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  Technically, anyone involved in a sport is allowed to use the gymnasium outside of school hours. Still, I feel like I’m misbehaving. I flick a switch and the overhead fluorescents buzz on, casting the gymnasium in an unnatural white glow. The quality of light feels different now that I’m the only person here. Colder. It crackles against my skin.

  I walk to the far wall and remove a practice saber from the metal cabinet. I tighten my grip around the handle. The weight feels good in my hand. I fall back into a lunge, whipping the saber in front of me. The emptiness around me seems to pulse closer. It’s like the walls are watching.

  I can’t quite explain what happens next. It would be one thing if I were athletic, if I had a history of taking out my anger and frustration with sports. But I’ve never done this before.

  I lunge forward, my feet moving easily through patterns Coach has drilled into my head over the years. I never really listened, but something in my body held on to the lessons, because my footwork is perfect. I parry and lunge and retreat. The blade whistles through the air. I feel like I’m dancing. Like I’m flying.

  I don’t know how long I keep this up. It feels like hours, hours of my feet performing complicated routines, hours of my arm whipping and stabbing and slicing. Sweat plasters my hair to my forehead, and my muscles burn, but I don’t stop. I don’t want to stop. My heart slams against my chest and blood pumps in my ears. I don’t think about the mystery bottle or Devon’s notebook or Ariel’s ruined video. I think about turning my left heel and pivoting on my toe, twisting at my wrist instead of swinging from the shoulder. Keeping my movements controlled. Sharp. Contained.

  A shadow separates from the doorway, and I freeze, my blade trembling.

  “Who’s there?” I call. I lower my sword and take a step forward.

  Zoe stands near the open door, watching me.

  “Hey!” I shout, but she turns and disappears into the hallway without a word.

  I spend my shift at the Med Center in a daze. I fluff pillows and check charts and answer the phone, but I’m still in the woods, still clutching Ariel’s cracked cell phone with both hands. Her voice is a song that won’t leave my head. A melody I only know half the words to.

  Fire. Monsters. Numb.

  I open a patient’s linen cupboard and then close it again without seeing what’s inside. Questions swirl through my head, and if I don’t keep moving, they’ll multiply and grow. Ariel expected me to find the video before discovering the “drink me” bottle in our dorm. The video was supposed to be my first clue. Maybe it explains the serum and why she wanted me to drink it.

  I stop at the supply closet in the main hall to stock up on sheets and pillows and bedpans. I can’t stop seeing Ariel’s wide, red-rimmed eyes, her mouth frozen in a grimace. Goose bumps crawl up the backs of my arms. It didn’t seem like she was talking about the serum. She looked scared. Like she was trying to warn me about something.

  Fire. Monsters …

  A door at the end of the hall swings open, and Jack steps out. Seeing him feels like pressing a reset button—my brain goes mercifully blank. I hug a stack of sheets to my chest and touch my lips with one finger.

  “Jack?” I call, and he turns. “What are you doing here?”

  “Physical,” he says, his brows knitting together. “The track season just started.”

  He isn’t smiling. It isn’t until that exact second that I remember I was supposed to meet him this morning before breakfast. Shit.

  My brain isn’t blank anymore. It’s crowded with guilt and clues and the memory of a kiss in the dark. Jack starts down the hall without looking back. I hurry after him, tangled sheets unraveling from my arms.

  “Wait. Talk to me,” I call. Jack stops walking. He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed and falling over his ears.

  “Now isn’t a good time.”

  “I didn’t mean to blow you off this morning,” I blurt. “I just got …”

  “Distracted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kyle saw you in the woods,” Jack says. “What were you doing if you weren’t coming to meet me?”

  I open my mouth, then close it again when I realize I’ll have to lie. My chest turns to ice, and a crack splits it down the middle—cutting me in two. One half belongs to Ariel and her secrets. The other belongs to Jack.

  I swallow. “I can’t—”

  “Don’t lie to me.” Jack curls his hand into a fist. I wait for him to do something reckless—like punch a hole in the wall, leaving his knuckles cracked and bleeding. But the anger drains out of him before that can happen. His arm falls to his side. “Ariel, I just—”

  I feel like I’ve been slapped. “Ariel?”

