Totally confused, I perk my ears to listen to what she and the other girls are saying as the bus starts off again. I catch the words “sick,” “not fooling anyone,” and “so dangerous.”

When I peek over my shoulder, they’re all staring at me. Even Ruby.

Oh, Ruby, I think. What did you do?

I hurry off the bus at school, bumping into Sean—one of the guys who sits with Edie at lunch—as I step down onto the pavement.

“Watch it!” he barks, shooting me a dirty look. The kind that should really be reserved for the dog poop currently on the bottom of his shoe.

By now, the heat in my cheeks is like fire, and my hands have begun to shake. This feels like the dream where you show up naked to school. Except I’m wearing all my clothes. And I put makeup on like usual this morning to cover my spots.

So what is going on?

Fina’s standing in our regular place in front of school. Head down, I scurry toward her. But even with my eyes on my feet, I can still see people parting around me, giving me a lot of space as I pass.

“Is that the girl?” someone to my left says.

“Oh yeah,” says someone else. “I think so.”

When I reach Fina, her eyes are full of thunderclouds. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What’s—what’s happening?”

“You didn’t see it?”

“See what?”

“Come on,” she says, linking her arm through mine and guiding me into school. We don’t stop until we get to the library. I collapse into the chair closest to the door. My legs are all wobbly.

“What’s going on, Fina?”

She has a look on her face like she’s about to get a shot at the doctor’s as she pulls out her phone and hands it to me. “I’m so sorry, Emma.”

On the screen is a huge group message. ATTENTION!!! it screams. BEWARE OF EMMA TALBOT. SHE IS HIDING A RARE SKIN DISEASE THAT IS HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS!

Below the text is a picture of me that Edie took on the bus the day I hadn’t blended in my sunscreen. The morning light glares off the white layer of sunscreen in an unnatural way so that I do look a little like a zombie freak, just like Edie said that day.

And now everyone thinks that’s what I look like under my makeup.