The house was nice.
I didn't want it to be. I had prepared, on the drive over, to be unimpressed — to find some flaw I could hold onto, some imperfection that would justify the feeling of wrongness that had been sitting in my chest since Washington. I needed something to be wrong about this place. It would have helped.
It was nice. Tree-lined street, high ceilings, the specific quiet of a neighbourhood that had paid for its silence. A white door at the end of the upstairs hallway that I found by instinct and immediately claimed. The room behind it was empty and clean and hadn't decided what it was yet.
That, at least, felt honest.
Evie and Mariah introduced themselves — staff, late twenties, professional smiles that were warmer than professional and cooler than personal, which was exactly the right calibration. Mariah brought pasta without being asked. Evie mentioned that Martha had called ahead with a full briefing, which made me laugh and made me miss Martha immediately and made me understand that Martha had known exactly what she was doing when she made the call.
I ate. I looked around the room that was mine now and did the arithmetic of what that meant. I made a list of things that needed doing tomorrow. I did not think about Arthur or the chemise or the forty-five seconds I had filed in the section of my brain I kept locked.
I called Arthur.
---
"Dad had Sam report on me. The second I landed."
"He's your driver, Asia. Reporting is part of the—"
"He watches me through the rearview mirror."
"Maybe he's checking traffic."
"Arthur."
A pause. "Is he at least—"
"Don't."
"I was going to say *professional.*"
"You were not going to say professional."
He was quiet for exactly long enough to confirm that he had not been going to say professional. "Stay out of trouble."
"I'm always out of trouble."
"You once called me from a school bathroom to describe your exit strategy from a party you weren't supposed to be at."
"That was Washington. I'm more mature now."
"You've been in New York for four hours."
I hung up on him. He texted back immediately: *night ugly.* I sent back: *night mop head.* And then I sat with the phone in my hand for a moment, feeling the specific warmth of a person who had been in your life long enough to have their own language with you, and then I put it down and picked out my outfit for tomorrow and told myself I would sleep at a reasonable hour.
I did not sleep at a reasonable hour.
I watched things on my iPad and spiraled through social media and fell asleep somewhere near midnight with the lights still on.
---
7:02 AM announced itself like a personal attack.
I stared at the ceiling for approximately four seconds doing the mental arithmetic of how late I was and then I was out of bed and into the bathroom with the specific urgency of someone who has made a catastrophic miscalculation and is still trying to recover it.
The flat iron was on the wrong setting. The shower temperature was wrong twice. I put mascara on wrong the first time, which I have been doing since I was fourteen and should not still be doing, and I was standing in the middle of the room in one boot muttering things I won't repeat when Mariah appeared in the doorway.
She assessed the situation.
She took the flat iron.
She sorted my hair while I finished the rest, checked my bag while I laced the second boot, and had a to-go breakfast ready and a coffee travel cup in my hand before I made it downstairs. I said *thank you, Mariah* and meant it completely, and she said *fifteen minutes, Miss Alvarez, Sam's waiting,* and I walked out the door feeling the specific gratitude of someone who has been saved from themselves by a more organised person.
Sam was in the driveway. Engine running. Expression doing the thing it always did, which was nothing.
I got in.
---
The ride was silent in the way that uncomfortable silences are silent — not empty, but *full*, loaded with things neither party had decided to say. I ate my breakfast and looked out the window and he drove and occasionally the mirror showed his eyes moving to me and moving away.
I had started counting them. The mirror checks. This was the third morning and I had a running average.
Ambrose appeared at the end of a wide street like it had been placed there by someone who understood the architecture of intimidation. Old stone and tall windows and an entrance that said *this institution has existed longer than you and will exist longer than your children* — the specific self-confidence of buildings that have never had to justify themselves.
Students were everywhere. All of them moving with the purposeful rush of people who already knew where they were going.
"Three o'clock," Sam said as the car stopped.
