Vanessa let out a sharp laugh. “Nice, real nice. And you wonder why she doesn’t want to be your friend anymore?”

“I don’t…” Sam mumbled. “Whatever.”

Sometimes I wondered if there was a part of Sam that remembered not just me, but the person she used to be before I ruined her. Amazing how I had managed to erase every good part of Sam—or at least, all the parts I loved. One touch, and she was gone.

A few girls asked me what had happened between the two of us. Most, I think, assumed Sam was being cruel when she claimed that we had never, ever been friends and never would be. I tried to play it off with shrugs—but Sam was the only thing that had made Thurmond bearable. Without her, it was no life at all.

No life at all.

I fingered the packet of pills.

Our cabin was brown on brown on brown. The only color was the white of our sheets, and most of those had aged to an ugly yellow. There were no shelves of books, no posters, no pictures. Just us.

I crawled onto my low bunk, dropping face-first into the worn sheets. I breathed in their familiar scent—bleach, sweat, and something distinctly earthy—and tried not to listen to the conversation above me.

A part of me had been waiting, I think—desperate to see if I could fix what I had done to my friend. But it was done. It was over, and she was gone, and the only one to blame was me. The best thing I could do for her was disappear; even if Dr. Begbie was playing me and they really were going to get rid of me, they wouldn’t connect us. They wouldn’t question or punish Sam because they thought she had helped me hide, like they would if we had still been friends. There were over three thousand of us at Thurmond, and I was the last Orange—maybe in the entire world. Or one of two, if the boy in the Infirmary was like me. It had only been a matter of time before they found out the truth.

I was dangerous, and I knew what they did to the dangerous ones.

The camp routine ran itself through, as it always did, churning us through the Mess Hall for dinner, to the Washrooms, and back to the cabin for the night. The light was dim and fading outside, clinging to the first fringes of night.

“All right, kittens.” Ashley’s voice. “Ten minutes till lights-out. Whose turn is it?”

“Mine—should I just pick up from where we left off?” Rachel was on the other side of the room, but her squeaky voice carried well.

I could practically hear Ashley’s eyes rolling. “Yes, Rachel. Isn’t that what we always do?”

“Okay…so…so the princess? She was in her tower, and she was still really sad.”

“Girl,” Ashley cut in, “you’re going to have to spice this up, or I’m skipping your boring ass and going to the next person.”