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“In a sec,” I whispered as he disappeared back into the school.
I stared at the brick wall in front of me, darker in spots from the rain. The breaking in, the chase, the cleaning up after ourselves—it was all familiar. Yet the more I studied the rough bricks, the more my stomach twisted.
Thunder rumbled low in the distance. For a second, I thought I saw a flash of blue against the faded red of the bricks. But when I blinked, it was gone.
A tight knot settled in my chest.
It was just another wall of just another school. It was all familiar, except for the tiny voice inside my head that warned, This time’s going to be different.
One (#u359ae647-a7c0-5bd9-9480-ee94fb4801d6)
Out of all the names I’d had in the last five years, I liked this one the best: Sloane Sullivan. It looked right, printed there at the top of my new class schedule. Good thing too, since it was the last one I was ever going to have.
“There’s just one more thing I have for you and you’re all set,” the secretary said. She was a little hard to hear over the buzz of voices coming from the hall on the other side of the glass wall behind me and the incessant ringing of phones inside the front office.
I glanced up from my schedule to find the secretary smiling. Her short, curly white hair and deep crow’s feet screamed helpful grandmother. She actually looked a little like our neighbor eight towns back who was a grandmother of eleven. I didn’t trust her for a second.
“I figured it must be hard to transfer so late in your senior year,” the secretary continued, “so I marked up a map of the school with the location of your classes. That way, at least you won’t get lost on your first day.”
Okay, I thought. That’s actually kind of sweet. I peeked at the nameplate sitting on the side of the tall counter separating me from the rest of the office. “Thanks, Mrs. Zalinsky. That’s really thoughtful of you.”
Little did Mrs. Zalinsky know that, thanks to my adventure with Mark last night, I already knew where every classroom was located. We didn’t use our more nefarious skills, like lock picking and camera tampering, just to practice escaping. I’d realized pretty quickly that having to ask for directions or stumbling into classes late didn’t help with blending in. And that was always the goal: to blend in. Blend in, follow the rules and don’t let anyone get too close. That’s what I’d learned after almost six years on the run.
Besides, if we got caught snooping around, Mark could just flash his badge and we’d get off scot-free. Of course, then we’d probably have to move again.
Mrs. Zalinsky grinned, pleased to be appreciated. “You’re welcome, Sloane.”
The little thrill that always shot through me when I heard someone say my new name for the first time danced in my chest. Sloane. I liked the way it sounded too.
“Let me grab the map for you.” Mrs. Zalinsky headed for an immaculately clean desk on the other side of the office.
I gazed at my name again, still surprised Mark had agreed to it. I’d thrown Sloane out on a whim and he didn’t even blink. He just nodded in that slow way of his, which made his thick hair, which was dark brown at the time, fall into his eyes, and said, “Sure.” I knew he would’ve preferred Sara or Samantha or something more mainstream for my nineteenth identity. He’d totally vetoed some of my more unusual suggestions—being Leia like the princess from Star Wars would’ve rocked—but he let Sloane slide by. Maybe it was because we were both counting on this being the last time we had to switch names.
I rubbed my thumb over my name. God, nineteen different people in almost six years. Well, twenty if you count my real name. But I don’t remember who that girl was anymore.
“Here you go,” Mrs. Zalinsky said, interrupting my thoughts. She handed me a map. “I circled your classrooms in order based on the colors of the rainbow. You know, Roy G. Biv? Red for first period, orange for second, and so forth. Except since we only have four periods, I stopped at green.”
I let out a low whistle. “That’s some serious organization. I’m impressed.” And I was. It sounded like something Mark would do, and I didn’t think anyone was as anal as he was.
“It takes a lot of organization to keep a school of more than 1,800 kids running smoothly,” Mrs. Zalinsky explained as she straightened an already perfectly aligned stack of papers.
I grinned. 1,800 kids. It was going to be so easy to be invisible in a school this size. All I had to do was coast through these last nine weeks of my senior year without any complications and I was free. In more ways than one. I’d be Sloane Sullivan forever. There was no going back to the person I was for the first twelve years of my life. I’d asked, but the Marshals felt dropping me back into my old life so soon after the confession was too risky, even with a plausible cover story. But honestly, I didn’t care. If being Sloane was what it took to get out of witness protection, I’d do it.
Out of WITSEC. I never thought it was possible.
“I’m not sure you’re going to need the map, pretty girl like you.” Mrs. Zalinsky nodded in my direction. “You’ll have the boys lining up to escort you to class if you smile at them like that.”
