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seemed nice.”
    “Get ready. It’s going to be hard,” Regine warned.
    “I’m glad I got through chemistry before he showed up,” Liz said. “How was the rest of your day?” she asked Celia.
    “Good. Definitely a lot of homework.”
    “When you get home, force yourself to start right away. Don’t wait until after dinner. It’s the best habit you can form,” Regine advised her. Liz nodded absently, but her eyes were across the lobby again.
    When the boys arrived, they all repeated their smooth, purposeful walk out to the cars, and the group chatted for a moment before splitting up into vehicles. Brenden and Marco asked Celia about her day, but Ivo looked around idly, and Celia thought again he didn’t seem very interested in knowing her. After only one day she desperately wanted approval from all of them, but she told herself not to ask for too much too soon.
    “You know, we have to get you a job,” Regine said as she pulled slowly out of the parking lot, in line behind the other two cars.
    “A job?”
    “Sure. We all have jobs. I work at a frame store. Marco helps with his mom’s tailoring business. Brenden works at a music store. Liz works at the library, and Ivo works at an interior design firm. You need to start earning money for college. And to pay for clothes and music, and Diaboliques.”
    “Diaboliques?”
    “It’s the club we go to on Fridays. You’ll love it.”
    “Are your parents going to help you pay for college?”
    “Sure, but it’s going to be expensive,” Regine explained. “If you want something you have to do the work to get it, right? I’ve saved five thousand dollars over the last two years for school.”
    “Wow.” Celia was impressed. “I wonder where I can find a job.”
    “We can go look this weekend. No tacky clothing stores, and no food service,” Regine said firmly. “Maybe you could work at an art supply store?”
    Celia arrived home feeling as if she were back from a long-distance trip. She wondered if the others truly were getting straight to work on their assignments before dinner, but she decided to follow Regine’s instructions, because it didn’t seem like a bad idea. As she dug into her pile of books, her thoughts were never far from the Rosary and how they had transformed her high school experience in a single day.
    When she went downstairs for dinner, Celia again saw the look that had been in her mother’s eyes ever since she had started her transformation. It was a look that said, I’m glad you’ve finally started to pay attention to your appearance, and maybe what you’ve chosen isn’t terrible, but it isn’t what I had in mind, either. But it wasn’t lost on Celia that her mother never had asked her to justify her decisions.
    “How was your first day?” her mother asked. “Tell me all about it.”
    “I don’t even know where to begin.” Celia exhaled. “One thing I know for sure: I was a different person yesterday.”

2. SONGS TO LEARN AND SING
    C ELIA QUICKLY CAME TO enjoy the morning and afternoon rituals of the Rosary’s funereal procession. “What’s this?” she asked each morning. “Some Great Reward,” Regine would answer, or “Clan of Xymox.” Celia’s love affair continued to grow with this new musical landscape that had been seemingly just beyond her awareness. Every song was another dot on the map. Sometimes during the first week she looked around at her classmates, thinking they didn’t know such darkly beautiful things, and they probably wouldn’t appreciate them if they did.
    She got along well enough with her classmates, but for the most part they left her alone. At school personas and reputations solidified very quickly, and Celia was gratified to be identified as the newest member of the exotic upper-class clique. Her real joy came from the Rosary and from knowing that throughout the day she would come in contact with one or more of these people with whom she dared to hope she was becoming friends. They would