Lennon’s bony shoulder pokes out of the fabric of her cardigan as she shrugs. “No one ever has, but if you’re not queen, then Natalie will be.”

Imagine the kind of enemy Natalie will become if I beat her out of homecoming queen. If Lennon is to be believed, Natalie seems the type to hold a grudge about that kind of stuff. If Shy is on the football team, I’ll tell him to leave me out of this.

“When’s the dance?” I ask.

“In three weeks,” Lennon says. “Football is really big here. Homecoming is a holiday. Anyway, even if you don’t get queen, you should still go to the dance. We can go together.”

“What if someone asks you to the dance?”

She smiles ruefully. “No one will ask me.”

“You can’t know that. Haven’t you been asked before?”

“No, and I won’t be asked this year either,” she says adamantly, as if the future is etched in stone—and maybe for her, it is. I wonder what happened to Lennon to land her at Nacoma, or if she’s another one of these people who just happen to live here. I almost ask her, but prying will be opening a door for her to ask questions about me, and that’s the last thing I need.

At lunch, I follow Lennon back to Emerson Hall, deposit my books into my locker, and meld with a crowd of students heading toward the cafeteria. It feels like joining a hoard of hungry zombies—they all moan about classes and can’t seem to walk straight, knocking shoulders with the person beside them. I don’t like physical contact, and I don’t like crowds. More bodies mean it’s harder to find an escape route if things go south, and I can’t tell if the dead are mixed among them.

When we make it to the cafeteria, I stick close to Lennon, following her to the end of a line winding its way toward a buffet staffed with lunch ladies. I might be paranoid, but it feels like everyone’s gazes are on me.

“So,” I ask Lennon as casually as possible. “Are you from here?”

“No, I’m from Pennsylvania. I was shipped here freshman year, and I’ve been coming back ever since.”

I bite back my instinct to ask why she was shipped here and instead say, “Do you like it? Living here, I mean?”

Lennon doesn’t look at me as she speaks. Her eyes wander the cafeteria, like she’s looking for someone. “I don’t hate it.”

“That is a nonanswer.”

She grins. “I’m going to be here even if I hate it, so I might as well make the most of it.”

“And how do you do that?”

“You watch people,” she says, and even now, she studies me. “Learn their secrets, so when they come after you, you’re untouchable.”