I run down the hallway to my homeroom, dodging people as I go. Three hours of sleep, no breakfast, and a brain that keeps cycling through thoughts of Elijah and that terrifying dress. If someone took a match to my nervous energy, I’d launch to the moon.

I yank Mrs. Hoxley’s door open and head directly for the Descendants, sliding into the seat next to Susannah.

“Big problem,” I say with zero attempt at sugarcoating. They all turn toward me. “I put that dress on.”

Alice clicks her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “You did what?”

“I put that dress on and—”

“Wow. We can’t leave you alone for two seconds,” Alice says.

Blair walks past me, and I scrunch my nose at her vanilla perfume.

Mary dismisses Alice’s comment with a wave of her hand and leans toward me, her curls in Alice’s face. Alice frowns. Susannah and I lean in closer, too.

I lower my voice to a whisper. “As I was putting the dress on, my room dropped away. I swear it was like I was on the Titanic.”

“Like in your dream?” Susannah asks.

“Different. More real. I was in a bedroom with a maid dressing me. Everything was disorienting. I kept feeling like I was supposed to be there and not supposed to be there at the same time.”

“So you could touch things this time?” Alice whispers.

I nod. “I drank and ate and talked to people. I was getting dressed up for dinner with my uncle….” Those words feel comfortable, but they shouldn’t. I don’t have any uncles. “And everyone there knew me. Like I had a whole different life. Even some of the things I said were old-fashioned. I felt, I don’t know…happy? But wrong happy, like the calm before the storm. And I can’t shake the feeling that it has something to do with Redd’s death warning. All morning I’ve had this feeling in the pit in my stomach.”

Mary is practically falling out of her chair, she’s listening so hard.

Alice narrows her eyes. “Back up. What do you mean, your uncle?”

“His name was Harry Harper….I’m telling you, it’s like I had a separate life there. I could feel my brain trying to remember who I was, especially in the beginning. But the longer I stayed, the more that dropped away. I had family; people knew me. I sat down to have—”

Susannah sits bolt upright. She puts her hand on my arm. “Stop.”

We all look at her. Usually Alice is the one telling me to stop talking.

Alice scans the room, which is quickly filling with students. Mary looks out the windows.

Susannah squeezes my arm. “Something’s off. Let’s talk about this later.”

Susannah’s face looks focused and serious, like someone is giving her important information from the next room and she has to strain to hear it. Alice and Mary might be used to her reading people, but I’ve never been around when she’s had a “feeling,” or whatever it is. It’s unsettling.

The bell rings.

Mrs. Hoxley claps her hands together to quiet us. “It’s not Friday; it’s Thursday. Look alive, people. Blair has an announcement to make about the Spring Fling.”

Didn’t we cover this on Monday?

Blair makes her way to the front of the room with an uninterested-looking Matt. His hands are full of small white slips of paper. Blair flashes the class a toothy smile and grabs the top one from the stack. She hands it to the first guy in the row nearest the door. “These are raffle tickets. Everyone should write their name on one. And at the dance, three names will be chosen for prizes.”

Blair hands four raffle tickets to me. I take one and pass three of them back.

“Third prize is a homework pass,” Blair continues. “Second prize is a dinner for two, and first prize…”

An approving murmur ripples through the room, and everyone hangs on her words.

“First prize is a sur-prise.”

I can’t deny that I would love to get my hands on that homework pass.

I examine the raffle ticket. There’s a drawing of a ship, with “RMS TITANIC” printed above it. The drawing looks familiar, like I may have seen it somewhere before. Maybe something from my homework? I write my name on the blank line labeled PASSENGER.

The guy behind me leans forward and hands me the signed raffle tickets from our row.

To my left, Susannah drops her pen. It rolls to the floor and she grabs her desk. Her head droops and she squeezes her eyes shut.

“Susannah?” Alice and I both say at the same time.

“Is something the matter, Ms. Martin?” Mrs. Hoxley asks.

“Water,” Susannah squeaks. She looks like she’s beyond nauseated.

Alice stands up. “I’ll take her to the bathroom.”

“I’ll help her,” I say.

“I think you’d better,” Mrs. Hoxley says, and all eyes in the room are glued on us.

Alice and I hoist Susannah out of her seat.

Blair wears a smug smile, and Alice glares at her. We push through the door, leaving the whispering students in our wake.

“What the hell is going on?” Alice asks.

“Everything looks like it’s swaying—the people, the desks, the walls,” Susannah says as we guide her to the bathroom.

“You look like you’re going to throw up,” Alice says.

“Worse. The floor was rippling under my feet like it was made of water.”

“Is it still happening?” I ask.

Susannah touches her forehead with her fingertips. “The farther away we get from that class, the walls become more solid and the floor sloshes less.”

Alice pushes the bathroom door open. Susannah heads for the sink, turns on the cold water, and splashes it on her face.

I check the stalls to make sure we’re alone.

Susannah pats a paper towel over her face. “It was a spell. At least, I think it was. It started the second I touched the raffle ticket. And I could practically smell the ocean. Almost like seasickness.”

