I take my phone out, hiding it under the zipper of my backpack.

Text sent from one world to the other:

How’s Dad? C

Hilary elbows me and I jump. “Hey,” she hisses. “So I was waiting for the right time to tell you this, but I have some news.” She strokes her cool blue hair.

“When it comes to tap water,” Mr. Garcia is saying, “don’t drink it. Don’t even look at it.”

“Yeah?”

“I got into State, too!” Hilary whispers, kind of bouncing in her seat. Abigail looks over and grins, and they’re both staring at me, and it takes me a second to register the significance of this.

“Wow,” I say, sitting up straighter and summoning all the positivity I can muster. “Congrats! Are you gonna like room together and stuff?”

“We’re gonna try,” Abigail says.

“But ya never know, do you?” Hilary says in her stupid British accent. I want to pull her cool blue hair out.

“Well, I’m really excited for you,” I say, leaning down to see if my mom has responded.

Abigail squeezes my arm. “And you can room with us second semester if you get your applications in!”

“My grades probably aren’t—”

“Well, then you can go to community college and transfer after.” She says it with such genuine enthusiasm for my future that I wish she’d lend me some.

“I mean I haven’t looked into community college at all, but, yeah, totally.” I feel my phone vibrate, and I stick my head in my backpack to read it. It’s very crowded in this room. It’s like being inside a throat that’s closing.

M No texting in class. Focus on school.

Yeah, because school is so important right about now.

“So there you have it,” Mr. Garcia says as the PowerPoint clicks off and the lights come up. “We’ll finish checking in with teachers today about progress reports just to make sure all students are cleared academically.”

“You’re okay, right?” Abigail asks. “You haven’t gotten any warning e-mails?”

Not if you ignore the one in my in-box this morning. “Uh, yeah, I think I’m good. Just gotta finish my essay this weekend.”

“Do you want help?” she asks. I find myself shaking my head. Her eyes are full of concern for all the things in this world that I haven’t done yet, but essay deadlines aren’t real deadlines. Real deadlines are the ones you can’t push back.

“So now for your groups. Group one.” Mr. Garcia scrolls down the iPad. “Danika Sandhu, Doug Freeman, Cham Myles, and Helga Huber.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” I breathe. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“I’m not going, remember, Mr. G?” Helga calls out. “Gotta get back to Germany.”

Damn right you do.

“Oh, that’s right, okay then, let’s put Brendan Gordon there.”

“Not going either,” he sings from the way back of the auditorium.

“Why wouldn’t you want to go to this?” Hilary whispers.

“Yeah. It’s freeeedom,” Abigail says. “Our parents can’t even bother us once. We can make calls with the community phone, but they can’t reach us. Ever.”