“Someone’s got an attitude. I like it.” The speaker—a girl, Persian maybe?—looks too cool for (this) school. Jet black hair cascades past a headband onto olive skin. One eye is covered by her locks completely, and the remaining eye is heavily outlined with kohl, beneath eyeshadow in the colors of a Caribbean beach party. I recognize her from Mom’s yearbook, which I dug up last year just to gawk at the clothes. I don’t remember her name, but her senior superlative was “Least Likely to Care About Your Opinion,” which obvi makes an impression. When I asked Mom why she wasn’t that cool, she’d laughed and said they were friends, which made her cool by proxy. I honestly can’t see them as buds, and she never talked about her, so they can’t have been close.

The girl’s eyebrow is raised expectantly, and I can see she wants the scoop.

My offender has beaten a hasty retreat, and it’s just me and this stranger I have to know. “He just surprised me, is all.”

She drops a husky laugh. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t get a Gale warning, so you had no way to know what was coming.”

Gale warning. Now I know why the name is familiar.

I almost spit. Gale, as in the museum nerd. Ernie Gale, as in my new roommate.

As if we’re old friends, the stranger tells me Ernie’s the biggest klutz in the school. “He’s lost just about every on-campus job, not because he doesn’t try, but because he’s a continual disaster.” Her eye sparkles as she rattles off the litany. “He set fire to the cafeteria, flooded the chapel, wrecked a tractor on the farm … Don’t get me wrong: he’s not a bad kid, just spacey.” She takes on the voice of a confidante. “Maybe it’s a little mean, but kids say ‘Gale warning’ to warn people that’s he coming.”

And I’m going to live with him?

I can’t think of what to say, which is okay because the second bell rings. I imagine it means the same thing here as in my time: we have sixty more seconds to get to class.

“First period English?” I don’t even have to look at my schedule.

“Yes!”

She nods down the hall toward what was and is Ms. Silverthorn’s room, but I pretend I don’t already know this. “Lead the way!”

“Straight into trouble,” she laughs, and I like her already.

I whisper my name, and she returns the favor, introducing herself as Leeza as she leads me to the very last row. Our still-teenage-looking teacher isn’t surprised to see me sitting so far back because she doesn’t know that someday Cheng and I will always, always claim the two seats nearest the door.