were in a long gallery with windows all along one side. The sun lit up Dibs’s hair, gilded Shanks’s

perfect skin and white teeth, and fired in Graves’s eyes. Me, I just blinked and tried not to look halfasleep—and tried as well not to choke on huge gulps of banana latte.

Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Banana latte is awesome.

The end of the gallery was a big set of double doors, and I inhaled sharply just like I did every

evening before Leon swept the door open and glanced out. He nodded, and it was only then that

Graves eased up on my arm and we all got through the doors and into a crowded hall full of boys.

Attending a Schola is like walking into a sea of extras from toothpaste commercials and sitcoms.

The wulfen are taller and the djamphir are built slighter. They’re in every conceivable human shade.

Wulfen tend to be more brunet, djamphir to have more extreme hair colors—not just blond but platinum or gold, not just dark-haired but raven or sandalwood. The skin colors are even and beautiful,

not a pimple or discoloration to be found. The eyes are glowing or gemlike, and djamphir have

sharper facial features. Plus, they move differently. Wulfen move like they’re shouldering fluidly

through long grass, and boy djamphir move with an eerie natural grace. It’s not so noticeable if

you’re just looking at one, but a crowd of them? The wrongness just explodes all over the inside of

your brain and tickles that little instinctive spot on the back of your neck. The one that tells you

something is dangerous.

Or that could just be me. Because as usual, the moment I stepped out into the hall, they were looking at me.

I guess I’d be curious about the only boy in an all-girls school. It’s just, you know, being the only

girl in an all-boys school was different. Because it was me being stared at. After practicing invisibility as an art form in school halls all over the U.S., this was new and unwelcome.

Antique metal lockers stood at attention between classroom doors, and the sounds of slamming

lockers and drumming feet, as well as the occasional catcall, didn’t penetrate the bubble of whispering around me. I put my head down, as usual, and let my shower-damp hair slide forward, curtaining me. Dibs drew closer on my left, and Graves held his chin up, a bounce in his step and his earring swinging. He didn’t seem to mind the whispers or the looks.

Course, he probably got a fair share of both as a goth boy in a Dakota town. Stands to reason he’d

have a good front to show the world. Sometimes he even reached down and took my hand, fingers