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  “I really like the color.” Lame, I know. But that was the first thing I could think of to say at that moment.

  “It’s called honeycomb,” he said with a bemused shrug. “I had no idea there were so many different shades of yellow.”

  “Neither did I.” I looked at his face and saw that worried expression he got when he thought I really hated something. “It’s great, Dad. Thanks.”

  My dad had obviously put a lot of care and thought into getting the room ready for me, and it showed. I wanted him to know I loved it. I kissed him on the cheek.

  He smiled, visibly relieved. Finally, something his hard-to-please (okay, bratty) teen daughter approved of.

  “Get some sleep, honey. You’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow.”

  As if I could sleep. He shut the door as he exited the room. I sat on the bed and sighed. Despite not having to live out of a suitcase anymore and my somewhat cool new bedroom, this was not going to be an easy adjustment for me.

  • • •

  Two hours later I was staring out the window, my mind racing, totally wired, despite having been up for more than thirty hours straight. My cell phone said it was 11:46 p.m. I had unpacked all my clothes plus laid out the few personal mementos I’d brought along, including a cheesy digital picture frame that flashed dozens of photos of my mother and me. All my beloved books and knickknacks were supposedly en route from Bangkok. I’d had them shipped last week in six boxes, and they were due to arrive (hopefully) within a few days. That was if they didn’t get lost or held up by the US Customs department, which undoubtedly would inspect them for drugs, illegal contraband, and terrorist connections, all in an effort to keep America safe. Funny, but in all the years I had lived abroad—and Mom and I had decamped in some pretty rugged and remote areas, including a Sivananda ashram in rural India—I had never once worried about not being safe. Now that I’d been back in the US for barely eight hours, safety seemed to be my father’s and this town’s priority. Their number one concern.

  Sitting at the window seat (it was already becoming my favorite spot), I looked out at all the well-kept houses that lined Whisper Glen Road. Every one of them was dark, unlit. Completely and totally pitch-black. Weren’t there any night owls in town besides me? Only the bluish glow of the ecofriendly streetlights gave any sense that people actually lived in the neighborhood.

  It was really weird, but I suddenly felt this sadness, a vague yearning for what I used to have. I was homesick, which was a novel and somewhat strange feeling for me. I’d never gotten homesick before. Weirder still, I was now in my actual home and didn’t really have an old home to miss. I assumed what I was missing was a way of life, a carefree, footloose existence I led, as opposed to a particular place. I pulled out my cell phone and immediately started calling my mother, who was visiting an old boyfriend in Buenos Aires before making her way to Antarctica the following week. Halfway through punching in her number I realized there was no phone service. No dial tone. Absolutely nothing.

  Great. Here was another wonderful selling point of life in Barrington—miserable, nonexistent cell-phone coverage. Frustrated, I tossed the useless phone over to the bed.

  That’s when I saw a classic black Mustang GT cruise slowly down the street with its lights turned off. Quiet. Stealth. Like a Japanese ninja creeping along undetected. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen another car, let alone another person, since my dad had caught me trying to break in more than three hours ago. And yet here was this rogue vehicle, flagrantly violating curfew and patrolling the streets on some kind of covert mission.

  Who was this mystery driver? A rebel or kindred spirit, perhaps? Or maybe a burglar on the prowl for a big score. Whoever he or she was, I was dying to know. I squinted and pushed my face up the window, trying to get a good look at the driver of this admittedly killer car, but it was way too dark to see much more than a shadow in the front seat. The figure looked like a guy, but it was hard to be totally sure. I wondered if the driver even lived in Barrington, or was just some random person passing through, in which case I might never know his identity. The thought occurred to me that I should run down the stairs and out the front door to flag him down. I could beg him to drive me to the nearest curfew-free town and then pig out on junk food and do regular teenage things, like maybe go bowling or hang out at some mall. That was what kids did, right?

  But as I fantasized about what to do, the car rounded the corner and then zoomed out of sight, disappearing like some kind of ghost or phantom in the night.

