I looked mournfully at the extra bed we had turned against the wall and loaded down with Jazza’s two hundred cushions.

“We hardly ever use it,” Jazza babbled on. “And it could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.”

But I think she felt the same way I did. This was our room, our little peaceful spot in the universe, and we’d lost it because we’d snuck out. I fell silent and looked up at the sky through the panes of the window. It was getting dark so much earlier. It came on fast here. The trees were black outlines against the dark lavender of the London night sky.

“Crap,” I said.

Chapter 17

17

THE NEXT MORNING, WE TOOK A FINAL LOOK AT OUR room as it was before we headed off to breakfast. When I returned to do a book switch-out after lunch, our room had a new occupant. Bhuvana was stretched out on the bed, talking on the phone. She gave me a little wave and a smile and wrapped up her conversation. She seemed fine with the position of the bed and had redecorated it with a huge pink and gray duvet and a stack of metallic silver and pink pillows. There were bags everywhere—suitcases, duffel bags, shopping bags.

Bhuvana was, as her name suggested, of Indian descent. She had very straight, very black hair, with one bright streak of artificial cherry red on the right side. It was cut into a severe line just at the shoulders, and she had razor-straight bangs. Along with the fact that she wore a lot of black eyeliner and long, dangling gold earrings, she reminded me of pictures of Cleopatra. She clearly wasn’t from India, though. Her accent was as British as they come—fast, urban, kind of Cockney, I guess. I could barely understand her at points.

“Aurora, yeah?” she said as she hung up the phone. She bounced off the bed to embrace me and give me two air kisses.

“Rory,” I corrected her. “You’re Bhuvana?”

“Boo,” she corrected me right back. “Only my gran calls me Bhuvana.”

“Only my grandma calls me Aurora.”

So we had that in common. Boo was several inches taller than me. She too had put her uniform on right away, but she wore it with a swagger, her tie slightly undone and jerked to the side.

“Did your parents just . . . drop you off?” I asked, looking at the stuff piled around the floor.

“Well, I live in London,” she said breezily. “I was in Mumbai visiting family, yeah? And I got sick, which is why I’m late for term. So, yeah, got catching up to do.”

Boo’s things looked like they had been hastily packed—everything randomly shoved into bags. Clothes, mugs, wires, pictures, trinkets. Her clothes were definitely more interesting than ours. Boo tended to lean toward the sparkly, the stretchy, and the dance-friendly.