Chapter One


“Do you want to come?” 

Alice Parrie is looking down, smiling. It’s lunchtime and I’m sitting beneath a tree, alone, absorbed in a book.

 “Sorry.” I shade my eyes and look up. “Come where?” 

Alice hands me a piece of paper. 

I take it and read. It’s a brightly colored photocopy of an invitation to Alice’s eighteenth birthday party. Come one and come all!! Bring your friends!! it reads. Free champagne! Free food! Only someone as popular and as self- assured as Alice would issue such an invitation; anyone more ordinary would feel as if she was begging for guests. Why me? I wonder. I know of Alice, everyone knows of Alice, but I’ve never spoken to her before. She is one of those girls— beautiful, popular, impossible to miss. 

I fold the invitation in half and nod. “I’ll try. It sounds like fun,” I lie. 

Alice looks at me for a few seconds. Then she sighs and plonks herself down next to me, so close that one of her knees rests heavily against mine. 

“You will not.” She grins. 

I feel my cheeks begin to color. Even though my entire life can sometimes feel like a façade, a wall of secrets, I’m not good at lying. I look down at my lap. “Probably not.” 

“But I want you to come, Katherine,” she says. “It’d really mean a lot to me.” 

I’m surprised that Alice even knows my name, but it’s even more surprising—in fact, quite unbelievable—that she wants me to come to her party. I’m practically unknown at Drummond High and have no close friends. I come and go quietly, alone, and get on with my studies. I try to avoid bringing attention to myself. I do well enough, but my grades aren’t exceptional. I play no sport, have joined no clubs. And though I know I can’t do this forever—live my entire life as a shadow—for now it’s okay. I’m hiding, I know that, I’m being a coward, but right now I need to be invisible, to be the kind of person who arouses no curiosity in others. That way they never need to know who I really am, or what has happened. 

I close my book and start to pack away my lunch things. 

“Wait.” Alice puts her hand on my knee. I look at her as coldly as I can, and she withdraws it. “I’m serious. I really do want you to come. And I think what you said to Dan last week was fantastic. I really wish I could think of things like that to say, but I never can. I’m just not quick enough. You know, I never would have thought about that woman’s feelings like that. Not until I heard you tell Dan off. I mean, you were great, what you said was just so right, and you really showed him up to be the moron that he is.” 

I know immediately what Alice is referring to—the one and only time I’d let my guard down, momentarily forgotten myself. I don’t often confront people anymore. In fact, it’s something I try very hard to avoid. But the way Dan Johnson and his friends had behaved two weeks ago had disgusted me so much that I couldn’t help myself. We had a guest speaker talking about career planning and college admissions. Sure, the speech was boring, we’d heard it all a billion times before, and the speaker was nervous and stuttered and hesitated and talked in confusing circles, only becoming worse as the crowd became noisier, more restless. Dan Johnson and his group of creepy friends had spotted their opportunity. They were so cruel and deliberately disruptive that the woman ended up leaving in humiliated tears. When it was all over, I stood behind Dan in the hallway and tapped him on the shoulder. 

Dan turned around with a smug, self- satisfied look on his face, clearly anticipating some kind of approbation for his behavior. 

“Did it ever occur to you,” I started, my voice surprisingly strong, fueled by anger, “how much you’ve hurt that woman? This is her life, Daniel, her career, her professional reputation. Your pathetic cry for attention means a whole lot of humiliation for her. I feel sorry for