  2. DANA FOX

  * * *

  “Nica, two-minute warning!” my dad shouted at me from the kitchen downstairs. It was 7:28 a.m. and I was already running late for school.

  “Okay! Be right down!” I yelled back, trying not to completely lose it as I rifled through every stitch of clothing I owned.

  I had slept through my hateful cell-phone alarm, which chirped and tweeted like some nightmarish invasion of parakeets tweaked on Red Bull. A few months earlier I had chosen it because it was usually way too effective in waking everyone within shouting distance—the dead and me included. But not today. By the time my dad realized I had overslept and dragged my sleepy ass out of bed, it was seven fifteen a.m. I had barely fifteen minutes to wash my hair and pick out the perfect outfit. Normally that would have been plenty of time.

  But today was most definitely not any normal day.

  It was my first day back at an American school after ten years abroad. My first day at Barrington High, filled with six hundred twenty (hideously judgmental) teenagers who would undoubtedly enjoy watching the freaky new junior humiliate herself publicly. What better entertainment for a bunch of hicks who were locked up every night.

  You would have thought I’d be used to the whole “first day” thing by now. That it wouldn’t bother me. I was an experienced world traveler, after all. I’d survived nineteen such first days in the last ten years. How bad could number twenty be, right? But I was intimidated. I knew just how wretched that first day could be. Like the time at Hobart Middle School in Tasmania, when some boy thought it would be hilarious to superglue my locker shut so I couldn’t get my books out. Or the time in Kyoto, Japan, when I was so naive I walked straight into the boys’ locker room, thinking it was the library, because I couldn’t read the signs.

  Still, as awful as all those first days were in other schools around the world, I knew an American high school in white-bread suburbia would be that much worse. All because of the clothes.

  I quietly panicked. I hated everything. And was completely clueless about what to wear for my first day at Barrington High. I’d never had to contend with such a major decision while I lived abroad. Students in Thailand (and every other country where I’d attended school) wore uniforms. They were mandatory from kindergarten up through college. Boys wore navy or khaki pants with a white open-collar short-sleeved shirt, white socks, and black sneakers. Girls wore knee-length navy blue or black skirts with an open-necked pale-blue blouse, white socks, and dark blue or black sandals. It made life easier and uncomplicated. No one stood out (even coming into school four weeks into the first semester). You never had to worry about not being cool enough or having the right shoes or jeans or designer purse. All my tropical colored tank tops and perky denim shorts and cute skirts that I wore after school and on weekends in Thailand suddenly looked way too slutty and crass in milquetoast suburbia. Nothing seemed right.

  I didn’t need that kind of pressure. And neither did my totally uncooperative mop of mousy brown hair, which had its usual waviness sucked out by the excessively dry mountain air. No amount of mousse or whip or volumizing foam altered the fact that I looked like a freeze-dried sewer rat.

  Totally desperate and ill-equipped to handle the pressure so early in the morning, I threw on an old pair of faded jeans, a vintage Patti Smith T-shirt I’d stolen from my mother, and a pair of laceless knock-off Converse sneakers I’d bought from some random street vendor in Bangkok. Hardly the back-to-sc
hool look one normally saw featured in Seventeen, but with no other options I hoped it would do.

  • • •

  The car ride to school felt like it lasted an eternity, even though it took less than ten minutes. It was all I could do to restrain myself from jumping out of my dad’s silver Prius and fleeing for the hills. He must’ve realized how freaked I was, because he was a little too cheerfully pointing out all the town highlights, which amounted to a bunch of restored old buildings from the 1800s along Main Street.

  “And there’s our library, which used to be the jail. And that’s the old hotel, which is now medical offices . . .”

  “What’s that?” I pointed up the hill to a sprawling campus of impressive postmodern buildings. They were the newest structures in town.

  “Bar Tech Industries,” my dad announced.

  “Bar Tech has an office here?” I asked, somewhat incredulous.

  “You’ve heard of them?” My dad acted surprised that I knew who they were.

