Breakfast was a family thing in the Danvers house, and Claire actually kind of looked forward to it. She didn’t often make it back for lunch or dinner, but every morning she sat with her mom and dad. Mom asked her about classes; Dad asked her about her job. Claire didn’t know how other families in Morganville worked, but hers seemed pretty . . . normal. At least in the abstract. The specifics were bound to be freaky.

Breakfast over (and, as always, delicious), Claire headed out for school. Morganville was a small-enough town that walking was easy, if you liked that sort of thing, and Claire did—usually. Today, with her gross-looking face throbbing with the heat of the sun, she wished she’d taken up her dad’s offer of buying her a car, even if it had come with the attached strings of also seeing a lot less of her boyfriend. She hadn’t told Shane that he meant more to her than having a car. That seemed like commitment any guy would find scary.

Claire stopped in at the first open store—Pablo’s Market, near the university district—and found a black cloth cap with a brim that shaded her face. That helped, and it made her feel a bit less obviously disfigured . . . until she heard a horn honk behind her, and looked over her shoulder to see a red convertible gliding up next to her on the street.

Claire turned face-forward and kept walking. Faster.

“What is it?” she heard a voice ask from the backseat of the car. Gina or Jennifer; Claire could never tell their voices apart. “It looks kind of human.”

“I don’t know. Zombie? We’ve had zombies here, right?” Gina (or Jennifer)’s vocal twin said. “Could be a zombie. Hey, how do you kill a zombie?”

“Cut its head off,” a third voice said. There was no doubt about whom that voice belonged to, no doubt at all: Monica. It was cool, confident, and commanding. “Let’s find the brain-freak and ask her—she’d know. Hey, zombie chick. Have you seen Claire Danvers, Girl Brain?”

Claire flipped her off and kept walking. Monica—black-haired again, no doubt looking shiny and pretty—was just a vague shadow in her peripheral vision, and Claire wanted to keep it that way.

And she knew, fatalistically, that it was never going to happen.

In fact, Monica didn’t like being flipped off. She accelerated the sports car, whipped it around the corner, and came to a hard stop to block Claire’s progress across the street. Monica and Gina snapped at each other, probably arguing about the specifics of how to kick Claire’s ass without breaking a nail or scuffing a shoe.

Claire gave it up and crossed the street.

Monica threw the car into reverse, and blocked her there, too.