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spoonful of honey. Too many kids, too much noise, too much to remember to do so that she didn’t come across like a freak. Knowing every minute of every day that she actually was a freak and there was no hiding it.
    She’d learned a lot, but most of it was by fire.
    “I don’t think so, Clover. The students are older. I don’t think there will be as much chaos.”
    “I hope my roommate isn’t an idiot.”
    “They don’t let idiots into the Academy.”
    Clover shrugged one shoulder. Her pack was starting to drag on it. “They let idiots in everywhere.”

chapter 3
     
    Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.
    —JOHN TAYLOR, MESSAGE TO THE HOUSE, DECEMBER 18, 1816
     
     
    Clover smoothed her palms over the full skirt of her pale yellow dress. The cotton was soft and warm under her fingers. The dress had been her mother’s and was Clover’s good-luck charm.
    West told her to wear the same Academy uniform the other girls would be wearing. He’d picked up her gray pants and navy blazer at the Bazaar. They didn’t fit right and were made of itchy fabric that felt like sandpaper against her skin.
    Her mother’s old clothes were mostly cotton, worn to a smooth comfortable texture, and fit like they were made for her.
    Still, maybe she should have taken her brother’s advice. No one younger than Mrs. Finch wore dresses anymore. Now that she was in front of the Academy, Clover wondered if blending in was more important than luck. But the truth was, she didn’t blend, anyway, no matter what she did.
    She clutched Mango’s lead in her hand and tried to breathe through her anxiety. She’d made West stay at home. If shewas old enough, and smart enough, to be accepted into the Academy, she was old enough and smart enough to go to orientation without a babysitter.
    At least that had sounded like a good plan at home. Now she sort of wished her brother were with her. She looked down at Mango, who sat at her right side when she stopped walking. “Ready?”
    He tilted his head, the folds of skin on his face jiggling slightly. She had a feeling she would need him even more than she needed her mom’s ghost to get through today.
    She took a deep breath and pushed open the heavy front door to the administration building before she could upset herself any more. Mango’s toenails clicked along the floor as they walked to the huge desk at the far end of the front room.
    A banner stretched across the ceiling that said,
Welcome, New Students!
    The woman behind the desk grinned, showing a mouth full of worn-down teeth that didn’t quite fit the rest of her. Then she looked from Clover’s face down to her feet. “My, what a pretty dress. And a dog, too.”
    “It was my mother’s.” Clover rubbed a damp palm against her hip. “The dress, I mean. The dog is mine.”
    The woman raised both dark eyebrows. They were plucked to barely visible curves that arched above brown eyes. “May I have your name, dear?”
    It was on the tip of Clover’s tongue to say,
Don’t you have one of your own?
But she stopped herself. “Clover Jane Donovan.”
    “Well, welcome, Clover Jane.” The woman handed her a card encased in plastic with a pin on the back. She’d written Clover’s first and second name on it. Would everyone else have their second name, or had Clover managed to make a mistake already?
    Clover took the pin, and then she and the woman stared at each other for a minute. The woman was waiting for her to pin the nametag to her mother’s dress. Clover didn’t want to put holes in the soft yellow cotton. Finally, the awkward moment was over when the woman cleared her throat.
    “Okay, first things first, Miss Clover. No dogs allowed at the Academy.”
    Clover knelt and pulled Mango’s paper from a pocket on his harness, then handed it to the receptionist. “He’s a service dog.”
    “Oh,” the woman said, looking the document