have to know that. "I just was wondering
if—there wouldn't be drinking , would there?"
Patrice laughed like I'd said something funny. "Oh, Bianca, grow up."
She headed off toward the library, and I got the impression that I wasn't
invited to come along. So I walked back toward our room alone.
Somehow my parents are cool, I thought. Does it skip a generation?
* * *
My parents had said that I would soon settle into a pattern,
and that when I did, I'd like Evernight more. Well, after the first week, I knew
they were only right about the first half.
Classes were okay, mostly. Mom made one reference to me being her daughter,
then said, "Neither Bianca nor I will ever mention this fact again. You
shouldn't either." Everybody laughed; she had them eating out of the palm
of her hand. How did she do that? And why hadn't she taught me how to do it,
too?
Other teachers took some getting used to, and I missed the informality and
friendliness of my old school. Here, the professors were imposing and powerful,
and it was unthinkable not to meet their high expectations. A lifetime spent
hiding from the world in the library had prepared me for the work, and I put
more time into my studies than ever. The lone class that bothered me was
English, because that was the one Mrs. Bethany taught. Something about her—just
the way she held herself or how she cocked her head before someone answered a
question in class—well, she was intimidating.
Still, academics weren't going to be a problem. That much I'd already figured
out. My social life was a different story.
Courtney and the other Evernight types had decided that I wasn't somebody to
despise; my well-liked parents had won me the right to be safely ignored, but
that was all. Meanwhile, the "new admissions" kids regarded me with
suspicion. I roomed with Patrice, and apparently that was reason enough to
assume that I wasn't going to side against her and her friends. The cliques had
formed within a day, and I was caught exactly in the middle.
The only other "outcast" I'd reached out to at all was Raquel Vargas,
the girl with the short haircut. One morning we'd griped about the amount of
trigonometry homework we had, but that was almost it for social contact.
Raquel, I sensed, didn't make friends easily; she seemed lonely but withdrawn
into herself. Not that different from me, really, but somehow even more
miserable.
The other students made sure of that.
"Same black sweater, same black pants," Courtney sing-songed one day
as she sauntered along, passing near Raquel. "Same stupid bracelet, too.
And I bet we see them again tomorrow."
Raquel shot back, "Not everybody can afford to buy every version of the
uniform, you know."
"No, I guess not," said Erich, a guy who hung out with Courtney a
lot. He had black hair and a thin, pointed face. "Only the people who
actually belong here."
Courtney and all her friends laughed. Raquel's cheeks flushed dark, but she
simply stalked away from them as the laughter got even louder. As she walked
past me, our eyes met. I tried to show, without words, that I felt bad for her,
but that only seemed to make her angrier. Apparently Raquel didn't have much
use for pity.
I sensed that, if we'd met somewhere else, Raquel and I might have found we had
a lot in common. But as bad as I felt for her, I wasn't sure I needed to spend
time with anybody more depressed than I was.
I thought that I wouldn't have been half as depressed, despite everything, if
I'd been able to understand what had happened between me and Lucas.
We were in Professor Iwerebon's chemistry class together, but sat at opposite
ends of the room. Every moment I wasn't trying to interpret the teacher's thick
Nigerian accent, I was surreptitiously watching Lucas. He didn't meet my eyes
before or after class, and he never spoke to me. The weirdest thing about this
was that Lucas wasn't remotely shy about speaking up to anybody else. He was
quick to cut down anybody he thought was being