I took a moment to let the compliment sink in. Usually, I ignored anything people said about my appearance because it was never about me. Not the real me anyway. It was about a person with dyed hair or colored contacts or—after one horrendous experience with a hairdresser who had to have forgotten her glasses that day—a frizzy black wig that felt like a steel wool scouring pad. But this was the closest I’d looked to my true self in almost six years.
I was wearing contacts that turned my green eyes dark brown, but my hair was its natural pale blond. “The color of real lemonade,” my mom always said when I was a kid. Mark had never agreed to my natural color before. He’d deemed it “too light and distinctive,” and I hadn’t seen it since we left New Jersey. But since this was the person I was going to be for the rest of my life, I’d begged to go back to my roots. Washing my hair seventeen times in a single shower to get out the temporary auburn color I’d had as Ruby had been totally worth it.
I shook the piece of paper in my hand. “Thanks, but I don’t need any boys. I’ve got a color-coded map!”
“You’re welcome, dear. And if you ever have any trouble, just come to me. I marked the office with a bee.” Mrs. Zalinsky pointed at her nameplate on the counter. Two bumblebees were drawn hovering around the Z in her name.
I examined the map. Sure enough, there was a little black-and-yellow bee floating next to the office. “I’ll bee sure to do that,” I joked.
Mrs. Zalinsky chuckled as she reached for a ringing phone.
I waved over my shoulder and opened the office door. The volume level rose considerably as I entered the bustling hallway. I glanced at the map just in case Mrs. Zalinsky was watching—I’d been well trained to keep up appearances—and turned left toward physics, my first class of the day.
Despite the fact that I’d arrived early, people were everywhere: crowding the hall, cramming books into lockers, making out in front of classrooms. They were just like the students at the six other high schools I’d attended, except here there were more of them. I loved it.
A sudden burst of sound to my left caught my attention. A group of about twelve guys, standing in a slightly curved line and wearing matching navy blazers, had started singing. An a cappella group? That’s new. A crowd surrounded them, snapping and nodding along to something I recognized after a few seconds: “The Longest Time” by Billy Joel. A song I hadn’t heard in years wasn’t exactly what I expected from high school boys. Homesickness pricked my chest as I tried to figure out where I’d last heard it.
I slowed, watching the tallest guy singing lead in the center of the group as I passed. He had light brown skin and short dark brown hair, but even seeing the words come out of his mouth couldn’t make the memory hovering at the edge of my brain come into focus. When his eyes met mine, I ducked my head. I hadn’t even been watching him for a full minute, but it was all the time I needed to see it: the way the other boys took their cues from him; the slightly larger amount of space around him than any of the other guys, like his all-around awesomeness needed room to breathe; how every eye in the crowd followed him. He was popular. Charismatic. Not one to blend in. Therefore, not someone I wanted to know.
I kept my head down and studied my feet—lack of eye contact makes you more forgettable—as I turned the corner to the hall that would take me to physics. Which is why I didn’t see the person barreling toward me until right before we collided.
I had just enough time to spread my feet and bend my knees slightly. I felt the crash in my whole body, muscles tensing, air rushing out of me in a muffled umph, but a tiny step back was all I needed to absorb the impact. The other person hit the floor with a loud thud, knocking everything I was holding in my hands across the hall. Before I could even cringe at the lack of blending in, a prickly sensation crept up my neck at the feeling of eyes on my back.
My chest tightened as the velvety a cappella voices, the mass of students, the entire hall disappeared. Fragmented images flashed in my mind: feet pounding on concrete, a hand tight on my arm, a broken piece of wood. Then, as fast as the images had come, they were gone, replaced with the hum of conversations and a person sprawled on the ground in front of me and too many students gathered around us. I swallowed hard. They’re not watching you, they’re just curious. No one here knows you.
I took a deep breath, trying to loosen the knot in my chest. “Walk much?” I mumbled, quiet enough I knew the guy who’d run into me wouldn’t be able to hear. And I was certain it was a guy. The level of solidness I felt before he bounced off wasn’t something a girl could achieve unless she was a professional bodybuilder from Russia.
“I’m so sorry,” a deep voice said. “I shouldn’t have been running. Are you okay?”
I didn’t glance at him or any of the people now whispering about us as I bent down to gather my stuff. “I’m fine,” I replied without any malice. I wasn’t really annoyed at him, I was annoyed at myself. That’s what you get for letting some stupid Billy Joel song distract you. Remembering never helps anything.
“Here.” The guy shifted on the floor and collected the map from where it had landed a few feet away. He smoothed it out, even though it didn’t have a mark on it, reached around the legs of a few nosy onlookers and held it out to me.