  Jack blinks. “What?”

  “You called me Ariel.”

  “No I didn’t.” But he did, and he knows it. I see her name reflected in his eyes, waiting on his lips. Jack tightens his jaw. I thought I had all his expressions memorized, but I can’t read this one.

  A horrible thought whispers to me: Is this how he looked at her?

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he says. But he’s wrong. It means there was a moment when Jack thought I was his dead ex-girlfriend. Just now, for a second, Ariel and I were the same.

  The ice in my chest thickens. I can practically hear it groan and crack. I don’t want to be split in two. I don’t want to be mistaken for a dead girl.

  I stick the sheets onto a tray in the hall and take Jack by the elbow. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  I glance down the hallway to make sure no one’s watching us, and then I open the supply closet and shove Jack inside, pulling the door closed behind us.

  I can’t see Jack, but I feel him in the darkness. Warmth radiates from his skin. His breath smells like spearmint.

  “I’m not Ariel,” I say.

  “I know that.” His voice is barely a whisper. “Charlotte—”

  I press my lips to his. I want to taste my name in his mouth. I want to steal the warmth from his skin.

  We kiss until our lips are raw and our hands can’t find new places to explore. Jack is heat and muscle and want. He presses me against a shelf filled with bedsheets. Something rattles, tips over, and falls to the floor. I feel a hard jab at my back and I gasp, but Jack covers my mouth with his, muffling the sound. His hands find my waist, tugging me closer.

  I’ve watched Jack kiss Ariel so many times. On her mouth, on her cheek, on the top of her head. Once he kissed every one of her fingers. Like they were precious.

  I always imagined what it would be like if he ever kissed me. He would taste like rain, I thought. His skin would be rougher than I imagined, his hair softer. I was right about all that, but I never stopped to think about how I might feel.

  Heat gathers inside me like a storm, swirling around shame and guilt. The pain and pleasure complement each other, like salty and sweet. I kiss Jack so hard that my lips start to hurt, but it still isn’t enough. I can’t get close enough to him.

  “I missed you this morning,” he says, his mouth moving against mine.

  “Me, too,” I murmur. Every inch of my body itches, needing to touch him. To be touched. His lips trail down my neck and over my collarbone. His fingers slip past the waistband of my scrubs. I close my eyes, leaning into him. I weave my hands behind his head and bury my fingers in his hair. I want him closer. I want him—

  I go cold.

  I pause, my face inches from Jack’s. It’s like someone has flipped a switch, shutting off everything inside me that can feel. All that hurt and heat is gone. I’m empty.

  I press my mouth into Jack’s, but his lips are just lips. His hands on my waist are just hands. No. I want this. I want to want this. I just feel weird because it’s Jack. Because I’ve wanted him for so long.

  But deep down I know it’s something else. Something’s wrong.

  Jack pulls away from me. “Are you okay?”

  I nod, and then realize he can’t see me in the dark. “I’m g
reat.”

  “You don’t seem into this.”

  “I am,” I say, but my voice sounds weird. Jack hesitates.

  “Look,” he says after a moment. “This might seem soon, but I want you to come home with me. For dinner with my parents. This Monday night.”

  “What about Chloe?” I ask.

  “I broke up with Chloe.” Jack finds my hand in the dark and squeezes. “I want to be with you, Charlotte. Only you.”

  These words do what Jack’s kiss didn’t. My heart flips. My knees feel weak. You love him, I remind myself, and a flicker of warmth sparks to life in my chest.

  “I’m there,” I say.

  “I should go,” he says, kissing me again. “Class.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looks like he might say something else, but then he shakes his head and lowers his hand to the doorknob. “We shouldn’t leave at the same time.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Jack kisses me one last time, on the forehead, his lips lightly brushing the skin just above my eyebrows.

  You want him, I remind myself. You’ve always wanted him.

