“The Forevers are the kids whose families have been here since, you know, they would say, forever. Again, super erasing and problematic. It’s like the whole Founding Fathers–type thing. Also, they all have like tons of money. Tanner Spencer, the tall guy who always wears his soccer stuff, his family is all mayors and councilmen. The kid with the black hair and the freckles from yesterday was John Maxwell; his family owns the grocery store and the car dealership. And Gilly Henderson, the girl with the long hair, her dad is on the city council and her grandfather manages the bank. Her mom died a few years ago. The girl with the pigtails is Sarah Pye. They’re just rich. . .I don’t know how. Her mom is PTA.”

“That’s too bad about her mom.” I looked over at Gilly, who was in the center of the track, bending to touch her toes. “So, like the Forevers, they founded the city?”

“Oh, I mean, no, probably not. Maybe?” Berry shrugged as Coach Harras tweeted us back into our laps with—I thought—an excessive number of blasts. “I mean, they sort of. . .own it?”

The best way to run a place is to act like you run it.

And somewhere now Lucy, the “militant lesbian,” had been given a position of power.

I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be good.

Fortunately, for me at least, Berry and I had almost the same schedule except for Band, which Berry had (tuba!) but I didn’t, so I could pretty much follow her around all day soaking up as much information as she was willing to dish out. And clinging to Berry like a life jacket.

Berry showed me the two water fountains that worked, how to open my locker, which stuck, and how to navigate the Greenville High building, which was basically a doughnut. Also where the bathrooms with the working stalls were.

“So what do people do around here,” I asked as we walked from Chemistry to Spanish, “for fun?”

“For fun?” Berry tapped her chin. “Some kids stay home and play video games and watch makeup youvids. Mostly, though, around here, everything is sports. Like Greenville is ninety percent soccer season and ten percent academics. Soccer is the big thing at Greenville.”

“Hence the dragon perched on top of the sign outside.”

“Yeah, you don’t mess with the Dragons. Like parents here are super intense about that stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“Like”—Berry surreptitiously pointed to the arm of a kid walking next to us—“if you want to get a dragon tattoo around here, you can do that from the age of like six.”

“Do you have one?” I asked.

“Uh, no way.” Berry frowned. “When I get a tattoo, it’s not going to be a Greenville tattoo!”

“So there’s a lot of patchy dragon tattoos around Greenville is what you’re saying.”

“Mmm-hmm.”