I grabbed it and shoved it into my bag. All I wanted was to get to physics and disappear into a seat in the back.
“Sloane Sullivan?”
My heart skipped a beat at hearing my name from some random guy. I flexed my hands, my always-on-alert muscles ready to put my self-defense skills to use. Then his hand came into my field of vision. He was holding my schedule, his thumb resting next to my name, and I almost laughed at how jumpy I was being. Get a grip. It’s not like you haven’t done this first day thing before.
“Cool,” the boy said. “My grandfather’s first name was Sullivan.”
My eyes locked on the scuffed floor as my breath caught in my throat.
“Everyone should have two first names.”
Every inch of my body froze as a completely different image popped into my head: black hair sticking up in all directions, deep blue eyes bright with amusement, mouth quirked into the same goofy grin it always wore when he said those words, words he’d said so many times before.
My pulse took off as the guy crouched in front of me, making it all but impossible to stand without facing him. “Let me help you up. It’s the least I can do for a fellow double-first-namer.”
The whole world slowed to a crawl as I forced myself to look up.
Right into the unmistakable deep blue eyes of Jason Thomas.
Two (#u359ae647-a7c0-5bd9-9480-ee94fb4801d6)
I studied the wide eyes staring back at me from only a foot away. It was impossible they belonged to Jason. But the pools of almost green around his pupils that melted into a deep ocean blue set against an even darker blue ring around the edges were exactly like I remembered. Exactly like I’d stared into a million times before.
This is bad. Very, very bad.
It had happened once before. Three and a half years ago, when we were living in Flagstaff. I thought I’d seen Ms. Jenkins, the elderly widow who lived across the street from me in New Jersey, come out of a gift shop one Thursday afternoon. I’d been inside a bookstore next door and was certain Ms. Jenkins hadn’t seen me, but I still took the long way home and told Mark. Three hours later, we were in the car on the way to our next lives.
And I hadn’t known Ms. Jenkins nearly as well as I knew Jason.
A crease appeared in between his eyebrows. He opened his mouth slightly then closed it, all while searching my face.
The contacts! I prayed the brown would be enough to throw him off. But when his gaze dropped to the left side of my neck, I knew I was in trouble. Mark’s voice sounded in my head, as clear as if he was standing right next to me: Lesson number six: take control of the situation.
I shifted my hair to cover the faint pink scar on the side of my neck—the only proof I’d once had a large dark brown mole there—and stood. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” I grabbed my schedule with one hand and took hold of Jason’s outstretched hand with the other, helping him up. “I’m Sloane, but you already know that.” I nodded at my schedule.
The crease in between his eyebrows deepened. “Jason,” he replied, still holding my hand.
I wanted to laugh at the deepness of his voice as I took in the rest of him. What happened to the scrawny twelve-year-old I left behind? Sure, his eyes were the same. And his black hair was still disheveled, only now it was tousled in a bed-head kind of way that could only be described as sexy. Which pretty much described the rest of him too. He’d filled out and grown super tall and it made my stomach flip as all the ways I’d changed from my twelve-year-old self ran through my head.
A husky voice interrupted the silence hanging between us. “Well, hel-lo.”
I yanked my hand out of Jason’s. A tall, slender guy with deep red hair was leaning against the lockers right next to me, holding a football. He inclined his head toward me and smiled. “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?”
I glanced from the boy to Jason and back again. “Um...”
A petite girl with olive skin materialized in between the boys. “Ignore him,” she told me, shaking her head at Mr. Love-at-First-Sight. “He tries his lines out on every female he sees.” She had shoulder-length, wavy dark brown hair with long bangs that swept across her forehead, partially covering one of her brown eyes. She turned to Jason and whacked him on the chest. “Babe! You practically mowed this poor girl down. How many times have I told you two playing football in the halls was going to end in bodily injury?”
Babe?
The girl turned back to me. “I’m Livie.” She paused, peeking at the guys on either side of her, then sighed. “And if these two Neanderthals haven’t properly introduced themselves yet, this is Sawyer—” she pointed to the pale redhead “—and this is my boyfriend, Jason.” She wrapped her hands around Jason’s arm.
The movement seemed to snap Jason out of his daze. “Oh, sorry, guys. This is Sloane.” He gestured toward me.
