the hallway, trying not to make a sound.
But the two of them had fallen silent. Luce could picture Daniel taking Gabbe's hands in his. Could picture him leaning in to her for a long, deep kiss. A sheet of all-consuming envy spread across Luce's chest. Around the corner, one of them sighed.
"You're going to have to trust me, honey," she heard Gabbe say, in a saccharine voice that made Luce decide once and for all that she hated her. "I'm the only one you've got."
Chapter Six
NO SALVATION
Bright and early Thursday morning, a loudspeaker crackled to life in the hallway outside Luce's room:
"Attention, Sword & Crosstians!"
Luce rolled over with a groan, but as hard as she crammed the pillow around her ears, it did little to block out Randy's bark over the PA.
"You have exactly nine minutes to report to the gymnasium for your annual fitness examination. As you know, we take a dim view of stragglers, so be prompt and be ready for bodily assessment."
Fitness examination? Bodily assessment? At six-thirty in the morning? Luce had already been regretting staying out so late last night ... and staying up so much later lying in bed, stressing.
Right around the time she started imagining Daniel and Gabbe kissing, Luce had begun to feel queasy -
that specific kind of queasiness that came from knowing she'd made a fool of herself. There was no going back to the party. There was only prying herself off the wall and slinking back to her dorm room to second-guess that strange feeling she got around Daniel, the one she'd foolishly taken as some sort of connection. She'd woken up with the bad taste of the party's aftermath still in her mouth. The last thing she wanted to think about now was fitness.
She swung her feet off the bed and onto the cold vinyl floor. Brushing her teeth, she tried to picture what Sword & Cross might mean by "bodily assessment." Intimidating images of her fellow students - Molly doing dozens of mean-faced chin-ups, Gabbe effortlessly ascending a thirty-foot rope toward the sky -
flooded her mind. Her only shot at not making a fool of herself - again - was to try to put Daniel and Gabbe out of her mind.
She crossed the south side of campus to the gymnasium. It was a large Gothic structure with flying buttresses and fieldstone turrets that made it look more like a church than a place where one would go to break a sweat. As Luce approached the building, the layer of kudzu coating its fačšade rustled in the morning breeze.
"Penn," Luce called out, spotting her tracksuit-clad friend lacing up her sneakers on a bench. Luce looked down at her regulation black clothes and black boots and suddenly panicked that she'd missed some memo about dress code.
But then, some of the other students were loitering outside the building and none of them looked much different than she did.
Penn's eyes were groggy. "So beat," she moaned. "I karaoke'd way too hard last night. Thought I'd compensate by trying to at least look athletic." Luce laughed as Penn fumbled with the double knot on her shoe.
"What happened to you last night, anyway?" Penn asked. "You never came back to the party."
"Oh," Luce said, stalling. "I decided to - "
"Gaaahh." Penn covered her ears. "Every sound is like a jackhammer in my brain. Tell me later?"
"Yeah," Luce said. "Sure." The double doors to the gym were thrust open. Randy stepped out in heavy rubber clogs, holding her ever-present clipboard. She waved the students forward, and one by one they filed past to be assigned their fitness station.
"Todd Hammond," Randy called as the wobbly-kneed kid approached. Todd's shoulders caved forward like parentheses, and Luce could see remnants of a serious farmer's tan on the back of his neck.
"Weights," Randy commanded, chucking Todd inside.
"Pennyweather Van Syckle-Lockwood," she bellowed next, causing Penn to cower and press her palms against her ears again. "Pool," Randy instructed, reaching into a cardboard box behind her and tossing Penn a red one-piece Speedo racer-back.
"Lucinda Price," Randy continued, after consulting her list. Luce stepped forward and was relieved when Randy said, "Also pool." Luce reached up to catch the one-piece bathing suit in the air. It was stretched out and thin as a piece of parchment between her fingers. At least it smelled clean. Sort of.
"Gabrielle Givens," Randy said next, and Luce whipped around to see her new least-favorite person sashay up in short black shorts and a thin black tank top. She'd