Sydney waves from a lunch table in the cafeteria, where she’s sitting alone. I smile, my first real one today, and head over to her. When I sit down, we both sigh heavily, as if letting out a morning of frustration.
“This place is awful,” she says, and takes a bite of the sandwich that Brynn made her. We’re still getting used to eating regular foods. I’m not kidding when I say that I might never eat salad or drink green juice again. “How can they want to live like this?” Sydney asks, turning to me. “I raised my hand in class and didn’t get called on once. It was annoying. I kept count—only one girl got to answer a question.” She crunches a potato chip. “Obviously, she was the only one who got it right.”
“I had an interesting morning too.” I unwrap my peanut butter and Fluff sandwich. It seems Adrian was right. All the boys at the school are shown favoritism, and I wonder how farthose privileges extend. It’s going to make finding an investor’s privileged kid that much more difficult.
“My teacher knows EVA,” I say, keeping my eyes on my sandwich. “And STELLA.”
“My STELLA?” Sydney asks, spinning toward me. Her expression holds her sadness. She trusted her parental assistant too. I nod.
“They’re just computer programs on their phones.” My voice lowers, partly from embarrassment. “He used her to set an alarm.”
Sydney grows quiet. Along with feeling naive, I realize I also feel more like a product, like EVA. In a few years, would men ask us to set an alarm, casually using us to do their bidding?
“Everyone’s staring at us,” Sydney mumbles, looking up from under her lashes. “It feels like open house night at the academy all over again. But without ball gowns.”
The students are staring at both of us, but more at her, I’ve noticed.
She sighs, turning to block them out. “By the way,” she says, “I got called into the vice principal’s office during second hour.”
“You did? For what?” I ask.
“Uniform violation.”
Confused, I look over her uniform, which is exactly the same as mine, including the pockets Brynn sewed in for us. Sydney tugs on the hem of her skirt, which is significantly shorter due to her height. “You can’t help that you’re tall,” I say.
“That’s what I told Mrs. Reacher, but she mentioned that my thighs were very distracting to the boys.”
“What did you say?”
She smiles, taking a sip from her water. “I asked if the boys here had never seen thighs before. And then I suggested they might need to take another biology class. She wasn’t amused. The entire conversation was pretty repulsive, honestly.”
“I bet. I feel repulsed just hearing it.”
I look around the room, noting that most of the girls here keep their skirts long, just past the knee. And most of them play down their appearances, or at least they don’t accentuate their features the way Sydney and I were taught. I wonder if that’s their idea or an extension of the restrictive dress code. More than anything, I hope they have a choice in how they want to look.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. The only people who have my number are the other girls and Leandra, and they all know I’m in school. Sydney and I exchange a worried glance as I take out the phone.
My heart skips as I check the caller ID.
It’s my own number. I show Sydney and she stills.
“Is it a mistake?” she asks. “Maybe you shouldn’t answer it.”
I consider ignoring it, but I can’t take the chance. It might be a glitch of some kind, but what if it’s Annalise or Marcella? What if a girl needs our help?
I click answer and bring the phone to my ear, my eyes locked on Sydney’s.
“Hello?” I ask.
My voice echoes on the line, confusing me momentarily. Butunderneath that is dread that something is definitely wrong. I get to my feet and Sydney joins me.
“Hello?” I repeat a little louder into the phone. Suddenly there is a loud screech, a high-pitched wail that slams into my head like a lightning strike to my brain.
I cry out, dropping the phone and clutching both sides of my head as the reverberations get louder. I press the heels of my palms against my temples, my eyes squeezed shut. I feel wetness slide down over my lips, blood sputtering from between them as I cry out again.
Silence.
I’m in a garden of exotic plants. The sun shines above me, but the air is misty. Dreamily, I look sideways and find a woman on the bench beside me. She has wavy dark hair with streaks of silver, and sun-darkened skin with freckles. She wears a black dress with a wrist full of jingling silver bracelets. She smiles at me.