I gave them the look of self-deprecation I’d perfected from constantly being the new girl. “You know, I expected to embarrass myself on my first day but I had no idea it was going to happen so quickly.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Livie insisted. “It’s these two who should be embarrassed.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of blue against a red background. Something twisted in my chest as I remembered the flash I thought I’d seen the night before outside the school. I turned my head, half expecting to see another brick wall.
Sawyer was on one knee in front of the row of red lockers, his blue shirt still fluttering from his sudden movement. I shook my head. Of course there isn’t a brick wall.
Sawyer gazed up at me, batting his eyelashes. “I, dear Sloane, offer my humblest of apologizes for causing you embarrassment by using my considerable strength to throw this football farther than Jason expected, making him run to catch it and crash into you. I promise to find a way to make up for my superhero-like muscles.”
I glanced around. Most of the crowd that had stopped to watch the aftermath of my collision with Jason had moved on, but several girls were still hovering, giggling at Sawyer’s spectacle. I tugged on his arm. “You can start by getting up,” I hissed.
Livie helped pull Sawyer to his feet. “She’s trying not to draw more attention to herself, genius.”
Sawyer grinned at me, totally not sorry for making a scene, then leaned toward Jason. “Bet you can’t top that apology.”
Jason didn’t respond. He was still studying me, head tilted to one side.
My eyes locked on Jason’s and my pulse raced, pounding a rhythm in my head that sounded suspiciously like it’s not working. I knew what I had to do.
I peered around Jason at the door to the girls’ bathroom, barely visible down the hall. Thanks to my recon mission the night before (and lesson number two: notice every possible exit), I knew that bathroom had a window large enough to climb out of. I’d simply politely extract myself from the conversation, go into the bathroom and vanish without a trace. I’d be a new person in a new state by morning.
It wasn’t a choice, it was a rule. And for good reason. Even though I couldn’t remember what I saw the day I entered WITSEC—a little online research at a public library one day when no one else was around told me I’d probably repressed the memories—I’d always known being discovered wouldn’t be a good thing. The creepy flashes I got whenever it felt like someone was watching me. The way my dad and Mark had always refused to discuss what happened in front of me, whispering about my dad’s testimony in hushed tones. How Mark once told me he never wanted me to remember. Disappearing was the safest thing to do.
I inched away from Jason, eyes on the bathroom, preparing to make my escape.
“Wait!” Livie blurted, pulling my attention back to the group. She dug in her bag, pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper, and glanced at it before grinning at me. “You’re Sloane Sullivan.”
What is it with everyone here knowing my name?
Livie bounced a little on her toes. “I’m your First Day Buddy.”
“My what?”
“You know, someone who shows you around on your first day, makes sure you don’t eat the fish sandwich in the cafeteria, answers any questions that pop up. You have physics first period, right?”
No. No, no, no. I nod.
“Mrs. Zalinsky came into class yesterday and asked for a volunteer—” Livie looked pointedly at Sawyer “—which some people rolled their eyes at.”
“If I had known it was going to be a cute girl, I would’ve volunteered first,” he grumbled. “Superheroes make great First Day Buddies.”
Livie turned to me and lowered her voice. “Then it’s lucky you got me.”
I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Mrs. Zalinsky. “You don’t really have to do anything. I have a map. I’ll be fine. And I’ll totally tell everyone you did a great job.”
“You might not need me, but I need you,” Livie insisted. “Mr. Pruitt offered extra credit for volunteering, and I need all the help I can get in that class. And he always knows when someone’s cheating, right, Jason?”
Jason nodded, his eyes slow to leave me and find Livie.
“Hey,” Livie said, focusing on him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sorry,” Jason said with a slight chuckle. “I was momentarily horrified imagining Sawyer in a superhero costume.”
“Shut up,” Sawyer muttered, his cheeks turning pink.
Jason smirked and my breath caught in my throat.
The girl I’d been before WITSEC had faded from my memory quickly, buried beneath new girl after new girl. But Jason’s smirk—that same irritatingly cute little smile he’d worn when we were kids—was like magic, breaking through the layers and shaking off the dirt on a hundred different memories at once. On all the times I’d been the one to sneak out and come up with ridiculous adventures for us, and he’d try to shoot them down even though he was just as excited as I was. A tiny piece of the girl I used to be, the girl who made up her own rules, sparked to life somewhere deep inside me and the craziest question popped into my head: Could I stay?
Livie grabbed my hand and pulled me closer, as if protecting me from Sawyer. “Don’t worry,” she fake whispered. “There are plenty of cute guys in this school to help erase the mental image of Sawyer in superhero spandex.”
I gave a little shrug. “I don’t know. Superhero Sawyer has a nice ring to it.”