I stepped out. Looked at the building. Felt the pre-social weight of being unknown settle over me — the specific vulnerability of walking into a room where everyone already has their arrangements and you are the variable they haven't accounted for.
"Ma'am." Sam's window. I turned. "You're late."
I checked my phone.
7:44.
Eight minutes to first period.
I looked at the emptying entrance and then back at Sam and he looked back at me with the expression of a man stating a fact and not offering solutions to it.
*Of course I am.*
I walked in.
---
The corridor split three ways and none of the signage made sense and I had Room 6, Evergreen, and no idea what direction Evergreen was in, and the hallways were thinning fast as everyone else apparently already knew this information.
I stood at the fork and looked at my timetable and understood nothing and considered, briefly, calling Sam back.
"Hey."
The voice came from behind and slightly too close. I turned and almost walked directly into him — tall, golden-blonde hair, a smile arriving before the word was finished. Easy. The specific ease of someone for whom this kind of thing had always worked.
"Evergreen?" I held up my phone.
He looked at the timetable. "Left hallway. Vending machines, then right."
"Thank you." I paused. He had warm brown eyes and an uncomplicated face — the face of someone who had not yet had to work very hard for most things and hadn't been made cynical by the ease of it. It was, in its own way, refreshing. "Is it that obvious? The lost thing?"
"Little bit." He offered his hand. "Nate."
"Asia."
"You'll like it here." He tilted his head, something in his smile shifting from friendly to something with slightly more intention. "I could show you around properly later. When you're not running late."
I shook his hand. He had a good handshake — firm without performing firmness. I noticed these things.
"I'll take you up on that," I said.
His face lit up in the uncomplicated way of someone who hasn't learned yet to hide when they're pleased.
*Predictable,* I thought. *But not unkindly.*
He was starting to say something else and I was starting to smile at it when I stepped back —
and walked directly into something.
Not a locker. Lockers don't breathe. Lockers don't have a specific, contained warmth radiating off them. Lockers don't make the air in a hallway feel different just by existing in it.
I turned around.
He was tall — taller than Nate, not enormously but enough to register, enough that you were aware of the height before you were aware of anything else. Jet-black hair. Cheekbones that a sculptor would describe as *architectural.* He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't immediately categorize — not rude, not warm, something cooler than both. Assessing. The way you look at something when you're deciding whether it's worth your attention, which is its own specific kind of arrogance.
His friend stood half a step behind him. Dark hair with white streaks at the temples that were too striking to be accidental and too precise to be anything else. He was looking at me too, but differently — with the specific quality of someone taking notes rather than making decisions.
I looked at both of them.
Both of them objectively, uselessly, extraordinarily good-looking.
I turned back to Nate.
Neither of them moved.
I felt it — the deliberate, chosen quality of their stillness. The not-leaving. I had walked into someone and apologised and kept moving, which was the end of a hallway interaction, which meant they should have moved on, which meant their staying was a choice.
"Is there a problem?" I turned back around and addressed the dark-haired one directly. He was still looking at me with that expression. Still doing the assessing thing. "Don't you think staring at someone is a little rude?"
Nothing. His face didn't move. He looked at me the way you look at something that has just done something marginally interesting and you are trying to decide if it is worth responding to.
"We're having a conversation," I said. "Your presence isn't requested. Keep it moving."
His friend put a hand on his shoulder — a specific pressure, the gesture of someone redirecting something rather than warning it. Something passed between them that I was not meant to see and saw anyway.
And then, without hurry, without giving me the satisfaction of a reaction, they left.
I watched them go.
"*Freak,*" I said, under my breath.
"Okay, princess." Nate appeared at my elbow. His voice was careful in a way it hadn't been before. "That's — let's maybe not do that. Ambrose has an ecosystem. It helps to learn the terrain before you start making moves in it."
"He was staring at me."
"I know." He said it with the specific quality of someone who was agreeing with me about the facts while declining to agree with me about the implications. "Let's get you to class."
