“Layla,” I say. “Do you want to—”

“No,” she says, and keeps walking.

I watch Layla’s back as she gets farther away from me.

“Don’t worry so much. Layla worries enough for all of us,” Aarya says.

I accept the chair Felix pulled out for me. Although I can’t help but feel weird that I didn’t follow Layla, even though I’m pretty sure we could use a minute apart.

“Thanks,” I say to Felix, who sits down next to me.

“You’re quite the hot topic around here.” Aarya pushes bowls of roasted cauliflower and carrots and a pan of lasagna in my direction, and I gladly accept them. “Not that anyone will tell you that.”

A girl with long red dreads, braided down the center of her head like a Mohawk, turns and looks at Aarya.

“What?” Aarya says. “Problem?”

The girl shakes her head and returns her eyes to her meal, but she doesn’t seem the least bit put off. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say she and Aarya are friends. Interesting that Aarya, who’s obviously bold and fluid, would have one friend who’s so reserved and another who’s so stiff.

Felix pours me a glass of water, and now that I’m so close to him, I notice that the scar on his face is a clean line, like a cut from a knife or a sword, the type you would imagine belonged to a knight or a pirate in a children’s book. And by the way it’s faded, it looks like he’s had it for a long time. Did someone really slice him in the face when he was a kid?

“It’s funny,” I say, “barely anyone here has even looked in my direction, much less spoken to me.”

“We’re not the most openly friendly bunch,” Felix says, like he prefers it that way.

“Speak for yourself,” Aarya says. “I’m a hoot.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I bet most of this room would disagree.”

“Says the gloomy Gus from the moors of gray and rainy,” she says with her mouth full, which makes me think Felix’s British accent is real even if Aarya’s isn’t.

He gives her a warning look.

“Okay, okay,” she says in a dramatic surrendering voice. “You’re not gloomy. Barrel of laughs, you are. No one can stop when they’re around you. You must take after your—”

“Aarya,” he says in a sharper tone, and his back straightens further.

She laughs. “You should really see your face, mate.”

I look back and forth between them as I grab a piece of garlic bread. This school might be seriously questionable, but the food is outrageously good.

“Now, November,” Aarya says. “Tell us all about you.”

I smile. “I thought that was the first rule of this place, not to say.”

“Did you really think for a second that we don’t share personal things?” Aarya asks. “You know what else is a rule that no one follows? No dating.”

I almost choke on my cider and Aarya laughs, a big relaxed laugh, which earns her looks from some of the nearby students. She glares at them until they look away.