  Then he’s out the door and down the hall, his shoes making a shuffling sound against the tile.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I can’t sleep that night. My skin hugs too tightly to my bones. My muscles itch.

  I replay the moment in the supply closet with Jack. My fingers in his hair. My mouth pressed to his mouth. Everything was heat and want, and then—nothing.

  I’ve never felt anything like that before. It wasn’t even an emotion. It was an absence of emotion. A void.

  My bed is a slab of concrete beneath me. I roll onto my back, arms stretched above my head, too-long legs taking up so much of the mattress that my feet dangle off the end. I feel like I’m about to rip a seam. I shift onto my side, knees pulled to my chest, arms curled beneath my head. I press my eyes closed. I can feel my heart beating in my closed lids. Ba-bomp. Ba-bomp.

  I think of twisted sheets. Empty beds. Voices giggling in the dark.

  I crawl from my bed and slip out of the dorm. I hold the doorknob until the latch settles against the frame, and then release it without a click. The hallway is painted the color of midnight. I close my eyes, and I swear I can hear the sounds of a dozen girls breathing behind their heavy wooden doors. That’s impossible, though. The walls are thin, but they aren’t that thin. I’m imagining it.

  A girl rolls over on her mattress, making the springs creak. Another whispers don’t in her sleep. Someone coughs.

  The sounds are deafening.

  I move down the hallway and stairs and out the door, like a shadow. Frost winks from the grass. The air smells like snow. I’m not wearing shoes, but that doesn’t seem to matter. I don’t feel cold in my thin sleep shorts and tank top. I bounce in place to get the blood moving through my veins. Then I start to run.

  Rocks dig into my heels. Twigs scratch my ankles. My breath floats in front of my face, cloud-thick and gray. Ten more minutes, I think. I’ll just run until I tire myself out and then I’ll drop back into bed, legs burning and body drained.

  But ten minutes turns into twenty turns into forty. I run faster. Harder. I stop keeping track of the time. I run in circles so I’m never too far from the school.

  Trees whip past me, branches swaying in a breeze I don’t feel. Stars glimmer overhead. I let my mind travel through my body, searching for pain or fatigue. Nothing. My muscles sing.

  The stars fade and then vanish. The moon dips below the tree line. Birdsong thrills through the air.

  Ten more minutes. The sun peeks over the distant hills, turning the sky pink and purple and gold. Finally, I stop.

  For a long moment, I stand, frozen, beneath the trees, waiting for exhaustion to catch up to me. For my legs to spasm and my chest to seize and sweat to break out on my lower back. I wait, but it never comes. I ran all night, and I don’t feel the least bit tired.

  Turning, I start the walk back home.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We pair off again during fencing on Monday, one on one. A quick glance around the gym tells me everyone else already has a partner.

  “You’re with me.”

  I turn toward the voice. Zoe stands behind me, sword propped on the ground next to her. Her body is made of points and edges.

  “Goody,” I mutter.

  We take our places on the piste. Zoe drops into an easy lunge, sword held straight before her. I felt large and clumsy the last time we fought, like my limbs weren’t the right length for this sport. I feel different now. Zoe might be small and fast, but I have better reach. A little strategy could keep her from getting within striking distance.

  I fall into position and lift my sword.

  Zoe darts at me without waiting for Coach to blow her whistle. The way she moves looks wrong. It’s too fast, for one thing, and jerky in a raw, animal way. Her blade cuts through the air, and I parry on reflex, metal clinking. She dances back, the balls of her feet barely touching the ground. It’s like she’s floating. Like gravity can’t hold her.

  I’ve seen Zoe fight a dozen times before, but never like this. Never like she meant it.

  Something in me tightens. I want to beat her. Just once. I want to show her who really belongs at this school. I move my weight to my front foot, flexing my toes inside my boots. Zoe stabs at me, and I duck to the side, her saber whispering past my helmet. She lunges, jabbing at my chest, and I bring my sword down in a swift arc, knocking her blade aside. Surprise flickers across her face, but it’s gone in a second. She tightens her grip on her saber.

