in terms of what I was used to. No one was bumping me, either by accident or on purpose, and if anyone did grab my ass, it would be pretty easy to figure out who it was. According to my schedule, I had Spanish in Conversation next, which was in building C. I figured that since this was my one day I could claim ignorance on all counts, there was no point in rushing, so I took my time as I walked along, following the crowd outside.

Just past the door, on the edge of the quad, there was a huge U-shaped sculpture made of some kind of chrome that caught the sunlight winking off it in little sparks and making everything seem really bright. Because of this effect, it was kind of hard at first to make out the people grouped around it, some sitting, some standing, which was why, when I first heard my name, I had no idea where it was coming from.

“Ruby!”

I stopped, turning around. As my eyes adjusted, I could see the people at the sculpture and immediately identified them as the same kind of crowd that, at Jackson, hung out on the low wall just outside the main office: the see-and-be-seens, the top of the food chain, the group that you didn’t join without an express invitation. Not my kind of people. And while it was kind of unfortunate that the one person I knew outside of Perkins Day was one of them, it wasn’t all that surprising, either.

Nate was standing on the edge of the green; when he saw me spot him, he lifted a hand, smiling. “So,” he said as a short guy wearing a baseball hat skittered between us. “Attempted any great escapes lately?”

I glanced at him, then at his friends—which included the blonde Jump Java girl from my English class, I now noticed—who were talking amongst themselves a few feet behind him. Ha-ha, I thought. Moments ago, I’d been invisible, or as invisible as you can be when you’re the lone new person at a school where everyone has probably known each other since birth. Now, though, I was suddenly aware that people were staring at me—and not just Nate’s assembled friends, either. Even the people passing us were glancing over, and I wondered how many people had already heard this story, or would before day’s end. “Funny,” I said, and turned away from him.

“I’m only kidding around,” he called out. I ignored this, continuing on. A moment later he jogged up beside me, planting himself in my path. “Hey,” he said. “Sorry. I was just . . . it was just a joke.”

I just looked at him. In broad daylight, he looked even more like a jock than the night before—in jeans, a T-shirt with collared shirt over it, rope necklace around his neck, and thick flip-flops on his feet, even though it was way past beach season. His hair, as I’d noticed last night, was that white kind of blond, like he’d spent the summer in the sun, his eyes a bright blue. Too perfect, I thought. The truth was, if this was the first time I’d laid eyes on him, I might have felt a little bad about discounting him as a thick jock with a narrow mind-set and an even tinier IQ. As this was our second meeting, though, it was a little easier.