Third period was science. Like in Spanish, the material was incredibly basic; the teacher, a nervous, fortyish man named Mr. Watson, was only beginning to introduce the structure of cells. Again, Eden wondered what these mortals had been doing in school for the past six years. But after what had happened with Bola, it was sort of a relief to be bored. She kept her mouth shut and raised her hand only occasionally.

However, as Mr. Watson began to explain animal cells, Eden felt a sharp poke in her back. “Ow!” she cried.

Mr. Watson turned from his drawing of a mitochondrion on the dry-erase board. “Is there a problem?”

Eden glanced over her shoulder. There, at the desk behind her, was the girl from the hallway who’d called her a nerd. The girl smirked, and her dimples appeared.

Eden turned back around. “No problem,” she said. Mr. Watson returned to his drawing. From the desk to her left, Sasha gave her a sympathetic look.

“Loser,” the girl whispered, softly, so Mr. Watson couldn’t hear. The sharp thing jabbed Eden between the shoulder blades again. This time when she turned around, she saw it was the tip of a paper folded into a small triangle. Grinning, the girl offered it to her. Eden took it and unfolded it discreetly on her desk.

Drawn in pencil on the lined notebook paper was a caricature of Mr. Watson. Big buckteeth protruded over his bottom lip; sweat stains reached from under his arms to his waist; and his pants stopped halfway between his knees and his ankles. In a speech bubble were the words Science is my life!

The girl kicked Eden hard in the heel. “Ow,” Eden said again—louder this time. Mr. Watson whipped back around.

“What’s the problem now?” he said, coming toward her. She was in the second row, so there was no time to hide the paper. He swiped it off the desk.

When he saw it, sadness washed over his face.

“That isn’t mine!” Eden protested. She pointed behind her. “She gave it to me!”

“Ex-cuse me?” The girl sounded appalled. “I did not!”

“Yes, she did!” Sasha cut in. “I saw it.”

Mr. Watson looked from Eden to the drawing.

“I swear!” Eden cried.

 “She’s lying!” the girl insisted.

Mr. Watson shook his head. “Ladies, this is not the way we’re going to start the year.” He pointed at Eden, then at the other girl. “Eden, Gigi. Both of you in the hall. You can get your story straight out there.”

“Me?” the girl exclaimed. “But I didn’t do anything!”

“Now!” Mr. Watson’s face was turning red.

Eden’s chair scraped on the floor when she stood up. Seething, she stalked out of the classroom.

Gigi kept up the guise of being wrongly accused until they were through the door. Once they hit the hall, she doubled over laughing.

“What’s funny?” Eden demanded.

“Seeing you get in trouble,” the girl said. “You’re such a suck-up.”

“I am not!”

“Yeah, right. I watched you call out every single answer in Spanish. ‘Yo soy too foreign to raise my hand!’” she mimicked.

“I didn’t know, okay?”

Gigi leaned against the wall. “Why don’t you go back where you came from? Nobody here likes you.”

Once again, insecurity pierced Eden like an arrow. “Yeah, right,” she muttered, trying her best to hide it.

“You wanna bet?”

“Aren’t you new too?” Eden said. “Why don’t you worry about yourself?”

 “I’m doing fine. I’m making friends. You notice how nobody’s talking to you? Because it’s obvious you don’t belong here.”

Eden tried to pretend the words didn’t affect her—but she couldn’t help wondering if they were true.

Just then the classroom door opened, and Mr. Watson came out.

“Girls,” he said, “what happened today was unacceptable.” He fiddled with the pencil in his hand. “I should give you both detention. But since you’re both new to Mission Beach Middle and I want us to start off on the right foot, I’m only going to give you a warning.” Eden relaxed a little. She didn’t know what detention was, but she didn’t like the sound of it.

“Next time, this conversation will be with Mr. Willis. And I guarantee he won’t be as nice as I am.” He looked pointedly at Eden, then Gigi. “Understood?”

“Fine,” said Gigi flippantly.

“Eden?”

Eden nodded, silently fuming.

“Now, come rejoin the class.”

On the way back in, Gigi stuck her tongue out at Eden.

It was a relief to discover that the next period was lunch. Eden went through the cafeteria line with Tyler and Sasha. Each of them got a tray of chicken fingers and French fries, and Tyler grabbed a bag of M&M’s to split for dessert. Eden still had no money, of course, so he paid for hers again. How would she ever pay them back?

Although Eden and Sasha had been together all morning, it was the first time they’d reconvened with Tyler.

“You surviving so far?” he asked playfully.

“Barely.” It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Between her encounter with Bola and the incident in Science, school was becoming much more complicated than she’d expected.

“What happened with you and the world history teacher in the hall?” Sasha asked. “She was so intense.”

“Uh-oh. You already got pulled into the hall by a teacher?” Tyler teased.

“Twice,” Sasha clarified.

“She was asking about my school back in Sweden,” Eden lied.

“She was so fixated on you. It was weird,” Sasha said. “You’d think she’d be happy you’re so smart.”

“Hey, have you heard anything from your mom?” Tyler asked.

“Not yet,” Eden said. “She can be sort of hard to pin down.”

 “Sweden! How goes it in the U.S. of A.?” Cameron and Devin slid into the seats next to Eden and Tyler. Their trays were loaded with chicken fingers.

Eden shrugged. She didn’t want to admit how badly things were going.

