Claire let go of the banister and slapped Monica right back, full across her pouty mouth, and for just a tight, white-hot second she actually felt good about it, but then Monica hissed like a scorched cat, and Claire had time to think, Oh crap, I really shouldn’t have done that.

She never saw the punch coming. Didn’t even really feel the impact, except as a blank sensation and confusion, but then the weight of her backpack on her shoulder was pulling her to one side and she staggered.

She almost caught herself, and then Gina, grinning spitefully, reached over and shoved her backward, down the stairs, and there was nothing but air behind her.

She hit the edge of every stair, all the way to the bottom. Her backpack broke open and spilled books as she tumbled, and at the top of the stairs Monica and the Monickettes laughed and hooted and high-fived, but she saw it only in disconnected little jerks of motion, freeze-frames.

It seemed to take forever before she skidded to a stop at the bottom, and then her head hit the wall with a nasty, meaty sound, and everything went black.

She later remembered only one more thing, in the darkness: Monica’s voice, a low and vicious whisper. “Tonight. You’ll get what’s coming to you, you freak. I’m going to make sure.”

It seemed like seconds, but when she woke up again there was somebody kneeling next to her, and it wasn’t Monica or her nail-polish mafia; it was Erica, who had the room at the top of the stairs, four doors down from Claire’s. Erica looked pale and strained and scared, and Claire tried to smile, because that was what you did when somebody was scared. She didn’t hurt until she moved, and then her head started to throb. There was a red-hot ache near the top, and when she reached up to touch it she felt a hard raised knot. No blood, though. It hurt worse when she probed the spot, but not in an oh-my-God-skull-fracture kind of way, or at least that was what she hoped.

“Are you okay?” Erica asked, waving her hands kind of helplessly in midair as Claire wiggled her way up to a sitting position against the wall. Claire risked a quick look past her up the stairs, then down. The coast looked Monica-clear. Nobody else had come out to see what was up, either—most of them were afraid of getting in trouble, and the rest just flat didn’t care.

“Yeah,” she said, and managed a shaky laugh. “Guess I tripped.”

“You need to go to the quack shack?” Which was college code for the university clinic. “Or, God, an ambulance or whatever?”