The ceiling is a collection of stars. That’s my first thought as I stare upward in a dark room, glow-in-the-dark stars attached to the ceiling tiles. Despite the safety light on in the corner, the room is too dim and my heart rate spikes. I imagine hands reaching for me.
I sit up quickly, and it only takes a second for the headache to catch up with me. I wince, doubling over on the small, padded table.
“Ahh … you’re awake.”
I jump at the voice of a woman and find her silhouette in the doorway. She flips on the light and I groan at the sudden brightness, even though I’m grateful for it at the same time. The shadows fade away.
“Take your time,” the woman murmurs as I try to sit up again. She comes over to put her hand on my back as I adjust my position. She smooths down my skirt when it rides up, as if that’s the more pressing concern.
“I’m the school nurse, Mrs. Louis,” she says. She lowers her arm, studying me. She smells strongly of lavender, and sweaty heat radiates from beneath her fuzzy, oversized sweater.
“I cleaned the blood off your face,” she says, “but you’ll need a new shirt. What exactly happened, Miss Calla? You don’t appear to have any injuries.”
I blink, trying to remember. I got a call. Then there was … that sound. No, not just a sound. A feeling. Something invading and improper. Something terrifying. Something familiar. A woman asking to be let inside my head.
But I can’t tell the nurse any of this. When I look at her, she presses her lips together in a sympathetic smile.
“Was it one of the boys?” she asks. “They don’t know their own strength sometimes.”
I can feel the color drain from my face.
“I’m certain they do know their strength,” I say. “But no, this had nothing to do with them.”
My answer bothers her, and she straightens. She doesn’t like my criticism.
“Then what was it?” Mrs. Louis asks, her tone having cooled.
“Headache,” I say simply. “That’s all.”
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.
There is one boy with reddish-blond hair and extraordinarily average features. But he wears his smile with confidence, his uniform fitting in a way that makes me think it was tailored. The other boys seem to defer to his approval.
A kid walking by calls to him. “Jonah!” My heart rate speeds up.
“A candidate?” Sydney asks, examining the boy. “You think he might be the investor’s son?”
“Could be,” I reply.
While we were preparing for Sydney and me to attend Ridgeview, the girls and I researched the traits that would describe an investor who has enough money to launder combined with enough maliciousness to want to invest in Innovations Academy in the first place. We used that to narrow down our search criteria to find the right student.
We decided that our target would have to be the child of a narcissistic, sexist, cruel egomaniac. I’ve only just seen this Jonah boy, but something about him seems right. Then again, a quick look around tells me that several of these boys could fit the bill.
At just that moment, Jonah glances over and notices me and Sydney. He doesn’t react at first, just sweeps his gaze over us. I quickly turn to Sydney and talk about a history assignment. It’s a little late, because from the corner of my eye, I see Jonah smile. He knows we were watching him.
Then again, we’ll have to get inside his orbit somehow. But right now, my head is killing me. And I have to warn the girls about the woman I saw.
“Let’s get out of here,” I tell Sydney, gesturing down the street with my notebook.
“Gladly.”
We get onto the sidewalk and head in the opposite direction of the boys. I hold my breath, hoping they won’t call after us, harass us. Thankfully, it’s quiet as we disappear into the neighborhood.
When we’re sure they’re gone, Sydney and I let our polite exteriors fall away.
“I hate it here,” she says, brushing her curly hair back over her shoulder. She no longer wears it the way Mr. Petrov specified. She chooses how she wants to look. We all get to decide for ourselves now, which is sometimes overwhelming. We’ve never had choices before.
“I’ll have to get a new phone,” I tell her.
“We all should,” she agrees.
I look around, paranoid. “I saw something when I passed out. And there was a woman there,” I add, lowering my voice.
“What kind of woman?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Older, I guess. Intense. We were in a garden, and she said she wanted me to let her inside my head. That she’s been looking for me. And, Sydney,” I say, my eyes wide, “I think she might be the voice Leandra warned us about.”
Sydney grabs my arm, pulling me to a stop. “Are you saying this woman was really inside your head? In your programming? ” she whispers.
“I don’t … I don’t know,” I say. “She knew about us. And then she asked my permission to access my mind.”
Sydney relaxes slightly. “Well, she’s not getting that.” She starts walking again, but her brow is furrowed as she thinks it over. “And you have no idea who she is?”
“None.”
She considers. “But someone couldn’t really do that, right? Get inside your consciousness through the phone? Is this what happened to Imogene?”
