Like Rinn had no idea what a struggle the day could be. Like she’d never had a bad mood in her entire life. Happiness was like breathing to Little Miss Perfect. An everyday kind of reflex. It was the kind of happiness that drew others to her. The kind of happiness that had to have prevented loneliness.

Imogen mostly ignored Little Miss Perfect. That way Imogen didn’t go around hating her all the time, too. Hating Cool Girl took up enough of Imogen’s energy already.

Luckily, Imogen had seen Eli come in, not half a minute before Cool Girl had been screaming like a banshee. Or a harpy. Or whatever other mythological creature went around screeching other people’s names rather than talking to them like an actual human.

Not that Cool Girl thought of Imogen as an actual human. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who gave anyone the time of day but her own reflection in the mirror and maybe about ten minutes of consideration for whoever she was hooking up with.

That was the kind of person Cool Girl was. Imogen was sure of it.

“Eli.” Imogen had seen him earlier, ducked behind the manga section in the back. She was moving through the YA section—which already had a WELCOME BACK, BROCK sign strung up across it—when she spotted him.

Eli jumped when he heard his name. Then his shoulders relaxed when he saw it was her. Eli was blond and thin, with a mass of curly hair on top of his head. He had one of those everyday kind of faces that made you forget what he looked like. It made sense that he’d have a face like that, to get away with as much theft as he had and only get a slap on the wrist. “Hey.”

“You okay, E?” Not being okay herself, Imogen could easily recognize the signs in someone else. Eli was, well, off. That was for sure. He was jumpy, and Eli was never jumpy. He was tense, ready for some kind of attack, some kind of fight.

He hadn’t even noticed her haircut.

“Yeah, sure,” said Eli. “Of course. Everything’s cool. Super. Fantastic. What’s up?”

“The lady doth protest too much,” was all Imogen could think in that moment. It was her mother’s fault, really, that Imogen could quote Shakespeare on command. Mom had gone through a phase of his writing when she’d been pregnant with Imogen. That was how Imogen had been stuck with the name Imogen in the first place, instead of something normal like Layla or Zara or Amira. Mom couldn’t even name her for a normal Shakespearean heroine. She had to go into some deep cuts and find a name out of Cymbeline, of all the plays.

Imogen stared at Eli. Trying to assess what he was hiding. How much he was hiding. “Daniella needs you in the back.”