With a groan, I zip my backpack shut and head down the hall toward room 117, clutching my map and schedule. I don’t need to pop into the bathroom to know that Miranda’s long gone.

I follow the gleaming white hall past open classrooms and walls of lockers. At the end, I make a left, proud of my map-reading skills. Four doors later I find Mrs. Deckler’s class.

And I’m not at all surprised to find Miranda already in her desk when I walk into the room.

Pausing for a second in the doorway, I give myself a little pep talk.

This is it, I tell myself. This is the moment to leave doormat Grace behind and become . . . fearless Grace. Confident Grace. If I take the offensive, I can turn this moment around. I can make sure that my time at Alpha isn’t spent feeling powerless. I take a deep breath, form the words of a biting, witty comment in my mind, and open my mouth.

“Did you get lost?” Miranda asks before I can utter a sound. “I waited outside the bathroom for like ten minutes.”

“I—” How do I respond to that? A complete and total lie. “What?”

She leans forward, as if to say something confidential, but her whisper is anything but quiet. “Are you constipated? Nurse Callahan probably has some laxatives or something.”

Most of the dozen or so kids in the half-full classroom erupt in barely concealed snorts and giggles. Whatever reputation-establishing comment I’d been about to make completely evaporates into abject humiliation. My cheeks burn to the point of combustion. My ears quickly follow. Every life-changing hope I had bursts like a bubble hitting concrete. There is no recovering from a comment like that. Ever.

Tales of my digestive distress will probably circulate throughout the school by lunchtime. Even freshmen will feel sorry for me, while being thankful it’s not them being thrown under the social bus.

I do the only thing I can do; I duck my head and hurry to the back of the classroom. Slipping into an empty desk, I make myself as small and invisible as humanly possible.

“Miranda is a vortex of evil.”

I look up from being preoccupied with my backpack—aka pretending to be too busy to notice the stares and snickers—to find the girl in the next desk over studiously doodling on her spiral-bound.

“I’m sorry?” I ask, not sure she actually said something.

She jerks her head, sending a wave of black hair with white tips in Miranda’s general direction at the front of the room. “Never apologize for Miranda bashing. It’s my favorite pastime.”

“Oh.” Looks like I’m not the only person on the receiving end of Miranda’s bad attitude.