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hoping he didn't give those out freely. They could be ...

friends. Maybe that was all she needed. Maybe then she would stop feeling quite so obviously out of place at Sword & Cross.

Maybe then she'd be able to forgive the fact that the only window in the classroom was the size of a business envelope, caked with lime, and looked out on a massive mausoleum in the cemetery.

Maybe then she'd be able to forget the nose-tickling odor of peroxide emanating from the bleached-blond punk chick sitting in front of her.

Maybe then she could actually pay attention to the stern, mustached teacher who marched into the room, commanded the class to shapeupandsitdown, and firmly closed the door.

The smallest tweak of disappointment tugged at her heart. It took her a moment to trace where it had come from.

Until the teacher shut the door, she'd been holding out a little hope that Daniel would be in her first class, too.

What did she have next hour, French? She looked down at her schedule to check what room it was in. Just then, a paper airplane skidded across her schedule, overshot her desk, and landed on the floor by her bag. She checked to see who'd noticed, but the teacher was busy tearing through a piece of chalk as he wrote something on the board.

Luce glanced nervously to her left. When Cam looked over at her, he gave her a wink and a flirty little wave that caused her whole body to tense up. But he didn't seem to have seen or been responsible for the paper airplane.

"Psssst," came the quiet whisper behind him. It was Arriane, who motioned with her chin for Luce to pick up the paper plane. Luce bent down to reach for it and saw her name written in small black letters on the wing. Her first note!

Already looking for the exit?

Not a good sign.

We're in this hellhole until lunch.

That had to be a joke. Luce double-checked her schedule and realized with horror that all three of her morning classes were in this very same room 1 - and all three would be taught by the very same Mr.

Cole.

He'd detached himself from the blackboard and was sleepily threading his way through the room. There was no introduction for the new kids - and Luce couldn't decide whether she was glad about that or not.

Mr. Cole merely slapped syllabi down on each of the four new students' desks. When the stapled packet landed in front of Luce, she leaned forward eagerly to take a look. History of the World, it read.

Circumventing the Doom of Mankind. Hmmm, history had always been her strongest subject, but circumventing doom?

A closer look at the syllabus was all it took for Luce to see that Arriane had been right about being in a hellhole: an impossible reading load, TEST in big, bold letters every third class period, and a thirty-page paper on - seriously? - the failed tyrant of your choice. Thick black parentheses had been drawn in black Sharpie around the assignments Luce had missed during the first few weeks. In the margins, Mr. Cole had written See me for Makeup Research Assignment. If there was a more effective way of soul-sucking, Luce would be scared to find out.

At least she had Arriane sitting back there in the next row. Luce was glad the precedent had already been set for SOS note-passing. She and Callie used to text each other on the sly, but to make it here, Luce was definitely going to need to learn to fold a paper airplane. She tore a sheet from her notebook and tried to use Arriane's as a model.

After a few origami-challenged minutes, another plane landed on her desk. She glanced back at Arriane, who shook her head and gave her a you-have-so-much-to-learn roll of the eyes.

Luce shrugged an apology and swiveled back around to open the second note: Oh, and until you're confident about your aim, you might not want to fly any Daniel-related messages my way. Dude behind you is famous on the football field for his interceptions.

Good to know. She hadn't even seen Daniel's friend Roland come in behind her. Now she turned very slightly in her