"Who is he?"
A pause. One beat too long.
"Nobody you need to worry about right now," Nate said carefully.
Which was, of course, the most worrying possible answer.
---
I made it to History with forty seconds to spare and was counting it as a moral victory.
A girl materialized at my elbow at the door — heavy eye makeup, vintage denim overalls, the kind of face that had clearly made its peace with being looked at. She was reading my timetable over my shoulder without asking and without apology.
"Same class," she said. "Come on."
She took my hand and walked us both through the door mid-lesson with the complete composure of someone who had never once experienced social embarrassment as a deterrent.
The teacher — Mrs. Potts — turned from the board.
The girl spoke before anyone else could.
"Good morning, Mrs. Potts. This is the transfer student — I was helping her get oriented. She had some trouble finding the building." She delivered this with the specific tone of someone who was not attempting to be believed and did not need to be believed and was simply providing a framework within which everyone could comfortably operate.
Mrs. Potts looked at us with the expression of someone who had heard thousands of variations of this particular story and had long since stopped the energy expenditure of challenging it.
"Seeing as we do have a new student," she said, "I'll extend some benefit of the doubt. Sit down, Miss Ruffman."
"Thank you, ma'am." She moved to the back with the unhurried grace of someone who had arranged all of this before she walked in.
"Miss Alvarez." Mrs. Potts's voice warmed slightly. "Welcome to History. Find a seat and do try to catch up."
"Thank you, Mrs. Potts." I meant it.
I found Ruffman's eye. She gestured to the seat beside her like she'd saved it, which she had, which meant she'd planned this before I appeared at the door. I sat.
"Lue," she said, already opening her notebook. "You're welcome, by the way."
"For what?"
"The save." She glanced at me sideways. "You were going to stand in that doorway and overthink it. I could tell."
"I wasn't—"
"You were." She turned a page. "Also you used me to get in without a late mark, so we're even."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
"Fair," I said.
She almost smiled.
---
By lunch I had a read on Lue Ruffman that I was reasonably confident in: sharp, intentional, performing indifference to the things she cared about most. She had shepherded me through History and Math with the manner of someone who was doing it for her own reasons and those reasons happened to include being helpful. I liked this. Agendas I could read were preferable to helpfulness I couldn't explain.
Nate was waiting outside my last class. Hands in pockets, leaning on the wall with the studied casualness of someone who had been standing there slightly too long.
"You survived," he said.
"Provisionally." I fell into step beside him. "You and Lue know each other?"
They exchanged a look over my head. The particular look of two people with a shared history of something they had decided not to discuss with new acquaintances.
"Since forever," Lue said.
"Good," I said. "You can both tell me who everyone is."
---
The cafeteria was enormous and hierarchically mapped — I clocked it immediately because you always clock it immediately, the geography of status, who owned which space and how loudly. Ambrose ran the same operating system as every elite school I'd ever been in. The surfaces were cleaner but the machinery was identical.
We found a table. I ate. Fielded the new-girl questions and deflected the family ones with the ease of someone who had been doing it for two years. Nate was better in sunlight — his warmth was genuine rather than performed, his questions real rather than formulaic. Lue had opinions about everything and shared them without pausing to check if anyone wanted them, which I was finding rapidly that I preferred to the alternative.
And then I felt it.
The particular weight of being watched. Not glanced at — *watched.* The sustained, deliberate quality of attention that has made a decision about you and is comfortable letting you know it.
I looked up.
Across the cafeteria.
Him.
The dark-haired one from the hallway. He was at a table near the far wall — the table that people at schools like this call *their* table in the way that isn't about the furniture — leaning back in his chair with the loose, completely conscious ease of someone who owned the room and didn't feel the need to perform it. There was a girl on his lap. Pretty, polished, the specific energy of someone who had worked very hard to be exactly where she was. She had her hands in his hair and her mouth at his ear and he was paying her approximately no attention whatsoever.
