“Where did you get them, Jaya?” an older girl asked.
“Mum just sent them from Milan,” answered a willowy girl with dark hair and eyes. “I hope they fit; she never gets my size right. She’s so self-involved, it’s like she forgets who I am.”
“That’s nothing,” said another girl. “When I turned fifteen, my mum sent me a ‘Happy Seventeenth’ card and gave me a car.”
“Did you hear about Malcolm Galt?” said the girl called Jaya. “He jumped off the chapter house and broke his arm.”
Somebody laughed. “What else is new? He never could resist a dare.”
“I hear Dev Masrani was there, too,” an older girl said. “He’s still in the medical center.”
Jaya’s jaw dropped. “Is he hurt badly?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said. “He didn’t go to the hospital, so I guess it can’t be that bad.”
“Then why is he still in the medical center?”
The girl shrugged. “Beats me.”
Emmy slid past the girls and ducked her head. People were starting to stare.
“Has anybody talked to her yet?” someone whispered.
“How did she get in after term started?”
“Maybe she has famous parents.”
“I bet they just sent her with a big fat donation.”
“Honestly,” said a black-haired girl on the couch, “if you want to know who she is, why don’t you bloody well ask her?” She jumped up, marched over to Emmy, and stuck out her hand. She was shorter than Emmy, but her handshake was so powerful it made Emmy wince. “I’m Lola Boyd. Who are you?”
“Uh, Emmy Willick.”
“Good, then,” Lola said. “Now, do you want to sit with us or would you rather stand here and feel like an idiot?”
Emmy had no clue what to say to that. At least Lola was talking to her. Lola had been sitting with a boy who was fiddling with a music player. He had dark eyes and skin, and everything about him was messy—his hair, his shirt, even his tie. Then he looked up and smiled. It was the first smile Emmy had seen in two days. She tucked her hair behind her ear and sat down.
Lola slumped down on the couch and threw her feet up on the coffee table, her thick black boots clunking heavily on the wood. Emmy smiled. Those boots definitely weren’t part of the uniform code. Lola had an accent, too, and this time Emmy was pretty sure it was Scottish.
“Don’t worry about those gossiping harpies,” Lola said. “Their barks are worse than their bites.”
“I’m Jack.” The boy pulled out one of his ear buds. “Jack Galt.”
Galt. Like the boy who had broken his arm. Maybe they were related.
“I’m Emmy Willick.”
“Wow, American,” Jack said. “We don’t get a lot of you at Wellsworth. Parents scarpered, have they?”
Emmy blinked. “Huh?”
Jack shook his head and smiled. “It means they took off and left you here. You’ve never been to a school in the UK, have you?”
Emmy shook her head.
A group of older boys walked past them, laughing and talking loudly. One of them had his arm in a cast. Jack’s whole body went stiff.
“Have you talked to him yet?” Lola asked.
“Nope.”
“Are you going to?”
Jack shrugged. “What’s there to say?”
“I don’t know, maybe, ‘Sorry you broke your arm while you were being a stupid show-off, Malcolm. Hope it doesn’t hurt too much.’”
The boy laughed while he tried to balance a stack of books on his cast. He looked a lot older, probably in his last year at school. “Is that the kid who jumped off the roof?”
“Something like that,” Jack said. “That’s my brother, Malcolm.”
Emmy looked back at the boy. His skin and hair were so much lighter than Jack’s. It was hard to believe they shared the same DNA. “He doesn’t really, um, I mean, you don’t exactly look alike.”
“Yeah, everyone says that. My dad’s white, and Malcolm takes after him. I look a lot more like my mum—she’s from Sri Lanka.”
“Is Dev still in the medical center?” Lola asked.
Jack nodded. “I don’t think he’s too badly hurt, just shaken up. I went to see him this morning.”
“What was he doing with Malcolm?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Latin Society.”
“Jeez, can’t they get those Latin Society blokes under control? They think they’re bloody invincible, and then somebody ends up in the medical center for two days.”
Emmy rubbed her fingers together. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be part of this Latin Society.
“Can’t the principal do anything about it?” she asked.
“Principal?” Lola said. “You mean the headmaster?”
Emmy nodded.
“We don’t see him much. He’s always busy with teachers or school governors. The housemasters and housemistresses are the ones who really run things. It was probably the same at your old school.”
“We didn’t have housemasters or housemistresses at my old school.”
“No?” Lola picked up a soccer magazine. “Who took care of the boarders?”
“I didn’t go to a boarding school. I lived at home with my mom.”
Lola raised her eyebrows.
“You’ve never been a boarder?” Jack asked.
Emmy shook her head. Jack and Lola looked at each other.
“What?” Emmy’s chest was tightening up again. “Is it really that bad?”
Lola shrugged. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“On lots of things.” Suddenly Lola slammed her magazine shut and stared at Emmy. “Wait, who’s your roommate?”
“Some girl named Victoria.”
Jack groaned, and Lola winced. She shook her head and opened her magazine again. “They’re not even giving you a fighting chance.”
CHAPTER 4
Humanities and Latin
The next day’s classes were just as hard, and the jet lag wasn’t helping. She was late for two classes, which earned her some pretty good glares from the teachers. She ducked down a flight of rickety steps that were supposed to lead to the Howard Room for her last class of the day: humanities.