If you pressed someone to talk about Imogen Lilly in middle school, they would probably say she was the girl with curly red hair and a strange absence of freckles, the girl who strayed to the edge of the woods during lunch and ate her sandwich in the shadows, the girl who looked up at the treetops instead of keeping her eyes on the ball during gym, no matter what sport they were supposed to be playing. She didn’t belong to any clubs or cliques. She didn’t talk to anyone.

Mostly, she whispered to herself.

And then high school came like a whirlwind, and she was right at the center of it, unruffled by the storms that slapped everyone else out of their personalities and left them naked and shivering.

Imogen arrived at Tempest High with her own style, solid opinions on every possible topic, and a smile that could burn through fog. Everyone noticed her long black skirts, tiny black shorts, shirts with no bra underneath, messy red braids, and wide-brimmed black hats that would have looked stupid on anybody else but on her, somehow, looked right.

One day Erin Wong was crying in the bathroom stall that was pretty much reserved for girls who were upset or getting sick. Imogen kicked in the door, put an arm right around Erin’s shoulders, and said, “What did he do?” not in a sweet, caring whisper-tone — more like her voice was a knife and could reach all the way across the school, cutting whoever had hurt this girl.

Erin cried harder. When she finally calmed down, Imogen was sitting on the tiles with her, pulling things out of her scaly black bag.

The next day, Erin was wearing a tiny bottle of water around her neck and smiling. By the end of the school year, half the girls in the sophomore class had bottles that didn’t quite match but all carried a few precious drops of water in them.

When the boys asked, the girls shrugged mysteriously and said it was a new style. Nobody gave Imogen away. The boys still smiled as she walked toward them, their faces — and sometimes other parts of their anatomy — perking as they passed her in the hall.

They all wanted her, in different ways, even if they didn’t know why, even if they couldn’t name the lack that she was supposed to be filling. The students treated her like a drug dealer or a minor goddess or both. And everyone put up with the Grays, a gang of shadows that followed her around wherever she went.

Danny: Now

Mom can’t be too pissed about catching me with Hawthorn, because she lets me eat the leftover lo mein from the Chinese restaurant in Arcata, the one that she stops at on her way home from work when she doesn’t want to cook.