“I’m not,” I assured her. “He was just some random guy.”

She slowly relaxed and settled back down.

“So,” she said. “You and Jerome?”

“What about us?” I asked as I looked up at the long rectangles of light coming in through the window and stretching along the wall. We hadn’t bothered to shut the curtains.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Do you like him?” she asked.

“He hasn’t done anything,” I said.

“But do you like him?”

“I’m thinking about it,” I replied.

“Well, don’t think too hard.” Then I heard the giggling again, and another pillow made contact with the wall above my head and landed on my face.

“No danger of that,” I said.

Chapter 13

13

THE NEXT MORNING STARTED WAY TOO EARLY, WITH someone pounding wildly at our door.

“You get it,” I mumbled into my pillow. “My legs fell off.”

Grumbling and confusion from Jaz as she fell out of her bed and shuffled to the door. Charlotte was there, wrapped up in a fuzzy blue robe, looking shockingly awake.

“There’s a school meeting in the dining hall at six,” she said. “Twenty minutes.”

“School meeting?” I repeated.

“You don’t have to put on your uniform. Just be over there.”

Meeting in twenty minutes, at six A.M., that meant it was . . . morning math, morning math, morning math . . . five forty. The sun wasn’t even up. We had only gone to bed about three or four hours before.

“What is this?” I asked as I fumbled around, looking for my shoes.

“I have no idea,” Jazza said. She didn’t have time to mess around with her contacts, so she slapped on her glasses.

“Are they really going to have some assembly at six in the morning?” I asked. “Isn’t that a crime against humanity?”

“We have to be in trouble. Someone did something. We did something.”

“They’re not having an assembly at six in the morning to yell at us, Jaz.”

“You don’t know that.”

It looked like the zombie apocalypse in the hall, everyone shambling toward the steps, looking confused, blank, deadeyed. One or two people had put on their uniforms, but mostly people wore sweatpants or pajamas. Jazza and I were of the pajama variety, with our PE fleeces on top for warmth and snuggle factor. Outside, it was one of those drizzly, it’s-rainingeven-though-it’s-not-raining English days I’d been getting used to. The cold and wet woke me up a little, but it was mostly the sight of the police . . . that, and the small white tent and work lights that had been erected in the middle of the green, and the people in the sterile suits that were coming in and out of it.

“Oh, my God,” Jazza said, grabbing my arm. “Oh, my God, Rory, that’s . . .”