“Ah, Adele, there you are.” Mrs. Thomas, who’s in charge of the senior-girls’ dormitory, looks up from the sheet of paper in her hand. Mrs. Thomas is a skinny mixed-race widow with a gap in her front teeth that makes a whistling sound when she talks, and, though she is also a matron, she prefers being called by her married name. Delia says that’s stupid. Mrs. Thomas was only married for three months before her husband died in a farm accident. “Everyone to your rooms, please. Choose your beds and unpack your clothes. No fighting or you’ll get a week’s punishment. Supper is at six sharp.”

The girls drift inside. Some lug suitcases, and others carry reused flour sacks stuffed with all that they own.

Wait, wait. My heart thunders in my ears. Where am I supposed to go?

Mrs. Thomas clears her throat and waves me closer. Delia and the pretties—a name that Delia herself coined for her group—hover on the front porch, desperate to see what happens next. They have money in their pockets, but gossip is also a form of currency.

“Off you go,” Mrs. Thomas says to the girls in a brisk voice. “It will take a while for you all to unpack your suitcases.”

Delia pulls a face when Mrs. Thomas turns away, and I realize that Mrs. Thomas just made a dig at the amount of clothes, cans, and trinkets that the top girls bring with them to school. Suddenly it doesn’t feel so good to be one of them. Then I remember that I’m not a princess anymore . . . I am standing in the dirt yard with an aching shoulder and dusty shoes, waiting to be assigned a cot inside the dormitory.

“Adele . . .” Color stings Mrs. Thomas’s cheeks, and I know that she has bad news for me. “Matron told you we’ve had to rearrange the rooms?”

Ahh.

I see the bags under Mrs. Thomas’s eyes and the turned-down corners of her mouth. She’s in one of her sad moods, so she’s trying to be nice, but I don’t want to draw the torture out any longer. “Where do I sleep, Mrs. Thomas?”

She flips the piece of paper over in her hand, and girls’ names spin from one side to the other. “We’ve made a special room for you and one other student. When you sweep it out and wash the floors, you’ll see that it’s nice. I think you’ll be happy there, and it’s only for this term. Not for the whole school year, you understand. And maybe, in a little while, if we find another space—”

“Wait. Are you talking about the green room where Lorraine Anderson died?” That room is haunted. There’s disease trapped inside the walls, and the peeling paint is infected with whatever killed Lorraine. Everyone knows that.