“How do you spell Mattie?” She emphasizes the T’s, sharp and jagged. Her eyes bore into me, as if I came to Poppy View Middle School just to make her life miserable. I never asked to be here. If I were still at my old school, I could be doing group projects with people who actually like me. Maybe even with my best friend, Mai. I try to picture life back home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Soon the leaves will turn red, lopsided pumpkins drawn by first graders will be taped to the school windows, and the air will smell like the first frost.

Mercedes taps her pencil on the paper, waiting.

“Two T ’s,” I tell her. “M-A-T-T-I-E.”

“It’s a…,” she begins. She pauses as if searching for the right word. “It’s a cute name.”

“Thank—”

“My friend had a dog named Mattie,” she adds.

A dog?

I smile the way I do when my mom tells me to clean my room, but I know I probably won’t. “Well, it’s short for Matilde.” And then I spell very, very slowly, “M-A-T-I-L-D-E.”

Mercedes shoots me a look that could freeze a lake in Minnesota. I shrug.

“I’m named after the wife of this famous dead poet Pablo Neruda,” I inform her. “You’ve probably never heard of him. It was my father’s idea.” I’m not sure why I say that. I never talk about my father to anyone.

Mercedes traces the M in her own name over and over until it’s dark and black. “I’m named after a wife, too. The wife of a famous writer.”

We don’t make eye contact, but the wire between us seems to buzz.

CHAPTER 2 Mercedes

The moment she walks into Mrs. Ellingham’s room, I get a sinking feeling deep in my bones.

“Whoa,” Gaby whispers, her breath hot in my ear. “That new girl looks just like you.”

My chest burns. Gaby and I watch Mrs. Ellingham hand the girl a textbook and point her toward the only empty seat in our classroom. Across from me.

“Not really,” I say, even though anyone can see that the girl and I have hair the same brown color that looks black in some light and reddish in others. We also happen to have it cut in the same style just past our shoulders. Hers is in a ponytail but I can tell it’s the same curly frizz as mine. “I mean, obviously, she’s never heard of a flat iron. Or been to a mall.”

“Other than the hair and the, uh, weird clothes.” The girl is wearing crisp, dark jeans—totally out of style—and a T-shirt that says Lake Superior. “There’s something,” Gaby insists. “I don’t know—something familiar that makes her look just like you.”