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I’d hurt her.
    “You’ve definitely got it,” Katrina said. “Good thing I bumped into you this morning. I felt it then, but it happened so fast I couldn’t be sure.”
    My stomach filled with dread. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “The Spark.” She reached into the tiny black leather purse that hung on a long strap across her shoulder and removed something small and flat and rectangular. A deck of cards bound with a strip of black satin. She did a quick midair shuffle, like a magician, and then fanned the deck out for me, the cards facing the floor.
    “Pick one,” she said.
    “Is this a trick?”
    “It’s an invitation.”
    I eased toward the door. “I should get to class.”
    “It will only take a second.”
    The cards were larger than normal playing cards, and looked soft, almost antique with age. I chose one and slid it from the deck. It felt even softer than it looked, like cloth. I turned it over, holding it so only I could see it.
    I’d never had a tarot reading, but I’d seen plenty of fortune-tellers on the Venice Boardwalk doing them. The card I held between two fingers bore a picture of a stone tower perched on a cliff. Of lightning striking that tower, and people falling from the top, screaming on their way to the ground. The eyes of the fallen seemed to stare out of the card at me, accusing.
    I didn’t need to read the caption at the bottom of the card to know its name.
    The Tower.
    During the earthquake, the Tower was the only downtown skyscraper to survive. It was the newest and tallest structure, built in response to the kind of massive, glittering high-rises going up in Dubai. Construction on the monstrosity had finished only a few months before the earthquake, and it was dubbed, simply, the Tower, as though height alone excused the need for further description.
    “Show it to me,” Katrina said.
    My throat was dry. I turned the card around so she could see it, and her eyes grew.
    She snatched the card out of my hand, reinserted it intothe deck, and shuffled again, muttering to herself as she did so.
    She fanned the cards again. “Pick another.”
    “Why?”
    She shoved the cards at me. “Do it.”
    I caught another glimpse of the knotted red scar tissue on her right palm, but it was mostly obscured by the cards.
    “All right, all right.” I slid another card from the deck, shaking my head, bewildered. I’d had some strange days in my life. Some very strange days. But this day definitely made it into my top ten.
    I turned the card over so we both could see.
    “The Tower.” Katrina exhaled the word.
    I tried to hand the card back to her. “Nice trick,” I said. “What’s the secret?”
    “I told you, it’s not a trick.” She stared at me with those glassy eyes. Her voice lowered. “It’s an invitation.” She wouldn’t take the card. “Keep it for now,” she said. “You can return it to me after school. Meet me in room 317.”
    “What? Why?”
    “We’ll talk about it then.”
    I shook my head. “I can’t be there.” I was becoming more convinced with each word Katrina spoke that I wanted nothing to do with her.
    She gazed at me a moment longer, and then nodded to herself. “You’ll come,” she muttered, and before I could assure her she was wrong, she walked out of the lounge, leaving me with the Tower card in my hand.

5
    LUNCH. IT WAS half the reason Parker and I had returned to school, but scanning the crowded cafeteria, I didn’t see my brother anywhere.
    Considering how many people were lined up at the lunch counter and jammed in shoulder to shoulder at the tables, it was strangely quiet inside the cafeteria, especially compared to the chaos in the parking lot that morning. There was no horsing around, no chatter. Students ate with concentration, and those in line for food had expressions of extreme focus on their haggard faces.
    I couldn’t help but notice that the usual cliques were a thing of the past. There seemed to be only two