It does not go unnoticed when the Grays tramp back to eighth period straight from the woods, June Ocampo twirling a great big knife.

It started ironically at first, the way everybody calls them the weird girls, because everyone is a little bit weird in Northern California. To most of the students at Tempest High, normal is about as great as syphilis.

But there’s the way they named themselves the Grays, like they can claim an entire color. The way they never show at parties, but sometimes people catch them running naked through the woods after midnight, shrieking. How June wears lacy baby-doll dresses but also necklaces that look like tiny bird skulls. And Hawthorn keeps that smelly leather notebook tucked into the pockets of her homemade dresses. Plus, every time Lelia Boyle catches someone calling them the weird girls, she corrects them with a shout loud enough to rattle the lockers in junior hall. “It’s WEIRDOS.” Then she smiles a switchblade smile and brushes her shoulders, like she’s proud of herself for some reason.

And there’s Imogen. She’s the only one most of them like, or maybe not like, but feel drawn to. But something’s wrong with Imogen, and nobody can figure out what. Wrong enough that they don’t even want to make up stories about it.

The senior girls gossip about Sebastian instead, and watch the weirdos roll their eyes and close ranks. Lelia is the only one who responds, hooking her thumbs under the floral suspenders she wears with a black muscle T before she hisses. It becomes a game. Get Lelia Boyle to hiss at you. Ten points.

And then the cloud of Grays shifts, and they notice someone standing at the back of the group, one hand bolted to the other elbow, hiding her left eye behind the sweep of an uneven bob. The new girl has gotten swallowed up by the Grays.

Her look is equal parts girly and grunge, green tights with runs in them layered under a short black skirt. The obligatory flannel, though she’s wearing it shrugged off her pale white shoulders to catch the sun. Anyone who’s noticed her would say that she doesn’t quite stand out and she doesn’t quite fit in. Only a few of them even know her name.

Danny Something.

On any normal day, her arrival would have been important, but on this day, they lost track of her. Now she’s standing in the middle of the Grays, looking like she took a wrong turn and ended up on a dark road she doesn’t know the name of.

Danny: Now