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yellow?”
    Elly smiled. “Maybe a little pink will do you some good.” She pointed to a row of pink nail polishes lined up on her dresser. “I could paint your nails?”
    “Touch me with a pink brush and I’ll drop a brick on your toes,” TJ said fiercely.
    “Ladies!” Steffie said, laughing. “There is no need for violence.”
    The window was open, letting the warm Saturday-morning breeze into the room. Vanessa let her thoughts drift. Her dreams had been haunted by the boy in the white mask, his raspy voice hot against her neck as he ran his hand down her ankle. His hollow face was the last thing she remembered before waking, damp with sweat.
    “But no one else heard any French, right?” Steffie said, bringing the conversation back to the secret orientation.
    TJ shook her head, her mess of brown curls going every which way. She was sitting on the carpet with Blaine, who was flipping through a stack of glossy magazines they had bought at a bodega after breakfast.
    “Blaine? What do you think?” Steffie asked.
    “I didn’t hear any French.” He flipped a page. “Only super-creepy chanting. It sorta reminded me of gym class back in Texas, right before everyone would throw dodge balls directly at my head.”
    “If no one else heard French,” Steffie said, “then one of the upperclassmen specifically told Vanessa to leave.”
    “Not just to leave,” Vanessa murmured. “To
flee
. To save my
soul
.”
    TJ rolled her eyes. “Way too dramatic, if you ask me. If I were going to threaten someone, I’d choose a better word than ‘flee.’ And I’d probably say it in English.”
    “I know,” Vanessa said. “It feels old-timey.”
    “I like it,” Elly said. “Flee. It feels romantic. Like something a man would say to a woman he wanted to elope with.”
    Blaine groaned, and TJ fluttered her eyes as if she were in a daydream. “Elly’s just jealous that someone else is living out her freaky domination fantasy.”
    “I am not!” Elly said, clutching a frilly pillow to her chest. “And I don’t have any fantasies except to meet a nice boy, go steady with him for twenty-eight to thirty months, and then get married. We’ll move into a nice four-bedroom house, buy real hardwood furniture, and maybe I’ll start an herb garden. That’s it. No freaks involved. Or domination.”
    There was a long pause as everyone exchanged looks of disbelief.
    “Go steady?” Blaine said.
    Elly frowned. “But I wasn’t trying to be funny—”
    “Herb garden?” TJ chimed in, laughing. “It sounds like you want to marry my grandfather. He loves gardening and is too hard of hearing to care about the other stuff. Plus, he’s a minister. He’d say ‘flee’ and ‘save your soul’ to you all you like.”
    “Really, though,” Steffie said as their laughter died down. “Why you?” She cocked her head at Vanessa. “Can you think of a reason why any of the upperclassmen would say that to you?”
    Vanessa arched her foot, feeling the bandage stretch. No one here knew her yet, but maybe some of the older kids knew about her sister. Margaret had been cast as the lead ballerina in
The Firebird
when she was only a freshman. That alone would have been memorable enough, even without the disappearance, the canceled performance, and the long, fruitless search for her. And even though Vanessa, with her wild red hair and her rosy skin, didn’t resemble Margaret at first glance, they did have the same round, hazel eyes. The same heart-shaped lips.
    Flee
, the voice had said. Which was exactly what Margaret had done.
    But it seemed unlikely that anyone would have recognized her as Margaret’s sister.
    Vanessa felt Steffie watching her. She was the only one in the room who knew that Vanessa even had a sister, and that was only because she was living in Margaret’s old room. The one they were sitting in now.
    Vanessa glanced around at her new friends. “I used to have an older sister named Margaret,” she said softly. Keeping