Chapter 4 The Girl Who Knows Nobody

Lena's POV

I drop my schedule before I even find my locker.

It slides out of my folder, catches the air like it is enjoying itself, and lands face down on the floor right in the middle of the hallway. Three people step around it. One person steps on it. Nobody stops.

I pick it up, smooth the footprint crease with my thumb, and tell myself this is not a sign.

It is absolutely a sign.

Westfield High is loud in a way that feels personal. Everyone already knows where they are going. Everyone already has someone to walk with. They move in groups with the easy confidence of people who have been doing this together for years, and I move in the opposite direction of all of them, map in one hand, crumpled schedule in the other, looking for locker 214 like it is buried treasure.

I find it. I spin the combination three times before it opens. I shove my bag in, grab what I need, check the schedule, check the map, look up, and realize I have absolutely no idea where room 107 is.

I ask a girl near me. She points left. I go left. I end up outside. I come back in. I ask a boy near the water fountain. He points right. Room 107 is right. I walk in five seconds after the bell.

Every single head turns.

I feel each one like a separate small impact. Twenty-four pairs of eyes doing the same thing, landing on me, measuring, filing me somewhere. I find the back of the room with my eyes before anything else, and I walk to it like it is the only safe place in the building, which right now it is.

I sit down. I open my notebook. I stare at the blank page and breathe.

The teacher calls the roll. When she hits my name, she adds, "New student, yes?" and I say yes, and the heads turn again. I draw a small star in the corner of my notebook page and do not look up.

Then something slides across the desk.

A folded piece of paper. I look left. The girl next to me is staring straight ahead at the board, completely innocent, but her hand is still on the desk near where the paper landed.

I unfold it.

You look like you need one friend. I'm Priya. Yes, I am loud. You will get used to it.

I read it twice. Something in my chest loosens just slightly. I write back: How do you know I need a friend? I slide it back.

She reads it. Writes. Slide it back.

Because you walked in like you were walking into a fire, and you were going to let it burn you before you asked anyone for help. I know that face. I had it freshman year.

I look at her then. She is already looking at me. She has bright eyes and the kind of face that is always on the edge of saying something, and she smiles as she has already decided we are friends, and I just have not caught up yet.

I almost smile back.

Almost.

Priya finds me after homeroom and walks me to second period like we have been doing this for years. She talks the whole way, not in an exhausting way, in a way that means I do not have to say much, which right now is exactly what I need. She tells me which teachers give homework on Fridays and which ones forget, which lunch table has the best view of the door, and which hallway to avoid between third and fourth because it floods with seniors, and you will get swallowed.

She tells me one more thing, right before she peels off toward her own class.

"One more thing. The east hallway near the gym, avoid it between the second and third. That is Rochelle Tate's hallway, and she has already seen you."

I stop. "What does that mean?"

Priya's face does something careful. "It means she knows who you are. And Rochelle knowing your name before you know hers is never a good thing." She squeezes my arm once. "Lunch table four. I will save you a seat."

She is gone before I can ask anything else.

I file Rochelle Tate in the back of my brain and go to the second period.

I make it through the morning by keeping my head down and my notebook open. I take notes I do not need, just to have something to do with my hands. I answer one question in the third period when the teacher looks directly at me and I cannot escape it. I gave the right answer. A few people look at me. I look back at my notebook.

Lunch. Table four. Priya is already there with a tray and a running commentary on the morning that makes me laugh twice before I even sit down completely. Real laughs. The surprised kind that come out before you can stop them.

For about twenty minutes, Westfield feels survivable.

Then I see him.

Declan. Across the cafeteria with a group of boys who all move like they own the room. He is laughing at something, relaxed in a way he has not been in the house once since I arrived, like school is where he keeps his easy self and home is where he keeps everything else.

He does not see me.

But the girl beside him does.

She is beautiful in that sharp, deliberate way, everything about her placed just right. She looks across the cafeteria and finds me, as if she already knew where I was sitting. Her eyes move from my face to Declan and back again. Then she leans over and says something in his ear.

Declan goes still.

He does not look at me right away. He looks at the table for a moment, jaw tight, and then very slowly, like he is making a decision, he lifts his head.

Across the entire cafeteria, our eyes meet.

He looks away first. Immediately. Looking at me was a mistake.

"That," Priya says quietly beside me, "is Rochelle Tate."

I already figured that out.

What I cannot figure out is what she just said to him. What made his whole body go tight in one second? What made him look at me like he was checking whether I already knew something.

I replay Rochelle's text preview from last night in my head, the one I was not supposed to see on his phone when I walked through the kitchen.

We need to talk about your new stepsister. I found something you should see.

She found something about me.

Something she already told him. At lunch. On my first day.

Something that made him look at me across a crowded cafeteria like I was suddenly a completely different problem than he thought.

I stare at my food and smile at whatever Priya just said and act like my heart is not hammering.

What does Rochelle Tate know about me?

And why does the answer feel like it is going to burn everything down before I even get a chance to start over?