I was finally alone.
But that was before I turned the corner and saw a boy standing in the center of the hall.
His hands hung loosely by his sides, and his hair was neatly combed. His white shirt and khaki pants were clean and freshly pressed. At a glance I might have confused him with just an ordinary private school boy. But, 1) There are no boys at my school. And 2) Zachary Goode has never been ordinary a day in his life.
I stood motionless. Waiting. Trying to reconcile the fact that Zach was there, standing in the middle of my school, looking at me like maybe I was the one who was totally out of place. He reached out one hand, his finger sliding down my arm as if to check to make sure I was real, and the touch made me close my eyes, waiting for his lips to find mine, but they never did.
“Zach,” I said, easing closer. “What are you doing here? Are you…? Is it…?” The questions didn’t matter, so the words didn’t come. “You’re here!”
“Funny, I was about to say the same about you.”
Just to reiterate: I was alone. With Zach. In my school.
Crazy was taking on a whole new meaning.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I sort of…go…here now.”
“You do?” I asked, then nodded, the facts settling down around me. Zach’s mother was a prominent member of the Circle. The fact that he had chosen to work against her meant that the same people who were after me were after him. The Gallagher Academy was one of the safest places on earth—probably the safest school. It made sense that he would come back and enroll full-time after the summer.
“Cammie,” a woman behind me said. “I’m Dr. Wolf. We’re ready for you.”
I knew I was supposed to turn—to go take their tests, answer their questions, and start trying to unravel the mystery of my mind—but I just stood, feeling Zach’s fingers play with the ends of my hair.
“How…are you?” I managed to mutter.
“It’s different,” he said, looking at my new short locks as if he hadn’t heard my question at all. “It’s different now.”
Chapter Five
Over the course of the next four hours, there were nine tests and three doctors. I spent thirty minutes strapped inside a metal tube, listening to a mechanic whirring so loud I couldn’t even hear myself think. They X-rayed every part of my body, scanned every part of my mind. I leaned against a metal brace, squinted into a light, and recited all the prime numbers between one and a thousand in Japanese.
I kept waiting for words like concussion or trauma, but there was nothing but hasty scribbling on notepads. The doctors’ expressions didn’t betray a single thing. They were all Gallagher grads, after all. Their poker faces stayed as blank as my memory.
“Well, Cammie,” Dr. Wolf said, after I’d changed into clean clothes, “how are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I said, relieved that at least my lying ability had made it through the summer intact.
“Dizziness?” she asked, and gave me knowing look.
“Some,” I admitted.
“Nausea?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Headaches?” she guessed, and I nodded. “These things are normal, Cammie. That’s quite a bump you’ve got there.” She pointed to the knot on my head.
“What is it, Cammie?” the doctor asked when I didn’t say anything, reading me as clearly as if I were still hooked up to one of her machines.
“You’ve seen my file?”
“Of course,” she said with a nod.
“Well, it’s just that I’ve been hit on the head a lot in the past,” I told her. “I mean a lot a lot.”
The woman nodded and raised an eyebrow. “I know. That’s quite a bad habit you’ve got there.”