He was looking at me.
Same expression as the hallway. That flat, measuring look. Except now it had something underneath it — something that hadn't been there before, or that I hadn't been standing still long enough to see before. Something that made the word *assessing* feel insufficient.
His fingers moved to the girl's arm without him looking at her. Pressed. Just slightly. Just enough that she shifted on his lap with a small, uncomfortable adjustment and he still didn't look away from me.
Saint sat beside him — phone down now, which felt deliberate — looking at nothing in particular, which was the sophisticated version of looking at everything.
"Hey." Lue snapped her fingers twice in front of my face. "You're gone."
"That guy," I said.
Nate and Lue both turned with the complete lack of subtlety that I was beginning to understand was a deliberate Lue policy — she refused to pretend not to look at things she was looking at.
"Damien," Lue said. Like it explained everything.
"And?"
"And that's mostly it." She gave a small, particular smile. "The one next to him is Saint. Inseparable — you essentially get both or neither. The girl is Nova. Head cheerleader, his girlfriend." She raised her middle finger in Damien's general direction. He didn't blink. She put her hand down. "They're also, technically, our friends."
"*Sorry?*"
"Complicated," Nate said. Quietly.
"How complicated?"
"Ambrose complicated," Lue said. "Which is its own category. Don't stress it today."
I looked back across the cafeteria.
Damien had not stopped looking at me for the duration of this exchange. He had the specific quality of someone who had decided that looking away was a concession he wasn't going to make, and I understood in a way I couldn't fully articulate that this was not incidental — that this sustained, unblinking attention was itself a kind of communication, and that I was supposed to understand what it was saying.
I didn't.
But I felt it. That was the thing I didn't like — I felt it in a way that was not entirely unpleasant and was entirely unwelcome, and those two facts sitting next to each other were deeply irritating.
He leaned forward.
Just slightly. Just a centimetre of shift in his posture. But the effect was a pressure change — like the room adjusted around the movement.
And then he smiled.
Slow. Private. The smile of someone who has just confirmed something they already suspected.
Something cold moved through me.
Something adjacent to cold moved through me directly underneath it.
Both of them were there at the same time and I did not appreciate either of them.
"*Psycho much?*"
I said it at regular volume. Not a mutter — a statement. Clear enough that Lue choked on her drink and Nate went slightly pale and three people at the surrounding tables turned to look.
Across the cafeteria, Damien's expression did not change.
He stood up.
I was out of my seat before the decision reached my brain — bag strap, shoulders, feet already moving, weaving through tables and chairs and the startled faces of people who had no idea what they'd just witnessed. Behind me I heard Lue say my name in a tone that meant *what are you doing* and I did not stop. I hit the double doors with both hands and pushed through and the corridor was cool and bright and empty and I kept going.
The parking lot.
Uber app.
I didn't look back.
---
Lue texted me at six: *okay so. he was VERY mad. like genuinely. but also you are absolutely iconic and i need you to text me back immediately.*
I read it three times.
Then I sat with the feeling that had been sitting with me since the cafeteria — the one I had been declining to examine. I was not afraid of Damien. I want to be clear about that. The thing I felt in the cafeteria when he smiled was not fear.
It was recognition.
The same specific feeling I got when I walked into a room and understood that the room was going to be interesting. Except directed inward. Except the room was me. Except the person doing the recognising was someone I'd decided on instinct was dangerous and my instincts had never once been wrong about that particular quality.
*He's the kind of problem that doesn't go away because you ran from it,* I thought. *He's the kind that notes that you ran.*
I typed back: *see you tomorrow.*
Turned my phone face-down.
Lay back on the bed and looked at my ceiling — this ceiling, the unfamiliar one, the one in the life I hadn't asked for — and tried very hard not to think about the way he'd smiled.
The way it had looked like the beginning of something.
The way something in me had recognised it.