As I Wake Read Online Free PDF

they all step back, look at me.
    “So?” one says, short but unquestionably the leader, the other two standing slightly behind her and watching her as much as they watch me. Her hair is long and black, her clothes are even more attention-calling than mine, layers upon layers of floaty, filmy black that complement her hair.
    She bites her nails, though. Bites them right down to the skin. She is a leader who lives with fear.
    “Hi, Sophy, Olivia, Greer,” I say, and the black-haired girl says, “See? I told you guys she’d remember us,” and then hugs me again. “Tell Olivia she owes me twenty bucks.”
    I look at the other two girls. One is the first girl’s height, and has a heart-shaped face with curls ringing it. The other is taller, and seems as awkward in her all-black outfit as I feel, is looking at people walking by and watching us as she picks at the hem of her long black shirt. Her hair is straight and shiny, a dark brown that is too dull to be black, and her eyes, when they meet mine, are cool. Assessing.
    “I don’t know who Olivia is,” I say, and meet the eyes of the girl with the straight hair. The one who is watching me intently. She doesn’t bite her nails at all, and she doesn’t blink when I look at her.
    She should be the leader of this little group, but she isn’t.
    “Told you, Greer,” the girl with heart-shaped face says, and gives me a blinding, silly happy smile that she turns on the leader. “Now you owe me.”
    “No way, Olivia,” Greer says, smoothing her black hair back behind her ears. “She said our names. That counts.” She grins at me, open and sunny, but with a hint of warning.
    It doesn’t bother me. I know her warning is something I can handle easily, that it is nothing but surface show—and wonder again who the Ava I’m supposed to be is.
    “So, how did you know it was us?” the tallest one, the watchful one, Sophy, says, her voice quieter than I think she wants it to be.
    “The clothes,” I say, watching her face. “We all look . . .”
    “Totally unique, I know,” Greer says, and smiles at me for real. “We aren’t slaves to the stupid mall like some people.”
    “Totally unique,” Olivia echoes. Her clothes are a match for Greer’s but catch on her curves. Of all the people who walk by and stare—and most of them do, sigh-sneering at the clothes, and then eyes widening at me—the guys always watch Olivia.
    She’s looking at Greer, though, and doesn’t seem to notice.
    A bell rings, loud and jarring, and a universal groan seems to echo out. I see a few instructors, standing in their classroom doorways, but they don’t look angered by the noise, just resigned.
    “Do you remember your schedule?” Greer asks, tapping my arm when I don’t look at her right away. “What are you staring at?”
    “No one’s in trouble for not wanting to go to class?”
    Greer laughs. “If we got in trouble for that, there’d be maybe three students here. You have forgotten everything, haven’t you?”
    She shakes her head at me, then says, “Don’t worry, I still love you,” and strides off into the crowd. Olivia plunges after her, but not before pressing a piece of paper into my hand and saying, “Here. I wrote down all your classes for you. My mom read this book on brain injuries last year and talked about it forever, so I figured that you might, you know, need help and—” She breaks off as Greer comes back.
    “Are you coming?” she says to Olivia, and then looks at me and Sophy and says, “Ditch third, okay?”
    “Oh, I forgot to tell you about that,” Olivia says, but Greer says, “Olivia, are we going now or what?” and Olivia gives me another quick smile and follows Greer, the two of them vanishing into the sea of people moving around us.
    “So, see you later,” Sophy says. “You sure you’re going to be able to find your classes and stuff?” She doesn’t say what ditching third is, and I know she won’t.
    “I’m fine,” I say, and