Even lunch was confusing. In the cafeteria, it was clear to see how students divided into cliques. At least one common trait united each table. One pack of girls wore high heels and lots of makeup. A group of guys had ’hawk hairstyles like the man at the beach. At another table, a black instrument case was stowed by each seat.

Their own group was small—just Eden, the Rockwells, and the two other boys.

“Don’t we have more friends?” Devin asked. “Sash, where are your girls?”

“I guess they’ve made new friends.” Sasha nodded toward a table across the cafeteria. Skye and Claire were sitting with a group of boys dressed in matching orange jerseys. One of them had an arm draped around Skye; Claire was laughing at something another had said.

“Hm. I see,” said Devin. “The football team.”

“Isn’t that the other new girl?” Cameron asked.

Sure enough, Gigi was sitting with them too.

“Maybe I should start playing football,” Devin joked.

“How do you know who she is? She’s a seventh grader,” Sasha said.

Cameron shrugged. “Word gets around. I heard she moved here from Arizona.”

“Well, she’s terrible,” Sasha said fiercely. “She’s been bullying Eden all day.” The conviction in her voice took Eden aback. She hadn’t realized Sasha cared so much.

“What did she do?” Tyler asked sharply.

Sasha explained what had happened in Science.

“What are Skye and Claire doing with her?” Cameron asked.

“Showing their true colors, I guess.” Sasha dragged a French fry through a mound of ketchup.

As they launched into a conversation about the loyalty of guys versus girls in friendships, it struck Eden that she was the reason Skye and Claire weren’t sitting with Sasha. They’d disliked Eden from the start, but Sasha had stood up for her. And she didn’t even know the truth about who Eden was.

When the bell rang to dismiss lunch, Sasha walked ahead with Cameron and Devin, but Tyler hung back.

“Eden,” he said low as he walked beside her, “I hope you’re not letting that girl get to you.”

She looked at him in surprise. Tyler was far more perceptive than most mortals. And even stranger, he really seemed to care.

“People only treat each other like that if they don’t know who they are,” he said.

Eden had to look away.

“You know that, right?”

“I guess so.” If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t sure she knew who she was. She’d thought life as a mortal would fit her like a glove; she hadn’t expected so many new challenges on Earth.

Her eye caught on her bracelet, and Goldie’s words came rushing back. If you’re ever unsure of who you are, she’d said, look at your bracelet and remember.

“Anyway,” Tyler said as they reached her locker, “I hope the rest of your day is smooth sailing.”

“Trust me, I do too.”

But not ten minutes later, the day took another unexpected turn. The teacher in Eden’s math class hadn’t even made it through roll call when a student came in and handed her a note.

“Eden Johansson?” she said, looking up from it.

“Here!” Roll call was one thing she’d learned to do right.

“No, this note is for you. Your mother is in the office.”

The room filled with snickers.

“Mommy misses you!” a boy called in a high voice.

“My mother?” Eden stayed seated, perplexed.

Next to her, Sasha gave her a strange look.

“That’s what the note says,” the teacher said, glancing down at it again.

Slowly, Eden rose from her desk. Every mortal in the class was staring.

One of them was Gigi. But for once, she wasn’t wearing a smug expression. For some reason, she looked just as confused as Eden felt.

Roll call resumed as she squeezed down the aisle of desks.

Though she didn’t know what or who to expect in the office, Eden had a feeling it would involve Bola. But when she got there, her world history teacher was nowhere in sight. Instead, in a chair between two angry-looking kids, was a different woman.

She was about thirty years old, slim, and stunning in a tailored mint-green dress. Shiny, honey-colored hair tumbled down her chest, and her catlike eyes were unbearably turquoise.

She looked nothing at all like Bola, yet the sight of her affected Eden the same way. Awe, wonder, and disbelief filled her. She was looking at someone she’d been dreaming about since childhood.

Sylvana rose from her chair as she entered.

“Darling!” she breathed. “How I’ve missed you!”

The next thing she knew, Sylvana’s arms were wrapped around her, pressing Eden’s face against her rose-scented neck. Sylvana is hugging me right now, Eden thought dizzily. It was so absurd, she could barely comprehend it.

“Missed me?” was all she could think to say.

“You didn’t tell me your mother was coming,” boomed Mr. Willis. For such a large man, he really had a knack for appearing out of nowhere.

Eden felt five steps behind.

“Jag skulle kommit fram igår,” the woman said. I was supposed to arrive yesterday—in Swedish.

“What happened?” Mr. Willis asked. “Are you okay?”

“Du är så snäll. Ingen fara, bara en inställd flygning.” You’re so kind. Everything’s fine, just a canceled flight. Then she batted her eyelashes at him.

“Thank goodness!” Mr. Willis’s voice echoed through the office. “Eden, you must be so relieved to see her!”

Slowly the pieces were coming together. Another alum had arrived—probably to try convincing her to return to the lamp, like Bola had.

But Xavier and Goldie didn’t talk to Sylvana. They barely allowed her name to be spoken in the lamp. Why would they send a message to her?

Sylvana placed a hand on Mr. Willis’s shoulder. “With your permission,” she said, “I’d like to check my daughter out of school for the rest of the day.”

Mr. Willis’s face creased with thought. “Well, technically we need a doctor’s note…”

Sylvana’s face fell—almost as if she were about to cry. Mr. Willis didn’t stand a chance.

“But who am I kidding? You’ve just come all the way from Sweden!”

“Oh, thank you.” Sylvana winked. “I promise we’ll behave.”