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should really stop color coding—everybody knows when you’ve been called to her office,” Harvey said.
    “Yeah, right. Weekly checkup. Pretty standard.”
    “I don’t mean when you’ve been called to her office,” Harvey backpedaled. “I mean, you know, anyone. Lots of people get blue slips.”
    “Don’t worry about it, man. Hey—what do you think about Audrey being in Carmen’s class with us?” I asked.
    “Uh, I don’t know. I wasn’t aware I would be expected to form an opinion.”
    “Off the top of your head.”
    “It’s weird. Don’t you think it’s weird? Wasn’t she always moping around in the dumb classes, with Cass and Adam and … all them? I mean, we only overlapped for like six months in sophomore year, but wasn’t that the way it was?”
    “That’s what I was thinking. Padding the resume in preparation for college applications?”
    “I guess. Although I always thought it was a foregone conclusion she was going to USC, since her grandmother donated, like, a building or something.”
    I shrugged.
    “Why?”
    “No reason. Thought it was weird.”
    “Well, I agree. It is weird.”
    It got weirder in AP government, when Audrey came in halfway through class and took the last remaining seat in the front row for the second time that day. Harvey, who was sitting in front of me, turned around and raised his eyebrows. I did my best to look uninterested.

C HAPTER F OUR
    A n hour later, I sat alone with my lunch. I was twisting off the stem of an apple when Audrey emerged from the library and took a seat at an empty table. I shifted to get a better view. She put down her tray and pulled a book from her bag, the same book that she had been reading in the library that morning. She didn’t appear to have noticed me, and she rarely looked up from whatever she was doing to glance around. Over the course of the hour, not one person came up to talk to her. The rest of the seats at Audrey’s table, as at mine, remained vacant.
    The past year had been hard on Audrey. Her father’s arrest and conviction for Carly’s murder had been disastrous, especially since she and Carly had been so close. She and I had beenfriends briefly at the beginning of high school, and I remembered her as quiet, well behaved, smart but no genius like Carly, with very little interest in really trying. Her family situation, even back then, was considered amply tragic; Enzo, notorious in Empire Valley during his youth, was an alcoholic and compulsive gambler who squandered his wife’s trust fund at the Indian casinos, and Audrey’s mother had left for good when Audrey was in the sixth grade. When Enzo had brought his daughter back to Empire Valley, the town was simultaneously scandalized and relieved: scandalized that Enzo Ribelli was once again living within their borders and relieved that his daughter had been returned to the bosom of her more responsible and upstanding family members. When she moved back to town, Audrey was showered with both pity and praise, for about ten minutes before everyone forgot about her and all they could talk about was Enzo’s latest exploits.
    Carly took it upon herself to befriend Audrey and put every bit of effort she could spare into understanding, loving, and sympathizing with her. This was the summer before our freshman year, soon after Carly’s mother was diagnosed with the ovarian cancer that killed her less than a year later. Their connection wasn’t anything I particularly understood, but it was real and strong and largely unaffected by Carly’s later transformation. I hadn’t hung out with Audrey since the end of our freshman year at Brighton—since Carly broke up with me, in fact—and I certainly wasn’t interested in striking up an acquaintance now, even though we seemed to be fellow outcasts.
    Apart from the obvious, Audrey’s penance for being the daughter of a murderer was social ruin. She was bearing up as well as could be expected. I could barely remember her fromthe