She sucks her teeth before nodding. “Well, it must have been a doozy,” she says curtly before turning her back on me. She walks to a desk in the corner of the room as if I no longer get the benefit of her attention.
“Where’s Sydney?” I ask.
“Who?”
“My friend. She … She was with me in the cafeteria.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Louis says. “I told her to move along. We didn’t need a crowd.”
“Two people is hardly a crowd.…”
“Since you’re feeling better, perhaps you should change and get back to class,” Mrs. Louis says. “I suggest you talk to your parents about today’s incident. Figure out the cause. I know you’re new, but we don’t want to scare the other students.”
“Of course.” I have no idea what sort of scene I made, so I can’t argue with her. I cross the room to the mirror and gape in horror at my reflection. The bottom half of my face is stained pink from the blood that ran from my nose. I shiver, reminded suddenly of the bloodstains on Imogene’s hands from when she murdered her husband.
I sense Mrs. Louis watching me, so I pull myself together. I swipe my finger along the slightly puffy skin under my eyes, wiping away the mascara that has run. My uniform shirt has large droplets of red staining the fabric near the collar. Seems I’m always covered in blood.
“Here you go,” Mrs. Louis says, holding out a folded uniform shirt. I thank her, grateful that she leaves as I get changed.
I think about that with goosebumps rising on my arms. At Innovations Academy, there was no expectation of privacy. It was another way they controlled us. And despite being far away from there, it’s like I can still feel their eyes on me. I hurry and change.
Once I’m cleaned up, I head out to where Mrs. Louis is waiting just outside the door. She holds out a pass, and I thank her for her care.
The second I’m in the hallway, I take out my phone and examine it. There’s a crack in the screen from when I dropped it. Sydney must have picked it up and put it in my pocket. I glance around the empty hallway before clicking through past calls.
There are none from my number. I check everything, but nothing seems out of place. I can’t escape the memory of what I saw. The garden, the woman asking to be let in …
I quickly hold out my arm to check for marks from when she grabbed me. But the skin there is smooth. It was only in my head.
Even though I’m sure it was just a hallucination … it felt so real. And the realization hits me: the voice that Leandra warned us about, the one Imogene heard. It seems likely that it’s this woman. But she didn’t ask me to kill anyone. At least not yet.
I have no idea who she could be or how she got inside my head. But we don’t understand our programming, how it can be altered or adjusted.
I have to talk to the girls and warn them, but I’m not going to chance using my phone again. I drop it on the floor with a loud crack, and then I stomp on it to make sure the woman can’t call me again. Once my phone is destroyed, I pull out the battery and drop the entire thing into the trash.
I’m shaky, but I get through the rest of the school day without incident. Several students watch me like I might pass out again, but no one mentions it. In fact, I’m ignored, which is fine with me. I’m out of sorts, a dull headache clinging to my temples.
“How are you feeling?” Sydney asks when she finds me after classes end. “I’ve been worried.” We walk together toward the exit. I haven’t told her about the woman; I want to wait until we’re away from the school.
“I have a headache,” I say.
“Yeah, me too.”
Surprised, I look over at her and she shrugs. “Sympathy pain?” she suggests.
“Maybe you heard the sound.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” she says. “At least not that I realized.”
“We’ll get home and see if Annalise has any thoughts on this,” I say.
Sydney rubs her temple in the exact spot where mine hurts.
When we get outside, I’m surprised to see the sun shining in a clear blue sky. Innovations Academy was close to the mountain, and nearly every day was overcast. This place is different; it could be the lower elevation.
Sydney and I are walking down the stone steps when I notice a crowd of boys standing next to a sleekly painted red car. I recognize Garrett, the angry boy from this morning. He’s laughing, talking with three other guys.
But one of them catches my attention, and I whisper Sydney’s name. She follows my line of vision.
