of the Evernight type.
Patrice’s skin was the color of a river at sunrise, the coolest, softest brown, and her curly hair was pulled back into a soft bun, which showed off her pearl earrings and her slim neck. She sat at the dresser, still neatly lining up bottles of nail polish while she looked at me.
“So you’re Bianca,” she said. No handshake, no hug—just the click of each bottle of polish against the dresser: pale pink, coral, melon, white. “You weren’t what I was expecting.”
Thanks tons. “You neither.”
Patrice cocked her head, studying me, and I wondered if we hated each other already. She lifted one perfectly manicured hand and began ticking off points. “You can borrow my perfume but not my jewelry or clothes.” She didn’t say anything about borrowing my stuff, but it was pretty obvious she wouldn’t ever want to. “I plan to do most of my studying in the library, but if you want to work here, let me know and I’ll talk with my friends somewhere else. Help me with the assignments you’re good at, and I’ll do the same for you. I’m sure we can learn a lot from each other. Sound fair?”
“Definitely.”
“All right. We’ll get along.”
If she’d acted all fake friendly with me right away, I think that would have weirded me out more. As it was, I was sort of reassured that Patrice was so businesslike. “Glad you think so,” I said. “I know we’re…different.”
She didn’t argue. “Two teachers here are your parents, right?”
“Yeah. I guess word travels fast.”
“You’ll be fine. They’ll take care of you.”
I tried to smile at her and hoped she was right. “You’ve been here at Evernight before?”
“No. First time.” Patrice said this as though changing her whole way of living was as simple for her as slipping into a new pair of designer shoes. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
I left my opinion of the architecture out of it. “You said you had friends here, though.”
“Well, of course.” Her smile was as delicate as everything else about her, from the peach gloss on her lips to the perfume and nail polish bottles neatly arrayed on the dresser. “Courtney and I met in Switzerland last winter. Vidette was a friend of mine when I was staying in Paris. And Genevieve and I spent a summer together in the Caribbean, once—was it St Thomas? Maybe it was Jamaica. I can’t keep these things straight.”
My pokey hometown seemed duller than ever. “So you guys all just—run in the same circles.”
“More or less.” Belatedly, Patrice seemed to realize how awkward I felt. “Eventually they’ll be your circles, too.”
“I wish I were as sure as you are.”
“Oh, you’ll see.” She dwelled in a world where endless summers in the tropics were everyone’s for the taking. I couldn’t imagine ever being a part of that. “Do you know anybody here? Besides your parents, I mean.”
“Only the people I’ve met this morning.” Meaning Lucas and Patrice, for a grand total of two.
“Plenty of time to make friends.” Patrice spoke briskly as she began putting away more of her things: silky scarves the color of ivory, hosiery in shades of taupe or dove gray. Where did she plan to wear things so elegant? Maybe it was unimaginable for Patrice to travel without them. “I hear Evernight is a wonderful place to meet men.”
“Meet men?”
“Do you already have someone?”
I wanted to tell her about Lucas, but I couldn’t. Whatever had happened between me and Lucas in the forest—it meant something, but my feelings were too new to share. All I said was, “I didn’t leave a boyfriend behind in my hometown.” I’d known all those guys at my old school since I was a little kid, and I remembered them back when they used to play with Lincoln Logs and mash Play-Doh in my hair. That sort of made it impossible to feel passionate about any of them.
“Boyfriend.” Her lips curled upward, as if the word struck her as childish. Patrice wasn’t sneering at me, though. I was simply too young and inexperienced for her to take me seriously.
“Patrice? It’s Courtney.” The girl outside knocked on the door even while she was opening it, obviously certain she would be welcome. She was even more beautiful than Patrice, with blonde hair that fell almost to her waist and the pouty kind of lips I’d seen only on starlets in TV shows, who could afford stuff like collagen. The same kilt that hung awkwardly at my knees made her legs look a thousand miles long. “Oh, your room is much better than mine. I love it!”
The rooms were all pretty much alike, actually—a bedroom large enough for two people, with white, cast-iron beds and carved wooden dressers on each side. The window looked out upon one of the trees that grew closest to Evernight, but I couldn’t think of anything special about it.
Then I realized there was one thing. “We are close to the bathrooms,” I said.
Courtney and Patrice both stared at me as if I’d done something rude. Were they too refined to acknowledge that we needed bathrooms?
Embarrassed, I kept going. “I’ve never, um, shared a bathroom before. I mean, I have with my parents, but not with—what, it’s like, twelve of us sharing each one? That’s going to be crazy in the mornings.”
This was their cue to agree and gripe about it. Instead, Courtney kept studying me, curious. I figured her curiosity was only normal, but I wished she would say something. Her narrow-eyed gaze felt threatening, even more so than most strangers’ did.
“We’re going out in the grounds tonight,” she said—to Patrice, not to me. “To eat. A picnic, you might say.”
Meals at Evernight were meant to be taken in the students’ rooms. Apparently they explained this as “tradition,” the way things were back in ye olden days before anybody had invented the cafeteria. Parents would send care packages to supplement the Spartan grocery allowance delivered each week. This meant I had to learn how to cook using the little microwave my parents had bought me. Patrice obviously didn’t worry about such mundane problems. “Sounds like fun. Don’t you think so, Bianca?”
Courtney shot her a look; apparently that invitation wasn’t meant to be open.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m supposed to eat with my parents. Thanks for asking me, though.”
Courtney’s lush lips could look almost ghoulish when twisted into a smirk. “You still want to hang out with Mommy and Daddy? What, do they feed you with a bottle?”
“Courtney,” Patrice chastised her, but I could tell that she was amused.
“You’ve got to see Gwen’s room.” Courtney began tugging Patrice out the door. “Dark and dreary. She swears it might as well be a dungeon.”
They took off together, and whatever fragile connection Patrice and I had created was broken in an instant. Their laughter echoed throughout the hallway. Cheeks burning, I fled my new room, then the dormitory floor, hurrying upward toward my
