clear. “Tact bleeds out of you.”
“Says you,” one of the other boys scoffs good-naturedly. “You wouldn’t know tact if it bit you.”
“Was it me who accosted the poor girl first thing in the morning? I’ve got better manners than that, unlike some people—cough, Sam, cough. As if anyone would bombard somebody so early. I can’t even process basic math before lunchtime.”
I slip away. I flip through my memories to find their names. The boy is Sam. Samir. The girl? Lekha. I remember now. She sat in class photos with her chin in her hands. She has the brightest eyes, like there is always something to laugh about. Neither one featured much in Amarra’s journal pages, but it’s a small class and they all know one another.
Nikhil’s tip about the yellowish door helps. I take a shaky breath and go in. Of the twenty-three people I know are in this class, most have settled down already. I brace myself for instant discovery.
Instead, a girl approaches me, pointy-faced and sharp-eyed. “Hey,” she says. She’s trying to be gentle, but her voice is loud. I wince, convinced it will draw everybody’s attention. “You recognize me, don’t you?”
What an odd question. My heart skips uneasily. Does she know?
“Sonya,” I say.
“Yay!” she says happily, tucking her arm in mine. “I knew it’d be fine.” I stare at her, brow tense, and she explains, “Oh, your mom told us. You know? About the head injury? She said you’ve been having trouble remembering stuff, so to be gentle with you. But I knew you couldn’t have, like, forgotten us.” She tightens her grip on my arm. Her lip trembles. “I cried so much when I heard. You’re okay, right?”
Incredibly, Alisha has given me room for mistakes, diminished my chances of exposure. Amarra’s acting different? Blame it on her head injury. Amarra can’t remember something big? It’s that memory problem.
I clear my throat, trying to find a suitably Amarra-like reply. All I can come up with is “Oh, sure. I’ll be fine.”
I’m doing a poor job. I struggle to pull myself together, to regain my wits and force myself to get used to lying.
“Come on,” says Sonya. “You should sit down, rest. Your mom will kill me if you collapse or something.”
We slip into their usual places at the back of the classroom. The seating’s not assigned, but people pick their favorite spots and stay there most of the year. I spot pencil scribbles on Amarra’s desk, notes between Sonya, Amarra, and Jaya—and there, scratched into the wood at the edge of the desk, the names AMARRA and RAY with a slightly demented-looking heart scratched in between.
I swallow. She was just a girl who did sweet, silly normal things like scratch her boyfriend’s name into wood. Then she went away, and none of these people who loved her know that she never came back.
I’m lucky. I don’t have to speak much. Sonya does most of it for me. She flings books onto her desk, chattering nonstop. “Have you seen Ray? He looks rotten. Serves him right—I mean, seriously, he could have killed you! You haven’t talked to him, have you? Your mom told me she didn’t want anyone disturbing you while you recovered, so I guess that includes Ray. She’s not happy with him right now. He’s a dumbass. Is your cell still broken? I’m sick of calling the house.”
Cell? It throws me for a split-second before I remember. Cell phone. All my guardians called it the British mobile.
“I think I’m getting a new phone sometime this week.”
“Good. Do you know how weird it is not being able to talk to you for hours every evening?”
I try to hide my alarm. “God, I know,” I say. I rub my clammy palms on my knees. I could give myself away at any second. Head injuries don’t make someone’s skin almost a different color, for a start—a life in another climate does. Amarra’s accent was never hugely different from mine, but her speech pattern was more like Sonya’s. I’m not sure my tongue wants to work its way around the word dumbass.
Sonya is still chirping on. “Amarra, you and I need to have a serious talk about this almost-getting-yourself-killed hoopla. I don’t want to get all mushy, but I really, really hate the world without you, so could you kindly refrain from doing it ever again?”
The words stick in my throat, but I make myself say them. “Okay,” I say, forcing a twisted grin. “I promise.”
Sonya makes me “pinkie promise.”