  She flicks her sword. I leap back, but the edge of her blade catches me on the wrist. Point Zoe. I dart forward, jabbing her hip before she can retreat. Point me. Zoe lunges. I knock her blade away, then tap her on the shoulder in a perfect parry-riposte. She swears, her voice so low I barely hear it through her helmet. She lunges again, and this time she hits me in the chest.

  The lights beat down on us. A film of sweat gathers between my forehead and helmet. It’s easier to attack than defend. I need to force her into retreat. My feet move automatically, like someone else is controlling them. Zoe’s fast, but I can match her. I advance, forcing her back two steps. Three. She alters her footwork, taking a short step and then a long one to keep me from guessing what she’ll do next. It doesn’t work. It’s like I see every move before it happens.

  We’re at the end of the piste. The wall is right behind her. Nowhere left to go. I shift my weight to my back foot, preparing to lunge—

  Zoe leaps forward and then back again, using the momentum to propel herself off the ground. She has one foot on the wall behind her, then two. She races up the wall, and then she’s above me, helmet inches from my own, feet windmilling over her, as if gravity is an amusing concept. I swing, but my sword catches nothing but air. She lands—like a cat—on the piste behind me.

  Coach is blowing the whistle and people are shouting. There are no flips in fencing. Not even showy, impossible ones. Zoe cocks her head, ignoring them all.

  It’s a dare.

  My heartbeat becomes a steady thrum. Zoe turns her wrist, whipping her sword at my side. I jerk my saber down and out, knocking it away. Zoe lunges, and I fall back. Our sabers clash together, then spring apart, the blades blurs of silver. Zoe gets a hit in low on my blade, knocking the sword from my grip. It clatters to the ground a few feet off the piste, leaving me unarmed.

  Normally, this would count as a penalty, and the match would pause to allow me to grab my sword. But we’re not really fencing anymore, and Zoe doesn’t hesitate. She slashes at me like she’s holding a broadsword instead of a practice saber.

  Time slows. I flip into a low backbend—knees bent, one hand propped beneath me, the back of my head inches from the floor. My body moves in a fluid way, like there aren’t bones and muscles holding me together any longer. Zoe’s blade whips through the air above my nose.

  My legs are springs. I arch my back—jump—and then I’m o
n my feet again. Whispers erupt, and I have just enough time to realize that I did something impressive before Zoe’s on me, stabbing and swinging. I leap to the side as she strikes, missing me. She stumbles forward, grunting. She’s losing energy.

  Stunned silence fills the room. Coach Lammly’s whistle hangs from her lower lip, forgotten. My sword is two feet away. Zoe lunges and I spring back onto my hands, my body an arc. I could never do a handspring, not even when I used to take gymnastics in middle school, but now I’m tumbling over myself—practically flying—my shoulders strong, my feet never touching the ground. It feels like I’ve been off the ground for a long time.

  I slide to the floor, falling into a perfect split. My saber winks from the ground. Zoe lunges, and I reach. My fingers wrap around the hilt as her blade whips toward me. I throw my sword over my head, just managing to block her blade. Metal screams. I push Zoe off and swing my arm to the side, catching her hip with my blade. Point me.

  If we were still fencing, I’d have just won.

  Coach Lammly fumbles for her whistle and blows—two quick bursts.

  “Enough,” she says, incredulous. She blinks, like she’s just come out of a daydream. “Locker room—both of you. I’ll be in to … to discuss this in a moment.”

  Scattered applause echoes through the gym as I stand, peeling off my helmet. Someone catcalls and a couple other girls laugh nervously. They don’t seem to know how to respond.

  I turn toward Zoe, but she’s already stalking across the gymnasium, moving faster than I imagined her short legs could carry her. I follow. The students who’d been watching turn back to their partners, shrugging. Show’s over.

  I step into the locker room, letting the door slam shut behind me. Zoe yanks her helmet off, her face beet red, her hair glued to her forehead with sweat. Her chest rises and falls as she struggles to catch her breath. I lift my hands in front of my chest, worried she’s going to attack again. She doesn’t.

  Instead she says, “You took the serum, didn’t you?”