But it isn’t fair! something in her howled. I had a plan! An actual plan! Monica slept late, and Claire had gotten up early just to do laundry while all the party crowd was comatose and the studious crowd was off to classes. She’d thought she could leave it for a couple of minutes to grab her shower—another scary experience—and she’d never even thought about anybody doing something so incredibly low.

As she bit back her sobs, she noticed—again—how quiet it was up here. Creepy and deserted, with half the girls deep asleep and the other half gone. Even when it was crowded and buzzing, the dorm was creepy, though. Old, decrepit, full of shadows and corners and places mean girls could lurk. In fact, that summed up the whole town. Morganville was small and old and dusty, full of creepy little oddities. Like the fact that the streetlights worked only half the time, and they were too far apart when they did. Like the way the people in the local campus stores seemed too happy. Desperately happy. Like the fact that the whole town, despite the dust, was clean—no trash, no graffiti, nobody begging for spare change in alleyways.

Weird.

She could almost hear her mother saying, Honey, it’s just that you’re in a strange place. It’ll get better. You’ll just have to try harder.

Mom always said things like that, and Claire had always done her best to hide how hard it was to follow that advice.

Well. Nothing to do but try to get her stuff back.

Claire gulped a couple more times, wiped her eyes, and hauled the arm-twisting weight of her backpack up and over her shoulder. She stared for a few seconds at the wet pair of panties and one sock clutched in her right hand, then hastily unzipped the front pocket of the backpack and stuffed them in. Man, that would kill whatever cool she had left, if she walked around carrying those.

“Well,” said a low, satisfied voice from the open door opposite the stairs, “look who it is. The Dumpster diver.”

Claire stopped, one hand on the rusted iron railing. Something was telling her to run, but something always told her that: fight-or-flight—she’d read the textbooks. And she was tired of flighting. She turned around slowly, as Monica Morrell stepped out of the dorm room—not hers, so she’d busted Erica’s lock again. Monica’s running buddies Jennifer and Gina filed out and took up flanking positions. Soldiers in flip-flops and low-rise jeans and French manicures.