“Hey,” I said, gently taking hold of her shoulders. “Talk to me.

How bad is this?”

“Bad,” she choked out. “Really, really bad.”

I fought down the wave of panic that threatened to crash over me. “Is there something I can do?” I broke off when I realized how little I knew about this, that I truly had no idea what her real name being revealed meant, or if there was anything that could be done now, so I added, “Someone I can call?”

“No,” she whispered.

“What about your mom?” I frantically asked.

“No, she . . . She’s in the middle of touring.” She leaned her back against the wall, drawing in a shaky breath as she blinked away the tears. “I’m probably being overdramatic. I’m sure it’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal if you almost have a panic attack.” I was silent for a few moments, just watching her as she tried to calm down, her chest rising and falling with every ragged breath. There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but looking at her, I knew that she wouldn’t answer any of them. Instead I said, “I want to help you. Is it okay if I do?”

Noelle stilled. Inhaled, exhaled, slower this time. Then her eyes met mine, finally looking at me and not through, and she nodded.

“How about you relax,” I slowly said, taking her hand, “And I do your makeup?”

Noelle looked confused at hearing her own words echoed back to her before her eyes lit up with understanding and something in her shoulders seemed to loosen a little. Her voice was raspy when she murmured a shaky “Okay,” her hand gripping onto mine hard enough to hurt.

I didn’t say anything and I didn’t pull away. Instead, I let her fingernails imprint little half moons into the palm of my hand and led her into our room, where I gently pushed her down onto the bed and got to work.

Noelle didn’t say another word that night.

21

Seth

Over the next week, I watched Noelle unravel. After the article about her mother came out, she was different—subdued, almost. She didn’t talk much when I was around, didn’t eat a lot, constantly looked over her shoulder in the corridors, paranoid, like she expected the shadows in the alcoves to pounce on her or the ceiling to crumble over her head.

“She’s like she was when she first arrived here,” Jasper told me one evening.

“Do you know why?”

“No. She doesn’t talk to me about this stuff.”

Evelyn didn’t know what was going on either. Even she found Noelle hard to get through to; she had told me that she sometimes woke up to Noelle having nightmares now instead of the other way around. What they were about, she never told Evelyn.

Instead, she spent most of her time in the gym, either training with the basketball team or having self-defense lessons, which she asked for almost every other day. I didn’t tell Evelyn what it looked like because I was sure she had realized it, too, by now—