For every first day of school that I can remember, my parents have taken photos of me in front of the azalea bush in our yard. Just me in front of fuchsia flowers. In the early photos, the blooms looked bigger than my head. In a few pictures, I’m reaching out awkwardly to touch one.

I couldn’t say no to my mom, not on the first day of high school anyway. And Janie wouldn’t let me opt out of carpooling. So that’s how I ended up standing at the side of our house, in front of a botanical backdrop, urging my dad to take the photos already before the Donahues showed up and the whole scene forever imprinted on Ben Donahue’s brain.

“Stand up a little straighter,” Mom instructed while Dad’s camera clicked away.

“We’re done, right?” I craned my neck, checking for the minivan backing down the drive. “How many do we need?”

“Until we get a good one.” The dew on the grass dampened my sneakers. “Look at the camera. Try to relax,” Mom implored. “Janie and her mom will wait for a few photos.”

“We’ve taken hundreds of photos.”

“How about you turn, just slightly, and look back at Daddy? Peek over the backpack!”

As she said it, Janie’s mom pulled into the driveway. Ben sat right up front, and even from my spot near the trellis, I could see his eyebrows arched in amusement. I almost sank into the ground. My dad kept clicking and probably caught the moment I realized that I would never achieve any semblance of coolness in the town of Glennon Heights.

“Mom?” I asked desperately. “Are we done now?”

Janie’s mom killed the engine but I was the one who died, silently screaming in front of the azalea plant. Mrs. Donahue swung her door open. “You’re so good! Every year I promise to take pictures. But then I count myself lucky just to get all three kids out the door.”

My mom threw up her hands, “Well, get them out here!” She tapped her watch. “We have plenty of time!” A better friend might have waved her off, run for the car, and claimed a need to arrive early for registration or paperwork. But I stood with my hands folded across my chest and waited for Janie and the twins to suffer through it right along with me.

For the first few, just Janie and I stood with the plant between us like a science experiment we had cultivated together. “How did this happen?” Janie murmured out of the side of her mouth.

“Every year this happens,” I said. Her mouth dropped open, just as my father’s camera clicked. “In this same spot.”

Our moms arranged Ben and Lucy on either side of us. Then the three Donahue kids stood together and I got to stand off to the side, smirking. Then Ben and Lucy, Ben and Janie, Janie and Lucy.

“Don’t we need to get a shot of Ben and Olivia?” Lucy asked, her voice poisonous.

Janie’s eyes moved from Lucy to Ben and finally to me. “Why would we need that?”

“We don’t need that,” Ben said. I concentrated hard on the azaleas.

Aware of Janie’s eyes on me. I found my voice. “We should go.” I spoke to the flowers. “We really can’t be late on the first day.”

In the car, I sat hunched as close to the window as possible without actually hanging out of it. As soon as we arrived, I sprang out of the car and grabbed my bag from the collection of bags in the trunk. “Thank you for driving me to school today, Mrs. Donahue,” I sang out.

“Of course, honey. Look out for Janie today, okay? All of this has suddenly gotten so complicated.”

Maybe it was different in bigger towns or boarding schools or other places where you didn’t know by heart the people who surrounded you. But in Glennon Heights, the first day of school felt pretty anticlimactic. Maybe you felt different because your locker sat in an unfamiliar row or you were wearing new shoes. But most of the kids knew you too well. It was hard to start fresh in September even though you might have felt transformed. And if you actually were new, then the opposite happened. If you had recently moved to town like Ben, Lucy, and Janie, all eyes followed you everywhere. Heather Singer moved here from Seattle in the fifth grade and we still called her New Heather. Heather O’Leary, who grew up here, got to be Heather, unadorned and undescribed.

And then there was the Donahues’ address. And the fact that Thatcher Langsom, previous occupant of said address, stepped out of the crowd to greet Ben as soon as we approached the school’s domed awning.

“You have arrived,” Thatcher announced, as if welcoming Ben to his kingdom.

Our classmates watched this scene intently because most of us were accustomed to watching Thatcher intently. I watched, wondering how Ben would react—his father’s warning still scowling in my memory. But Ben just clapped one arm around Thatcher’s shoulders and grinned. Lucy separated herself quickly, but Janie and I walked behind them as long as we could and I marveled at the way the crowd parted for Thatcher. The boy. The athlete. The recently rich kid. All this power he flexed without even realizing it. But then I remembered how quickly Thatcher had turned on me the night before, how easily he’d reminded me how insignificant I was. Maybe he understood exactly how much power he flexed.

Before, I had felt known in Glennon Heights. But now I felt noticed. In front of us, the boys’ backs receded into the crowd and Ben didn’t turn to pass along a reassuring look to his sister, let alone me. Janie’s eyes darted and skidded around the corridor, and then I saw her take a deep breath and settle into the invisible spotlight. She smiled at the friends I pointed out and even waved to the coffee shop guys from the night before. I should never have doubted Janie.

She even handled Brooke. First period. World History. The three of us shared that class together, and I’d forgotten, along with so many other details that a good friend would know or remember. Brooke had been right about that. This time, Janie didn’t wait for me to broker a connection.

“Listen,” she told Brooke, “I’m sorry that we didn’t get to know each other better this summer.” She took the desk next to Brooke’s, leaving me to claim one across the room, near the door. “Moving felt like the worst wrong turn of my life. And then just when things started feeling normal, those letters started arriving.”

I wanted to shout at her to stop, to remind her that Brooke had achieved expert level in social manipulation. But the whole class had tuned in, listening. I bit my lip and waited. Brooke would deploy one of two options—she could go nuclear and unleash an onslaught of insults. Most of us, in that room, expected her to go that route.