“It could be possible, I guess,” I say. “That sound … the screeching? I don’t know. We’ll have Annalise research. See if she can find anything. But …” I pause, scared.
“We’re not going to tell Leandra,” Sydney answers before I ask. When she turns to me, her jaw is set hard. “I’m not going to let her drive a spike into your head.”
I nod a thank-you and reach over to interlace my fingers with hers. I’m scared, but I know Sydney will stand with me no matter what.
“I’ve already called the girls to tell them you fainted,” Sydney says. When I tsk, she shrugs. “What did you want me to do?” she asks. “You were laid out on the cafeteria floor. Do you have any idea how gross that is? I knew it was serious.” She smiles at me.
“You’re right. It was disgusting.”
“Exactly,” she says. “Anyway, they said they’d research. I didn’t know the stuff about the garden woman. We’ll update them when we get home. And don’t worry,” she adds, bumping her shoulder into mine. “They’ll help us figure out what to do next.”
We take a turn onto our street. Leandra paid in advance for three months on an upstairs apartment near Ridgeview Prep. It’s a modest three-bedroom, two-bath that came furnished. But we’re all hoping we’re out of here before the three months are up.
None of us like it here. Not this town, not what we know of Ridgeview Prep. But every second that Innovations Academy exists is another second that girls are being held captive there, even if they don’t realize it. We’re going to wake them up. We’re going to shut down the corporation. I just hope we can figure out how to do it quickly.
Aside from a brief obituary for Dr. Groger, Innovations Academy hasn’t been in the news. And during the last update from Leandra, she said Mr. Petrov still hadn’t discovered that we’ve escaped.
Right now, we have to stay on task. To make that easier, I devised a rule to keep us safe—no new friends. I made the girls promise not to tell anyone who, or what, we are. It hasn’t been that difficult. After what we’ve been through, it’s hard to believe anyone would understand except another girl. Another one of us.
So we’re keeping our distance. Just like I’ve kept my distance from Jackson. Thinking about him weighs down my heart. I wonder some nights if he waited for me at his house. If he worried when I didn’t show up. If his leg is still broken and getting worse. But realistically, Quentin probably confronted him, and Jackson knows I betrayed his trust. He probably hates me.
Either way, Jackson’s out of my life. And I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t miss him.
“We’re home,” I call out as we walk inside our apartment. The place smells like banana bread, something Brynn has been baking daily, promising to do it until she gets it perfect. It’s already pretty close to perfect, but she says baking helps calm her mind. A familiar part of her programming that she can still indulge in safely.
There’s no one in the kitchen, and I turn back to Sydney as she enters and closes the door behind her. She glances around with me.
“Girls,” she calls. There is soft chatter from the other side of the apartment, and cautiously, Sydney and I head that way.
“I hope Brynn is all right … ,” I murmur.
Brynn has been taking the adjustment to the outside world hardest. She’s wracked with survivor’s guilt—that’s what Marcella called it after finding the term online. I know how deeply Brynn loves others—a programmed caretaker—but it’s more than that. She’s all heart in a way that we’re not.
Then again, Brynn has only lived once. The academy put the rest of us through even more—rebooted and reused us when we didn’t behave, or when we were destroyed by abusive men. I try not to think about it, but every so often … a piece of memory leaks through and I end up crying on the bathroom floor. It’s why I sleep with the lights on.
There’s a small laugh from Annalise and Sydney’s room. Sydney scrunches up her face and pushes open the door. Her breath catches.
Annalise and Brynn are sitting on the bed, smiling, while Marcella stands near the window. When she notices us, she winces apologetically.
Because sitting in the chair at the desk is a person I don’t recognize. The stranger turns around, examining us without smiling. She looks about nineteen or twenty with olive skin, her dark hair buzzed underneath with a deep part. Her brown eyes are lined with black, making them look almost hazel. Red matte lipstick.
She’s captivating in an unusual way.
“What’s going on?” I demand, ignoring the training I’ve had in greetings. “Who is this?”
“Raven,” the girl says before Annalise can. Her voice is deep with a hint of amusement. “And you are … fascinating.”
She betrays her first smile before straightening it. Her eyes glisten with what looks like admiration. I turn back to Annalise, who is beaming.
“Isn’t she adorable?” Annalise asks.
“Annalise … ,” Sydney warns.
“It’s okay,” Annalise says, waving us off. “Raven knows all about us.”
My stomach hits the floor, and Sydney takes another step into the room.
“Now be nice,” Annalise says. “Raven’s our new friend and the best hacker you’ll ever meet. She’s going to help us.”
Raven turns back to me and grins.