If this was bitter, I wanted bunches. Impossibly, coffee tasted even better than it smelled, and it wasn’t just one flavor but an evolution that started with something—yes, bitter, as it slid over the tongue but then turned sweet as I swallowed and left a spicy aftertaste. What magic was this liquid that could change flavor even after it was gone?

“What do you think, princess?” Lina called from the counter.

When I looked up at her, I got the unsettling feeling that she had been watching me the entire time.

“It’s delicious,” I said. And then, because I was feeling generous, I added, honestly, “It’s the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.”

Lina’s sudden roar of laughter took me aback. Had I accidentally said something wrong again? But when I looked around at our new acquaintances, they appeared as puzzled as I was.

“I bet it is, princess!” Lina said, doubling over the counter in hysterics. “I bet it is.”

Poe eyed Lina over the rim of his thick black glasses, then pushed them up his nose and said seriously to the rest of us, “One day, I intend to be as fabulously eccentric as her.”

“We basically all want to be Lina when we grow up,” Sydney explained.

Sophia nodded in agreement. “She’s a little off her rocker, but she’s ours.”

“And what can we say? The coffee is exceptional.” Poe lifted his mug in Lina’s direction, a tribute, and she responded by waving him off and disappearing into the kitchen, still snickering.

Dexter flashed me a bright white smile. “Some days she’s a little more off than others.”

Twelve

Bigger Than Prom

Reg and I spent the next hour chatting up the humans and managing not to embarrass ourselves. Just as Sal predicted, whenever a question was hard to answer, we had only to refer to our fictional dead parents, and the group backed right off.

Our new classmates gave us the full verbal tour of Hope High, from sports (Sophia played soccer; Sydney feigned illness on a regular basis to avoid gym) to fine arts (the fall play was Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Poe was apparently a shoo-in for Puck). Dexter was a member of something called Future Farmers of America, which should have sounded painfully boring but, coming from him, seemed terribly interesting.

He explained that he was raised on a farm but his parents had sold the land to move him closer to town so he wouldn’t be so isolated from his friends and civilization. I liked the way he put air quotes around the word “civilization” and winked when he acknowledged that a city girl like me probably didn’t see it that way.