  “Who hasn’t?” I retorted. “They’re one of those huge international companies, always in the press. Into all sorts of high-tech stuff like green energy and communications.”

  “And health care, too,” my dad added. “Anyway, that’s their headquarters. Speaking of green, did you know we’ve got the highest recycling rate of any community in the West?” My dad proudly rambled on about how Barrington was such a “green community,” while I zoned out.

  His valiant efforts to distract me and put me at ease didn’t work. Instead of listening I kept hearing a terrified voice inside my head warning me of impending doom. They’re all going laugh at you. You’re wearing that? The voice in my head scared the hell out of me, and yet there was nothing I could do to stop it. I sat there mindlessly picking my cuticles while staring out the car window like a zombie, hardly registering the flurry of homemade MISSING—HAVE YOU SEEN posters of a pretty Asian-American girl named Dana Fox that were stapled to every telephone pole.

  • • •

  By the time we pulled into the busy parking lot at Barrington High School, I felt nauseous and on the verge of losing my quasi-breakfast of yogurt and berries. Which would have been a great way to introduce myself to my new classmates. (Hey, check out the new girl barfing in the parking lot!) And that would not have been pretty. Luckily, Dad offered me a stick of winter-mint gum. My obsessively chewing helped settle my stomach and keep things down. Barely.

  The Prius finally made its way up to the entrance drop-off behind a parade of other fuel-efficient hybrids.

  “Good luck,” my dad said with a great big smile as I grabbed my bag and opened the door, ready to jump out.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, and quickly exited the car, praying I could survive first period without any major disasters. Maybe I’d just blend in and no one would even notice me.

  Just as I slammed the passenger door shut, my dad opened the window and called out to me. “If you want, I could go in with you. Help you get oriented.”

  Oh my God. I bit down my lip, desperate to fend off an all-out panic attack. Having my daddy walk me into high school like I was six years old was the last thing I needed. That would be one humiliation I’d never be able to live down. I didn’t care if his feelings would be hurt; I had to nip that idea in the bud, and quick.

  I shook my head. “Thanks, Dad, but I got the whole first-day thing pretty well covered.” I waved him off, sounding just the tiniest bit confident—enough, at least, to reassure my dad. I breathed a sigh of (temporary) relief as he shifted into gear and drove away, allowing me to suffer in silence.

  I looked around the school grounds and tried to get oriented. Three ivy-covered brick buildings were built in a U shape around a lushly landscaped quadrangle, where friendly students congregated in various cliques. The campus looked more like a small elite college than any school I’d ever seen. And the surprisingly clean-cut student body—boys in argyle sweaters and cardigans, girls in plaid skirts and colorful tailored blouses—only added to the idyllic impression. They looked like they had jumped out of the pages of a J.Crew or American Eagle catalog. Everyone, that is, except for me, of course. I was the square peg among all these perfect round holes.

  Still, as I stood in the middle of the quad, no one was giving me dirty looks. Which was disconcerting by itself. In fact random kids passed by and gave me big hellos and friendly smiles as if they were my friends. I mean, the high school years, no matter where you lived, were supposed to be the meanest and most insecure time of our lives. Surely there were one or two Queen Bees in this Disneyland who would shoot withering looks my way and take great pleasure in reducing me to tears. I was prepared for such nastiness. I could handle being royally snubbed by the cool kids. What I wasn’t prepared for was being showered with warmth and friendliness. That was freaky and a little unnerving.

  I was immobilized for a moment in kind of a daze when I remembered I had to pick up my class schedule. I scanned the quad, searching for a sign or map that would direct me to the main office.

  That was when I first saw it. Or heard it.

  A low, dull rumble came from somewhere behind me. I turned around. A shiny black Mustang roared into the student parking lot. There was no mistaking: It was the identical car I’d seen cruising by my father’s house at nearly midnight the night before, out way past the town curfew. I suddenly got excited and wanted to tell someone about it. Until I quickly remembered that I didn’t actually know anyone and therefore had no friends to confide in. Clusters of students were clutching books and chattering away, not paying the slightest bit of attention to the fine Mustang as it glided into a primo parking space right in front of the entrance.

