just one more thing I have for you and you’re all set,” the secretary said. She was a little hard to hear over the buzz of voices coming from the hall on the other side of the glass wall behind me and the incessant ringing of phones inside the front office.
I glanced up from my schedule to find the secretary smiling. Her short, curly white hair and deep crow’s feet screamed helpful grandmother. She actually looked a little like our neighbor eight towns back who was a grandmother of eleven. I didn’t trust her for a second.
“I figured it must be hard to transfer so late in your senior year,” the secretary continued, “so I marked up a map of the school with the location of your classes. That way, at least you won’t get lost on your first day.”
Okay, I thought. That’s actually kind of sweet. I peeked at the nameplate sitting on the side of the tall counter separating me from the rest of the office. “Thanks, Mrs. Zalinsky. That’s really thoughtful of you.”
Little did Mrs. Zalinsky know that, thanks to my adventure with Mark last night, I already knew where every classroom was located. We didn’t use our more nefarious skills, like lock picking and camera tampering, just to practice escaping. I’d realized pretty quickly that having to ask for directions or stumbling into classes late didn’t help with blending in. And that was always the goal: to blend in. Blend in, follow the rules and don’t let anyone get too close. That’s what I’d learned after almost six years on the run.
Besides, if we got caught snooping around, Mark could just flash his badge and we’d get off scot-free. Of course, then we’d probably have to move again.
Mrs. Zalinsky grinned, pleased to be appreciated. “You’re welcome, Sloane.”
The little thrill that always shot through me when I heard someone say my new name for the first time danced in my chest. Sloane. I liked the way it sounded too.
“Let me grab the map for you.” Mrs. Zalinsky headed for an immaculately clean desk on the other side of the office.
I gazed at my name again, still surprised Mark had agreed to it. I’d thrown Sloane out on a whim and he didn’t even blink. He just nodded in that slow way of his, which made his thick hair, which was dark brown at the time, fall into his eyes, and said, “Sure.” I knew he would’ve preferred Sara or Samantha or something more mainstream for my nineteenth identity. He’d totally vetoed some of my more unusual suggestions—being Leia like the princess from Star Wars would’ve rocked—but he let Sloane slide by. Maybe it was because we were both counting on this being the last time we had to switch names.
I rubbed my thumb over my name. God, nineteen different people in almost six years. Well, twenty if you count my real name. But I don’t remember who that girl was anymore.
“Here you go,” Mrs. Zalinsky said, interrupting my thoughts. She handed me a map. “I circled your classrooms in order based on the colors of the rainbow. You know, Roy G. Biv? Red for first period, orange for second, and so forth. Except since we only have four periods, I stopped at green.”
I let out a low whistle. “That’s some serious organization. I’m impressed.” And I was. It sounded like something Mark would do, and I didn’t think anyone was as anal as he was.
“It takes a lot of organization to keep a school of more than 1,800 kids running smoothly,” Mrs. Zalinsky explained as she straightened an already perfectly aligned stack of papers.
I grinned. 1,800 kids. It was going to be so easy to be invisible in a school this size. All I had to do was coast through these last nine weeks of my senior year without any complications and I was free. In more ways than one. I’d be Sloane Sullivan forever. There was no going back to the person I was for the first twelve years of my life. I’d asked, but the Marshals felt dropping me back into my old life so soon after the confession was too risky, even with a plausible cover story. But honestly, I didn’t care. If being Sloane was what it took to get out of witness protection, I’d do it.
Out of WITSEC. I never thought it was possible.
“I’m not sure you’re going to need the map, pretty girl like you.” Mrs. Zalinsky nodded in my direction. “You’ll have the boys lining up to escort you to class if you smile at them like that.”
I took a moment to let the compliment sink in. Usually, I ignored anything people said about my appearance because it was never about me. Not the real me anyway. It was about a person with dyed hair or colored contacts or—after one horrendous experience with a hairdresser who had to have forgotten her glasses that day—a frizzy black wig that felt like a steel wool scouring pad. But this was the closest I’d looked to my true self in almost six years.
I was wearing contacts that turned my green eyes dark brown, but my hair was its natural pale blond. “The color of real lemonade,” my mom always said when I was a kid. Mark had never agreed to my natural color before. He’d deemed it “too light and distinctive,” and I hadn’t seen it since we left New Jersey. But since this was the person I was going to be for the rest of my life, I’d begged to go back to my roots. Washing my hair seventeen times in a single shower to get out the temporary auburn color I’d had as Ruby had been totally worth it.
I shook the piece of paper in my hand. “Thanks, but I don’t need any boys. I’ve got a color-coded map!”
“You’re welcome, dear. And if you ever have any trouble, just come to me. I marked the office with a bee.” Mrs. Zalinsky pointed at her nameplate on the counter. Two bumblebees were drawn hovering around the Z in her name.
I examined the map. Sure enough, there was a little black-and-yellow bee floating next to the office. “I’ll bee sure to do that,” I joked.
Mrs. Zalinsky chuckled as she reached for a ringing phone.
I waved over my shoulder and opened the office door. The volume level rose considerably as I entered the bustling hallway. I glanced at the map just in case Mrs. Zalinsky was watching—I’d been well trained to keep up appearances—and turned left toward physics, my first class of the day.
Despite the fact that I’d arrived early, people were everywhere: crowding the hall, cramming books into lockers, making out in front of classrooms. They were just like the students at the six other high schools I’d attended, except here there were more of them. I loved it.
A sudden burst of sound to my left caught my attention. A group of about twelve guys, standing in a slightly curved line and wearing matching navy blazers, had started singing. An a cappella group? That’s new. A crowd surrounded them, snapping and nodding along to something I recognized after a few seconds: “The Longest Time” by Billy Joel. A song I hadn’t heard in years wasn’t exactly what I expected from high school boys. Homesickness pricked my chest as I tried to figure out where I’d last heard it.
I slowed, watching the tallest guy singing lead in the center of the group as I passed. He had light brown skin and short dark brown hair, but even seeing the words come out of his mouth couldn’t make the memory hovering at the edge of my brain come into focus. When his eyes met mine, I ducked my head. I hadn’t even been watching him for a full minute, but it was all the time I needed to see it: the way the other boys took their cues from him; the slightly larger amount of space around him than any of the other guys, like his all-around awesomeness needed room to breathe; how every eye in the crowd followed him. He was popular. Charismatic. Not one to blend in. Therefore, not someone I wanted to know.
I kept my head down and studied my feet—lack of eye contact makes you more forgettable—as I turned the corner to the hall that would take me to physics. Which is why I didn’t see the person barreling toward me until right before we collided.
I had just enough time to spread my feet and bend my knees slightly. I felt the crash in my whole body, muscles tensing, air rushing out of me in a muffled umph, but a tiny step back was all I needed to absorb the impact. The other person hit the floor with a loud thud, knocking everything I was holding in my hands across the hall. Before I could even cringe at the lack of blending in, a prickly