Our plates overflowing—to put it lightly—Molly and I head over to a table with a few spare seats I think have been saved for us. Molly dumps her plate down and jumps into hugging some of the girls I guess she didn’t get a chance to see yesterday. I stand awkwardly for a second, and then I put my own plate by the empty seat next to Molly. No one’s sitting yet, so I stand behind my chair like the rest of them, drumming my fingers on the wood and hoping I don’t look half as self-conscious as I feel.

Finally, a hush falls over the room, and I look around to see what we’re all going quiet for. In a parade of polished shoes, blazers, and suits, the headmaster, a Black man with close-shaven gray hair and deep frown lines, marches into the dining hall followed by a line of twenty or so girls.

I spot Eleanor—the snobby girl with tanned skin and long curls from Molly’s party who kept talking about how some families were total nobodies—toward the front of the line, and figure these are the prefects. Just as I put that together, I suddenly find myself looking right at Princess Rosemary.

She quickly scans over the girls at my table, and then her eyes lock with mine. It’s only for a split second, but it feels like a weirdly weighted moment. Like everything slows, so that half second feels more like a minute.

She’s pretty. The kind of pretty that makes you forget you’re standing in a room full of people who don’t know you exist, because for a second you’ve forgotten any of them exist right back. I think there’s something unfair about that, to be born into that much money and status, and to also be beautiful. And I’m not just jealous because I flopped in at least two, if not three, of those categories. Or maybe I am jealous, who knows. But she is. Beautiful.

Her hair isn’t brown, it’s a thick, glossy chocolate brown that hangs past her shoulders in frizz-free waves. Her eyes aren’t just green, they’re piercing, and expressive enough that you can tell she finds something funny before her mouth even catches up to smile. And I like the way she holds herself. Sitting and standing, she’s self-assured and straight-backed and tall in a way that forces you to look at her. I’m suddenly aware of my own terrible posture, and I try to straighten myself up.

There’s that gnawing question again. Was she laughing with me at the party, or at me? I’ve been thinking about it on and off since talking to Molly about her yesterday, and I keep coming to different conclusions. I wonder if she does that on purpose? Fashions herself into an answer that keeps changing?