Before I can check if I have a fever or anything, someone behind me clears his throat. The sound is oddly formal, like a person readying themselves to deliver a speech.

I spin around. It’s Henry.

Of course it is.

For a long moment he just stares at me, cocks his head, considering. It’s impossible to tell what he’s thinking. Then he steps forward and says in that infuriating British accent of his: “You don’t look very good.”

Anger spikes inside me.

That’s it.

“Are we insulting my looks now?” I demand. My voice sounds shrill even to my own ears, and more than a few students pushing past us turn to shoot us curious looks.

“What?” Henry’s eyes widen slightly, the faintest trace of confusion disrupting the precise symmetry of his features. “No, I just meant...” Then he seems to catch something on my face—something cruel and tightly wound—because his own expression shutters closed. He shoves his hands into his pockets. Looks away. “You know what? Never mind.”

The bottom of my stomach dips at the sudden flatness in his tone, and I hate him for it, hate myself even more for my reaction. I have at least twenty thousand better things to worry about than what Henry Li thinks of me.

Things like the cold still spreading under my skin.

I whirl back around and run out through the doors, onto the grass courtyard. I expect to feel better in the sunlight, but my trembling only grows more violent, the chill running down to my very toes.

Definitely not normal.

Then, without warning, something slams straight into my back.

I don’t even have time to cry out; I crash hard onto my knees. Pain shoots through me, the stiff, fake grass digging into my raw palms.

Wincing, I glance up in time to see that the culprit isn’t something, but someone. Someone built like a bull and twice my height.

Andrew She.

I wait for him to help me up—to apologize, at the very least—but he simply frowns as he regains his balance, his eyes passing right over me, and turns around to leave.

Confusion wars with indignation in my head. This is Andrew She, after all; the boy who cushions his every sentence with phrases like “sorry” and “I think” and “maybe,” who can’t speak up in class without his face going red, who’s always the first person to greet the teachers good morning, who’s been teased mercilessly by everyone in our year level for being polite to a fault.

But when I turn toward the tinted glass doors to check for any injuries, all thoughts of Andrew She and basic etiquette vanish from my head. My heart slams violently against my ribs, a loud, ragged beat of this-can’t-be-happening-this-can’t-be-happening—

Because the doors reflect everything like a mirror: the kids spilling out onto the basketball courts, the emerald bamboo groves planted around the science building, the flock of sparrows taking to the skies in the distance...

Everything but me.