But she had already done that—to me, the night before. Today was our first day of high school, after all. Maybe Brooke intended to transform herself a little bit too. “It sounds terrible—what you’ve gone through.” The room held its collective breath. But she only went on to say, “You’re pretty killer, taking on some crazy psychopathic letter writer. But at least your new place is amazing. I always thought it would make the best haunted house.”

“Well, you should come over. We already found one hidden room.” Janie spoke loudly enough to include the rest of the class in her conversation. “Liv found it, actually.” Janie crowned me with the credit. “We’ll keep looking and see what we uncover. We should have the Halloween party to end all Halloween parties.”

“That would be incredible.” Brooke sounded sincere, and when she looked up, her smile extended to me too. “I’ve really missed hanging out on Olcott Place.”

Sometimes I got so wrapped up in wondering how I fit into the world, I forgot that there were people I fit with.

“Well,” I offered, “Olcott Place misses you too.”

“Yeah?”

“I miss you. I don’t know about people like Miss Abbot. But she probably misses you.”

Brooke and I smiled at each other, and Janie smiled, and for that moment and the rest of the class and even the rest of the school day, it seemed like maybe I could handle high school. I moved from class to class—sometimes with Janie, sometimes with Brooke. With Allie and Mirabelle and Kaia. With both Heathers and Sage and even an art class with Justin, who said to me, “You’re Janie’s friend, right?” as if that counted as my identity.

A couple of times throughout the day, I caught a glimpse of Ben. A sliver of jacket sleeve turning a corner. The back of his head bobbing down the steps a full crowd in front of me. I had thought that would make me nervous, but actually it reassured me. Unlike summer days, when Ben disappeared from his family for hours at a time, at least I knew he was in the same building, on the same patch of land.

My mom texted me a couple of times. First a heart. Then a question mark. I wrote back, I’m handling it. But that first day felt even better than that. All that worrying, but high school made sense to me. I had friends. I felt connected.

And then the dismissal bell rang. I stood up, swung my bag over my shoulder. By the time I reached our locker, Janie already stood waiting. “Do you need to stay after?” she asked. “My dad’s on his way.” She looked down, texting Lucy and Ben. I couldn’t get our combination on the first try, so I tried the numbers once more. Fumbled again—this time because Ben distracted me. He strode through the hallway, cutting a path through the rest of the freshmen milling around.

“Janie, we’ve got to go. Right now.”

“Yeah. I’m just—”

“Lucy’s already outside. We have to go to her.”

“What’s going on?” Janie looked at me. “Just give us a second, okay?”

“No time. Listen, Livvie. You should stay here, okay? Can you call your mom and grab a ride with her?”

“No, Ben. She cannot.” Janie slammed on the locker. “Liv, don’t pay any attention to him. There’s plenty of room.” She turned to her brother. “Seriously, what is your problem?”

“Guys, I’m serious. I can’t explain it right now, but it would be better if Olivia found another ride.”

“Stop it.” Janie swung her backpack over her shoulder. “I guess things didn’t go so decently for you today? I’m really sorry, Ben. We had a good first day of high school, right, Liv? Like surprisingly acceptable.”

“Please just listen to me.” Ben spoke quietly in the few spaces left in Janie’s chatter. She kept going and I followed her. I’d already been following Janie for weeks by then. Why would I have chosen that exact moment to stop?

“Do you have a lot of homework? I don’t. We have that summer reading essay thing, but she said it’s due next Tuesday.” Janie barely took a breath as we worked our way through the hallway.

“Jane.” Ben’s voice rang out in a warning. Janie and I swiveled to face him. People in the hall turned as well. He crossed quickly to us and spoke low and fast. “When we get outside, we stick together, okay?” He held up his hands: no questions. “You keep your head down. No matter what anyone says to you, you don’t reply. You don’t even look up.” He glanced from Janie to me and then to her again. “I guess that goes for both of you.”

Ben turned to walk backward, facing us, and bumped open the door with his backpack. We all stood for a second blinking up at the sun and then Ben took one of each of our shoulders, steering us firmly.

I kept my head down, like Ben had instructed, and that’s when I saw the wires snaking around the sidewalk. Then I noticed the feet wore men’s dress shoes, women’s heels. Too fancy, even for the first day of high school. “Maurice! That’s them. Three kids. The Donahues!” She lunged to block Ben’s path and he tried steering us around her.

In a flash, I understood how I’d made the situation more difficult. The reporter lady thought I was Lucy, who’d probably been smart enough to walk out separately. They had been looking for three kids and there we were.

“Just a minute. Please. Hey, guys! Look over here for a second? Can we get a statement?” I felt Ben’s fingers tightened on my shoulder. “How long have you felt unsafe in your home?”

Then another voice, “Your father has claimed your family is being hunted.” Beside me, I heard Ben grunt softly. Heads down, we kept walking. There were only three of them, plus their cameramen, but they caused such a commotion, it felt like a full press conference.

“Who do you think is watching your family?”

Ben looked directly at the reporter asking that question. She stood the tallest and didn’t seem so much older than us. Aunt Jillian would have described her as looking a little desperate, with all the makeup and her hair piled high on top of her head.

Encouraged by the eye contact, the woman repeated her question. “Who is watching your family?”

When Ben lifted his arm from my shoulder, I half expected him to hit the reporter. But he just gestured to the cameras. “You are, I guess.” Ben spoke deliberately, like he knew they’d use that quote over and over. That night and the weeks after. “You’re watching my family now.”