The common room is even more inviting than the fancy lobby. Sparkling white and spacious, the room has floor-to-ceiling windows running across its length and modern furniture—a low sectional with bright pillows and an earthy, burnt-orange shag carpet. The furniture is organized in three separate seating areas and the back has a half dozen café tables near a galley kitchenette, complete with refrigerator and sink. It’s like the lobby area of a fashionable but inexpensive hotel. And—as promised—there are more than a dozen people clustered around the room in different groups. They are all girls, all wearing matching gray sweat suits. Just like mine. Though some of them have already adapted the sweats to suit their own taste—sleeves rolled, legs pulled up over the knees. They are still wearing their own shoes, too, which in the cases of high heels, look outright weird.

All girls. And Dr. Cornelia is involved. Dr. Cornelia of the Outliers-are-all-sick school of thought. These things are not unrelated. These girls aren’t unrelated, even if I don’t yet understand how they connected us.

They are leaning up against the windows, flopped across the fancy-ish couches. A couple laugh and point at something as they stand too close to the big-screen TV on the back wall next to the emergency exit. I think I might recognize some of them.

At least one goes to Stanton Prep, class president or something. I saw her speak at the annual awards ceremony last year when Gideon won the science prize. She had on the same bright-red lipstick that she’s wearing now, seriously out of place with the sweats. She is pretty with a dark, blunt bob, setting off her chalk-white skin. There’s another girl I definitely recognize from Newton Regional. She is tall and model-thin and strikingly beautiful with thick black hair and flawless skin—Becca, I think her name is. She’s one of the girls in heels, platform sandals to be exact. Somehow, though, she manages to pull it off. Becca ran in the same circles with Maia, but I don’t know whether they were actually friends. There was a rumor Becca was a heroin user. A pretty believable one if I recall.

I wonder if Jasper was friends with her. The thought of him makes my chest ache. But he is okay, he has to be. I know it, too. Don’t I? I think so. I hope so.