Ivy clutched at the dark emerald ring hanging on the charm around her neck, hoping it would ward off her fear like a magic amulet. As if. It had been three weeks since Ms. Starling assigned seats, and Ivy still felt like she was caught in direct sunlight without any sunblock. Sitting at a desk next to drop-dead Brendan Daniels each morning was torture. Quite enjoyable torture, admittedly, but still.
She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, shooting Sophia her meanest look—the death squint—as she crept past. Sophia rolled her eyes.
Ivy pulled the long wooden spike out of her bun as she sat down, then peered out at Brendan from behind a curtain of dark hair.
He was utterly Goth gorgeous in every way: skin the color of pure white marble, high cheekbones that made dark valleys in his face, curly black hair that hung near his shoulders. Her heart convulsed. She was sure she’d turn to dust if they ever exchanged a single word. He clicked his mechanical pencil.
I’m going to fail this class , thought Ivy. How can I concentrate on a single thing when he’s so close?
A singsong voice interrupted her thoughts. “After I win the cheerleading tryouts and become squad captain of the Devils, I’m totally going to do the best cheers ever!” said Charlotte Brown.
Kill me now, Ivy thought. Ivy could think of only one thing more painful than unrequited love, and it was hearing Charlotte Brown babble on about herself.
“I am already so much better than my big sister,” Charlotte twittered, “and she’s, like, co-captain of the varsity squad at Franklin High.”
“Maybe I’ll be your co-captain!” one of Charlotte’s minions said brightly.
“Maybe I won’t have a co-captain,” replied Charlotte coolly.
It was one thing to get assigned a seat next to Brendan Daniels and die of embarrassment. But it was another thing altogether to get seated behind Charlotte Brown and die of boredom listening to her endless, dumb, mean-spirited chatter. Charlotte and her lemmings had been yammering on about cheerleading tryouts nonstop since the first day of school.
Ivy pushed her hair behind her ears and pulled out her notebook. She angled herself away from Brendan—if she couldn’t spend eternity with him, she could at least use the time productively—and turned to the back page, where she jotted her ideas for the school paper.
“Former Franklin Grove Cheerleading Captains: Where Are They Now?” she wrote. Let’s see, she thought. There was Carli Spith, who was now a cashier at FoodMart. And Melinda Willsocks, who got crowned Miss Revoline at the auto show last year but still lived with her parents and couldn’t get a regular job. And . . .
Ivy realized that the room had suddenly gone quiet. She stopped writing.
“Class,” Ms. Starling announced, “I’d like to introduce you to a new member of the Franklin Grove community.”
Beside Ms. Starling stood the girl in the pink dress. Ivy got the same weird feeling she’d had when she’d first seen her in the hall—like déjà vu mixed with indigestion.
“Her name is Olivia Abbott,” Ms. Starling explained. “She’s just moved here from the coast.”
Ivy put her hand on her necklace and twirled her ring as she watched the new girl at the front of the room. Olivia’s long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her dress was seriously pink. She wasn’t the kind of person who would normally attract Ivy’s attention. So why did Ivy feel like she was looking at someone she had met before?
Olivia was given a desk right near the front, probably because, once again, Ms. Starling was determined to ruin Ivy’s life using the ancient curse of assigned seating; no matter how she craned her neck, Ivy was unable to catch another glimpse of the new girl’s face.
In between trying to learn about the legislative branch of government and trying to look cool and beautiful in case Brendan was looking at her, Ivy tried to figure out how she knew Olivia Abbott.
She decided to list all the possibilities in her notebook: Kindergarten? Elementary school? Dance camp? Summer retreat? Meat & Greet Diner? Costume ball? Mall? Finally, desperately, Ivy wrote . . . TV ???
There weren’t many people Ivy knew who Sophia wouldn’t recognize as well, so Ivy tore a blank corner from one page and passed a note back to her friend while Ms. Starling was writing on the blackboard.
Sophia’s response came at once: “R u kidding? She’s 2 pink 4 us 2 know!” She’d drawn one of her bunny cartoons at the bottom.
“Love your fur!” one bunny said.
“Pink is totally my natural color!” replied another, which had a ribbon in its hair.
Ivy tried to cloak her laughter with a fake cough, but the resulting rattle was seriously grave. Brendan probably thought she sounded like a cat coughing up a fur ball.
Ivy saw Olivia raise her hand to ask a question. “Do we have to type the assignment?” Even her voice sounded familiar.
Ivy was more certain than ever that there was something strange about the girl in the pink dress.
When the bell rang, Ivy waited for Brendan to leave before she got up. She and Sophia were headed to their lockers when Sophia nudged her arm and said, “Looks like the new bunny’s about to be roadkill.”
Down the hall, Olivia Abbott was standing by the bathrooms, surrounded by four boys in black heavy metal T-shirts.
Oh no, thought Ivy. It was the Beasts.
Before she knew what she was doing, Ivy was rushing toward the group.
“New meat,” she heard one of the boys say.
“Yeah, dude.” Another Beast chuckled. “Like, with ketchup. I wonder if she likes horror stories.” They all guffawed.
For the first time, Ivy saw Olivia without a smile on her face. Their eyes met over the boys’ shoulders. Olivia looked half confused, half scared.
Ivy clenched her teeth. As night was her witness, there was no way she was going to let this girl be eaten alive by the biggest Goth losers at Franklin. “Buzz off and die, Beasts!” she growled, shoving them aside and stepping in front of Olivia. “Go haunt a convenience store parking lot.”
“What’s your problem, Vega?”
“You’re my problem, you rat. Now put a stake in it.” Ivy unleashed her death squint. “I said buzz off!”
The Beasts laughed uncomfortably before slinking away down the hall.
“I am so happy you showed up,” Olivia blurted. “I don’t even know your name, and you’re already my favorite person!”