Alice cracks her knuckles. “But how could it have been the ticket? We all got them and no one else almost puked, so it makes it less likely or more difficult. Blair would have had to set you up to get a specific one. She’s not a Descendant, and she doesn’t know jack about magic. And Matt isn’t even from Salem.”

“I know,” Susannah says. “But the feeling went away as soon as I left the ticket behind.”

“Just like the dress,” I say. “I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that two times in the past twenty-four hours we’ve come into contact with objects that have spells in them.”

The bell rings.

“No, it’s not,” Alice says. “And if someone is doing magic that way, that person could be clever enough to deliver the objects through other people. It’s not easy, but it’s also not impossible.”

The bathroom door opens and Mary walks through, holding our bags. “Please tell me that wasn’t a spell.” She looks at Susannah and then at Alice for confirmation. “Damn. But it’s gone, right?”

I take my bag. “Gone. But I think we should avoid anything Titanic-related for the rest of the day to be safe.”

“Agreed,” Alice says.

Susannah frowns. “A weak spell is almost worse than a strong one. It’s like someone’s just toying with us….And casting it in public like that? The person either doesn’t think they’ll get caught or doesn’t care. Like the way serial killers send letters to the police.”

The warning bell rings. Mary opens the door.

We say our goodbyes, and I speed-walk to Wardwell’s history class. The bell rings just as I enter. I freeze. Jaxon’s laughing with Niki, who is sitting on his desk.

“Seats, everyone,” Mr. Wardwell says.

Niki slides from her perch, grinning at me. What is it with these girls recently? She flicks her ponytail over her shoulder and touches Jaxon’s arm. I plop down in my chair.

Wardwell grabs a stack of thick paper packets. He drops a few of them on each of the front-row desks; they make a weighty clunk as they land. “These packets are divided by categories. You’ll be expected to learn or, better yet, memorize them.” Clunk. “Because…next Friday we’re having a Titanic trivia contest. And the winning team will be excused from the test with an automatic A.”

There’s a murmur of excitement from the students. Raffles and trivia contests. I’ve got to hand it to this school; it has have the carrot method down.

“Let’s get you used to the Jeopardy! categories by starting with some of the passengers we learned about this week. I want a name, what you know about the person, and if they survived.”

A few hands shoot up around the room. Wardwell points to Dillon, who is once again in his lacrosse jacket. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without it.

“Joseph Laroche,” Dillon says. “He grew up in Haiti and was working as an engineer in France. He’s thought to be the only black dude on the entire ship. His wife and two daughters were on board with him. They got into a lifeboat, but he didn’t. He went down with the waves.”

“Correct.” Wardwell nods and points to a girl in the first row.

“Margaret Brown. She was the only first-class passenger who came from nothing. She and her husband got rich in the mining industry. She was a feminist and suffragette and known for her philanthropy. She helped load passengers into lifeboats, and even rowed in her own boat. She survived.”

“Great, perfect,” Mr. Wardwell says, and points to Niki.

“Henry Harper,” Niki says.

I jerk my head up. Harper. Uncle Harry. Harry could definitely be a nickname for Henry.

“He was one of the owners of the Harper and Brothers publishing house and one of the few men who survived with his entire family. I think because they were in one of the first boats and everything hadn’t gone crazy yet? Anyway, Henry, his wife, and even his Egyptian valet survived.”

All the blood drains from my face. Seeing Elijah threw me for such a loop last night that I didn’t consider that the man who called himself my uncle on the Titanic could have been my actual ancestor. I raise my hand.

“Exactly right,” Mr. Wardwell says. “Samantha?”

“What was his wife’s name? Henry Harper’s, I mean.” My tone is urgent, and a few people turn to look at me.

Mr. Wardwell tilts his head. “Huh, good question.” He picks up a packet off his desk and flips through the pages. He runs his finger down one of them. “Henry Sleeper Harper and Myra Haxtun Harper.”

The room spins. Myra H.H. Either dead people are sending me packages now, or someone knows my family history better than I do.

“Samantha?” Mr. Wardwell says with slight annoyance, and I look up at him. “A name?”

I zero in on Niki. “Why did you pick Henry Harper, Niki?”

She turns around in her chair. “Huh?”

Jaxon stares at me.

“Why did you pick him? Did you have a reason?”

Niki looks at me like I might have lost my mind. She opens her mouth, but Mr. Wardwell interrupts her.

“Samantha, I’ll ask that you stay on topic and not disrupt the class.” His eyebrows are up, and he looks like he means business. “A name.”

I shift my eyes to him. I have the subtlety of a foghorn. “A name?”

“Of a passenger.”

“Uh.” My mind races. I do know some, but for the life of me I can’t think of anything right now except Myra and Henry. And I would bet anything that the painting in the hallway is of her. “Um.”

Mr. Wardwell frowns. “Samantha, whichever team you’re on isn’t going to want a weak link. You’ll be first up tomorrow. You’d better study tonight.”