So, you know, no pressure there.

“Your mother is fantastic,” Patrice gushed as she walked through the hallways after class. “She’s looking at the big picture, you know? Not only her own little window on the world. So few people have that.”

“Yeah. I mean—I’m trying to be like her. Someday.”

Just then, Courtney turned the corner. Her blond hair was pulled up into a tight ponytail that made her eyebrows arch even more disdainfully. Patrice stiffened; apparently her new acceptance of me didn’t extend as far as defending me in front of Courtney. I braced myself for Courtney’s latest snarky remark. Instead, she sort of smiled at me, and I could tell she thought she was being nicer to me than I deserved. “Party this weekend,” she said. “Saturday. By the lake. One hour after curfew.”

“Sure.” Patrice shrugged just one shoulder, like she couldn’t care less about being invited to what was probably the coolest party at Evernight this fall, at least until the Autumn Ball. Or were formal dances not cool? Mom and Dad had made it sound like the biggest event of the year, but their ideas about Evernight were already suspect.

My curiosity about balls and their coolness or lack thereof had kept me from answering Courtney for myself. She glared at me, clearly annoyed I hadn’t gushed all over her with thanks. “Well?”

If I’d been gutsier, I’d have told her that she was a snob and a bore and that I had better things to do than go to her party. Instead, I only managed to say, “Um, yeah. Great. That’ll be great.”

Patrice nudged me as Courtney sauntered, with her blond ponytail swinging behind her. “See? I told you. People are going to accept you because you’re—well, you’re their daughter.”

How big a loser do you have to be to coast into high school popularity on your parents? Still, I couldn’t afford to turn my nose up at any acceptance I won, no matter what the reasons were.

“What kind of party is it going to be, though? I mean, on the grounds? At night?”

“You have been to a party before, right?” Sometimes Patrice didn’t sound any nicer than Courtney.

“Of course I have.” I was counting my own birthday parties when I was a kid, but Patrice didn’t have to know that. “I just was wondering if—there wouldn’t be drinking, would there?”

Patrice laughed like I’d said something funny. “Oh, Bianca, grow up.”

She headed off toward the library, and I got the impression that I wasn’t invited to come along. So I walked back toward our room alone.

Somehow my parents are cool, I thought. Does it skip a generation?

My parents had said that I would soon settle into a pattern, and that when I did, I’d like Evernight more. Well, after the first week, I knew they were only right about the first half.

Classes were okay, mostly. Mom made one reference to me being her daughter, then said, “Neither Bianca nor I will ever mention this fact again. You shouldn’t either.” Everybody laughed; she had them eating out of the palm of her hand. How did she do that? And why hadn’t she taught me how to do it, too?

Other teachers took some getting used to, and I missed the informality and friendliness of my old school. Here, the professors were imposing and powerful, and it was unthinkable not to meet their high expectations. A lifetime spent hiding from the world in the library had prepared me for the work, and I put more time into my studies than ever. The lone class that bothered me was English, because that was the one Mrs. Bethany taught. Something about her—just the way she held herself or how she cocked her head before someone answered a question in class—well, she was intimidating.

Still, academics weren’t going to be a problem. That much I’d already figured out. My social life was a different story.

Courtney and the other Evernight types had decided that I wasn’t somebody to despise; my well-liked parents had won me the right to be safely ignored, but that was all. Meanwhile, the “new admissions” kids regarded me with suspicion. I roomed with Patrice, and apparently that was reason enough to assume that I wasn’t going to side against her and her friends. The cliques had formed within a day, and I was caught exactly in the middle.

The only other “outcast” I’d reached out to at all was Raquel Vargas, the girl with the short haircut. One morning we’d griped about the amount of trigonometry homework we had, but that was almost it for social contact. Raquel, I sensed, didn’t make friends easily; she seemed lonely but withdrawn into herself. Not that different from me, really, but somehow even more miserable.

The other students made sure of that.

“Same black sweater, same black pants,” Courtney sing-songed one day as she sauntered along, passing near Raquel. “Same stupid bracelet, too. And I bet we see them again tomorrow.”

Raquel shot back, “Not everybody can afford to buy every version of the uniform, you know.”

“No, I guess not,” said Erich, a guy who hung out with Courtney a lot. He had black hair and a thin, pointed face. “Only the people who actually belong here.”

Courtney and all her friends laughed. Raquel’s cheeks flushed dark, but she simply stalked away from them as the laughter got even louder. As she walked past me, our eyes met. I tried to show, without words, that I felt bad for her, but that only seemed to make her angrier. Apparently Raquel didn’t have much use for pity.

I sensed that, if we’d met somewhere else, Raquel and I might have found we had a lot in common. But as bad as I felt for her, I wasn’t sure I needed to spend time with anybody more depressed than I was.

I thought that I wouldn’t have been half as depressed, despite everything, if I’d been able to understand what had happened between me and Lucas.

We were in Professor Iwerebon’s chemistry class together, but sat at opposite ends of the room. Every moment I wasn’t trying to interpret the teacher’s thick Nigerian accent, I was surreptitiously watching Lucas. He didn’t meet my eyes before or after class, and he never spoke to me. The weirdest thing about this was that Lucas wasn’t remotely shy about speaking up to anybody else. He was quick to cut down anybody he thought was being pretentious, snobby, or hurtful—in short, virtually anybody who was the “Evernight type,” at any time at all.

For instance, on the grounds one day, two guys started laughing when a girl—not the Evernight type—dropped her backpack, then half stumbled over it. Lucas, strolling right behind them, said, “That’s ironic.”

“What?” Erich was one of the guys laughing. “That this school lets in total losers now?” The girl who had dropped her bag blushed.

“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t be irony,” Lucas pointed out. “Irony is the contrast between what’s said and what happens.”

Erich made a face. “What are you talking about?”

“You laughed at her for stumbling right before you fell flat on your face.”

I couldn’t see exactly how Lucas tripped Erich, but I knew that he’d done it even before Erich went sprawling into the grass. A few people laughed, but most of Courtney’s friends glared at Lucas, like he’d done something wrong by standing up for that girl.

“See, that’s irony,” Lucas said as kept walking.