“Gosh,” Anand said, coming around the corner. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“If only,” Rose muttered.

“What happened?”

“Them!” She glanced over her shoulder. Carrie, Lisa, and Brianna were walking behind Ms. Elfenbach as she led the girl to the nurse’s office.

“Mean Queens?” Anand asked. His dark eyes grew darker. “What did they do to you?”

She nervously fingered the locket. “They were trying to trap me in the bathroom. Then Ms. Elfenbach came in with that poor girl who threw up on Carrie’s shoes. Carrie called her a creep.”

“She called a sick kid a creep?”

Rose nodded. “Listen, we’ve got to go or we’ll be late for math.”

Ms. Elfenbach was also late for math, and Carrie, Lisa and Brianna weren’t there at all. She was relieved when she saw Myles and Joe instead. Lucky, Rose thought, as this stuff that Ms. Elfenbach had started teaching about linear equations and graphing a slope intercept was not coming through at all. She would definitely have to go over it with Anand. But she was completely distracted. She could feel the locket against her chest. She needed to escape to someplace where she could open it and look at the face of that man, who in fact looked so much like her. Why hadn’t she seen it before? She saw Anand whispering to Joe. Then she saw Joe scribbling a note. He passed it to Anand, who passed it to Susan next to her. Rose opened it.

There was a scrawled message. Don’t worry. We’ve got your back. She mouthed back to them: Thanks. But in all honesty, she was worried. What could they do? Their very efforts to protect her could make matters worse. Susan looked at her sympathetically. Anand must have told Susan something about the Mean Queens targeting her too. Susan was a shy girl with glasses that had very thin, round black frames that really set off her pale complexion. There was something almost unearthly about her paleness. It was as if she had been created out of vaporous matter—clouds, mist, fog. But her hair was fantastic. Jet black and densely frizzy. She spoke in a sandy whisper. It was as if she was afraid to speak up. She sometimes hung out with Joe, Anand, and Myles, since she was into sci-fi and they all were super Doctor Who fans. Rose sensed that Susan had a crush on Joe. Every time she talked to him, her voice almost vanished, and a storm of rapid blinks seemed to seize her eyelids.

“Rose!” Ms. Elfenbach said as she gathered her math book and papers to leave. “Might you stay a moment, dear? I’d like to speak with you.”

Oh no, was she going to get blamed for that scene in the bathroom? She walked up to the desk.