“May, oh my god, I am so glad to see you. Do you have an extra tampon? I just got my period. It’s like a fucking bloodbath down there….” She trails off and her face goes scarlet. My heart’s beating at a thousand ticks a minute, and I’m breathing in and out, trying to calm myself down. Chim glances over at Jordan’s face, which is staring at us from the bullshit display on the wall. “Oh god. I didn’t mean that. Oh my god, I am so sorry…” She drops my arm and puts her hands to her mouth. This is such typical Chim. Haven’t seen her in three months, and in the first twenty seconds I’m reminded why.

Since I got kicked out of school last year, I’ve tried to learn how not to react. How to control my face and my emotions like a fucking Zen monk. It’s an art form, I swear. One I’m not very good at, especially around Chim, who reminds me of who I used to be—a person I’d rather forget.

I force a smile and rummage around in my purse with shaky fingers, finally locating a tampon. I hand it to Chim and she smiles, all grateful. I manage not to roll my eyes directly in her face. She’s wearing a skullcap that’s totally inappropriate for the eighty-degree day, and the ends of her hair peek out from under it. She’s chopped it since I last saw her three months ago, and apparently dyed it pink. She looks cute, I guess, if you like that sort of thing.

We start down the crowded hall together, into the black hole that is this fucking school, toward lockers and classrooms and all the things I hoped to never have to deal with again. We have to push by people to get through; Lucy warned me how overstuffed it is here, but I didn’t really expect it to be this bad. I should have, though, I guess, since there are now so many students enrolled here that we have two principals: Rose-Brady, who came with us from Carter so we’d have a familiar face in charge (eye roll), and Kalb, the original QA principal.