The boy from the hallway is sitting in the one next to it, his head down as he scribbles something in his notebook. All of the nervousness instantly returns to my body, and I fervently wish I could sit in any other seat apart from that one. He peers up at me when I get closer, pen stilling on the paper, and I shift into my seat carefully, pretending not to see.

As I set down my notebook and my copy of Macbeth in front of me, a young woman with rich brown skin strides into the room, pulling her multitude of braids into a bun.

“Good morning, everyone,” she says, perching on the edge of her desk. “I’m sure you’ve noticed a familiar face has returned to us safe and sound. Let’s all give Allie a warm welcome back.”

Everyone in the room turns to look in my direction once more, awkwardly applauding me because of the mere fact that I didn’t die. Ducking my head, waiting for it to be over, I imagine myself disappearing into the floor. The boy next to me doesn’t clap.

“Now, we’re going to pick up from where we last read, in act two.”

The words send everyone into a slow frenzy, flipping through their books to find the right page. Except I have no idea where we last read from and when Ms. Warren begins to read aloud, everything sounds jumbled and confusing without any context.

The boy in the seat next to mine watches me fumble through the pages. Up close, it’s clear that one of his eyes is green, the other blue, and the combination is striking, nearly impossible to look away from.

“Thirty-four,” he says quietly, then returns his gaze to the paper.

I nod gratefully and flip to the correct page, feeling unfocused.

“Do you know me?” I finally ask in a whisper.

“Everyone knows you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

Turning back to his book, he proceeds to ignore me for the remainder of the class.

03 | Fall

The end of the school day can’t come quickly enough, but when it does, I’m hit with the realization that I have to come back here tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. Dropping out and hiding in my room for all of eternity is becoming more appealing by the second. My body would certainly thank me for it. Miraculously, I walked away from the accident with minimal injuries—besides the whole amnesia thing, of course—but the effects of being in a temporarily comatose state linger, and I’m not as strong as I should be.