Mom pumps a fist in the air at me. I pump mine back, and hope she can’t tell that I’m panicking.

The thing is, I didn’t have the best start to high school. Things have been better recently, but that’s thanks to my best friend, Rachel. Rachel, who lives in Boulder, and won’t be here to have my back if the Bramppath kids decide they hate me. And they might. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to me.

At the end of the tour, Hellene takes us into a small room near the main office. “Just wait out here for a moment,” she says, going through a door that leads into an ominous black stairway. “I’ll grab your uniform.”

Mom and I exchange a glance. Shrugging, I sit down on one of the dozen or so wooden chairs lining the wall. There’s one other person here, a girl about my age with perfect lips and a sharp chin who looks like she might be East Asian. She gives me a distracted smile and pushes her bangs out of her eyes, showing off straight, high-set brows.

I don’t know how to tell if her clothes are expensive without referring to labels, and I can’t see any of those, but something about them looks expensive, anyway. She’s dressed in head-to-toe neutrals, her bag is all floppy like real leather, and her shoes are spotless.

I bet she has a Porsche.

Hellene comes up the stairs clutching a box. She grunts under the weight of it, and I jump up to give her a hand, but Mom gets there first. When they haul the box onto the desk, Hellene steps back, catches her breath, and notices the other girl. “Oh, Molly. Senior cape, right? I’m sorry, we’re running a little bit late.”

Molly shrugs. “I’m not in a rush.”

Satisfied, Hellene starts unloading the box. “The compulsory uniform is covered by the scholarship,” she says, handing me a mountain of clear, individually wrapped packages, all in varying shades of dark green and white. “I’ve got your shirts, skirts, vests, and socks.… Here’s the school tie, the school jumper, your formal dining gown—this one’s heavy—and the senior cape.”

“What, no emblazoned underwear?” Mom jokes, and I concentrate on melting into the floor. If probably-owns-a-Porsche Molly didn’t peg me as an outsider before, she sure knows now.

The bundle, which is roughly as tall as I am, starts forming a leaning tower of packages in my arms almost as soon as Hellene hands it over, so I transfer it to a nearby chair. For a beat, I think it’s going to hold its balance, but then it topples over, littering the room with plastic-sealed clothing.

Amazing.

With poker-hot cheeks, I start snatching the packages up, and Molly covers a laugh behind her hand. I wince, and she stops.