  Just when I started to think that maybe the mysterious driver was some loser creep that everyone loathed, the door swung open and out stepped this gorgeous boy. Even from where I stood I could see that he was tall and athletic. Not to mention insanely sexy in his tight, faded jeans, cowboy boots, and black hoodie. He had this retro rebel aura about him—a wildness and defiant swagger, almost—like he’d leaped out of an old-fashioned movie Western. He was the kind of dangerous boy mothers usually warned their daughters to steer clear of.

  Luckily for me, my mom skipped over that lesson.

  As Rebel Boy brushed by me, he flipped that mane of jet-black hair off his chiseled face with the toss of a hand. My heart practically burst out of my chest it was beating so fast. Though he seemed not to notice me standing right there, I couldn’t help but stare. Absorbing every little detail about his beautiful face. Especially those shockingly bright blue-green eyes, which seemed haunted by a rage that nearly took my breath away. So much so that I actually felt woozy and had to steady myself against a nearby tree.

  A moment later the school bell rang and snapped me back to reality. But by then Rebel Boy had disappeared among the crush of students filing inside through the main entrance. I pulled myself together, remembering it was my first day, and quickly joined the stream of kids.

  • • •

  I discovered that Barrington High School was as beautiful inside as it was on the outside. It may sound surprising, but beautiful this school was. And so spotless you could practically eat off the polished tile floors, not that I planned on ever doing so. A far cry from the Morogoro Primary School I’d attended for two months in Tanzania, which used an old farmhouse with dirt floors for its classrooms and open cubbyholes for lockers. Here rows of shiny navy-blue and burgundy lockers (school colors, of course) perfectly complemented pastel-colored walls unmarred by grime or graffiti. Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of nauseating levels of school spirit. Professionally made banners and posters touted sporting events, club meetings, and countless charity drives, all sponsored by Bar Tech Industries. To top it all off the hallways even smelled good—kind of sweet, like a candy shop.

  Somehow I found my way to the main office amid all this cheerfulness. A pair of very helpful middle-aged women immediately greeted me with warm smiles and a welcome package that included a T-
shirt, baseball cap, and several notebooks emblazoned with the school mascot.

  Go, Cougars!

  Clearly they had expected me, although a day later. They all knew my dad (“such a wonderful doctor”) and treated me like I was some sort of VIP. Even going so far as to quiz me about all my travels and what it was like to live in Thailand and India. Just as they were printing out my class schedule and reassuring me about how quickly I would fit in with everyone, a girl burst into the office, breathless and just a hair shy of frantic.

  Taller than me and naturally pretty, she had wavy black hair and green eyes, and she wore a dark-blue embroidered baby-doll dress. She looked like the kind of fresh-faced beauty who never needed any makeup and probably washed her zit-free olive complexion with generic bar soap and water and yet still looked amazingly perfect when she bounced out of bed every morning.

  “Sorry I’m so late, but I thought you were arriving tomorrow.”

  I realized she was talking to me. “Parental miscommunication. Happens when neither one is in the same time zone.” I shrugged, suddenly feeling surprisingly relaxed.

  “Well, we’re glad you made it. I’m Maya Bartoli, FYI. Principal Hellinger asked me to show you around. Help you get acquainted. And see why Barrington is the absolute greatest high school in Colorado, if not the entire country.” She said it like some slick politician at a campaign rally.

  “Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you,” I replied, totally straight-faced.

  She barked out a nervous, giggly laugh. “Not at all. I mean, I really do love our school. Which reminds me, do you prefer Nikaela or Nica? Just so I can let everyone know.”

  “Nica’s cool. Actually, I prefer it.” Standing next to me, I could see her type Nica into her cell phone with a big, approving smile as if she was preparing to text the info to the entire student body. It was all a little too much energy and perkiness for barely eight in the morning, but I decided to roll with it. Then she took my arm, waved good-bye to the kindly office ladies, and whisked me off to start the grand tour.