A beat.
Then louder, aimed at me —
"I've been trying to figure you out."
A couple of heads lift.
I don't look up.
"Since you got here," she says. "Nobody knows what your deal is. You show up in a van, you get your own cottage, you've got someone following you everywhere you go." A pause, just long enough. "What did you do?"
I turn a page I'm not reading.
"Seriously," she says. "We're all thinking it. What do you have to do to get a personal security detail at school? Like what did you actually—"
"Becky." The girl to her left, low. A warning.
Becky doesn't take it.
"I'm just asking. Is it a danger-to-others thing or a danger-to-yourself thing, because what exactly are we dealing with—"
My back teeth lock.
Two people go quiet who weren't quiet before.
Becky keeps going.
"—because the babysitter thing is a lot, right? Like what did you actually—"
I lift my head.
She stops.
Mid-word.
My eyes find hers across the circle and I don't say anything and I don't move and that's the thing — the complete absence of movement, the going-still that isn't calm, the kind of still that registers as wrong before anyone knows why.
Becky's mouth is still open.
The girl to her left has pushed her chair back two inches without noticing.
I let it sit. One second. Two.
Then I say, "Careful."
That's all.
My voice doesn't rise. A growl sits under it — low, rough, not entirely human. Not loud. Just enough that it carries across the circle and stays there.
The room goes still.
A pen hits the floor somewhere to my left.
Nobody moves to pick it up.
Becky's face has gone the color of someone who just understood something she can't explain. Her shoulders pull back.
"I—" she starts.
