"Not again," Pia sighed. "The jock with the black hair is Derek Mendoza, the quarterback. Yeah, he's hot but don't think his s.h.i.t don't stink. And the hulk with the buzz cut is Wade Stoops. He is a.s.shole numero uno. He's on the football team too, but the reason his face is so red and pudgy like a pervert is 'cause he looks at nasty stuff constantly online. Put a permanent sneer on his face. He is gross, trust me."

Kaila watched the trashed boy pulling himself out of the dumpster, hitching his legs over the side. He had curly dark hair and adjusted thick gla.s.ses over reddened cheeks.

"Hey dork d.i.c.k, you stink!" Derek and Wade laughed as they sauntered away from the dumpster, their wide shoulders swaying.

The dumped boy furiously wiped his baggy pants to remove pieces of trash.

"That's Douglas Lafarge," Melissa whispered.

Douglas balled his fist and shouted, "Eat me!"

Several students in the area mimicked, "Eat me!"

Douglas glared back at the students with defiance.

Wow, Kaila thought, this is vicious. They all gang up like wolves.

"Forget him," Melissa said. "He's a dork. Look. That tree over there is geeks. And over there, techno-nerds. There, gamers." She inclined her head to the left. "That tree over there is the gangstas."

Kaila noted boys with wide pants and baseball caps.

"The ones sitting alone, the loners, um, inside on the bench in black are the Goths," Pia added. "And the ones in the parking lot by their trucks chewing chaw are the hicks."

Why were there all these groups? So complicated and daunting. Was she supposed to come to school appearing a certain way so people could pull out a checklist and say, okay, Kaila is X. But to which X did she belong?

"There's the skaters out in the parking lot," Melissa said.

"And a ton of wannabes and posers," added Pia, crumpling her brown lunch bag.

Kaila said nothing, digesting the school groups. Then, she saw way off under a distant tree the mysterious "cult." Kaila was dying to know about them and Jordyn. "What about them?" she pointed.

Melissa and Pia held a hand above their eyes and squinted.

"Weird. I didn't see 'em there before," Melissa said. "This is the first time they came out of their area. They usually hang in the back field away from everybody."

In their silver overalls, the group stood in one line, side by side, looking at everyone on the school grounds, saying nothing, just staring beneath dark sungla.s.ses.

"I met one of the guys this morning," Kaila said.

"Yeah? What was he like?" Melissa asked.

"Very intense."

"Really?" Pia said. "That's the exact word I heard others say when meeting them. There's something weird going on with them."

"They're weird cause they were raised in that cult," Melissa said.

"There's more to it than that," Pia said. "I was next to one in the office over the summer. She gave me the creeps. Felt like she raped my mind or something."

Though perspiration trickled down the back of Kaila's neck, she shivered. That was exactly what she had felt. Jordyn had gotten inside her head. Still, she didn't want to admit that she thought he was really hot and was dying to see him again.

"Hey look," someone shouted. "The freakin' aliens are out to play!"

Everyone gathered under the shaded walkway and peered at the group way off under the tree.

"That's a good name for them," Pia said.

"What?" Kaila asked.

"The aliens. That'll be their name."

Kaila thought this was mean but didn't say so. "Aliens, prep, gangsta, skaters, hicks, geeks, so then what are you?" she asked Melissa and Pia.

"We're undefinables," said Melissa. "And that's what to be because you can hang with everybody and wear and do whatever you feel. There's a lot of us."

Her appet.i.te near gone, Kaila tore open her Lay's potato chips bag.

Pia's heavily mascaraed lashes fluttered as she touched Kaila's long fingers on her left hand. As if burned, Kaila yanked her hand away.

"I noticed her hand too," Melissa said, meeting Pia's gaze. "Since we all live so close we'll have to hang out."

"This is going to be an interesting year," Pia said.

Kaila knew there was some sort of subtext going on, but she couldn't figure what. Her nerves were killing her.

A girl with long, white-blonde hair walked up to Kaila.

Kaila shrunk before this G.o.ddess with bright blue eyes. She wore a silk cornflower-blue sundress with a white belt.

"I'm Priscilla. Just wanted to say *hey' and hope you're happy here." She seemed utterly sincere.

"Thanks. I'm Kaila."

"Okay, nice meeting you." Priscilla's face grew even lovelier as she smiled. "See you around."

Kaila turned to Melissa and Pia for interpretation.

"That's Priscilla Snowden," Melissa said. "She's a prep, but she never backstabs people. Yeah, she's so beautiful it makes you feel like a t.u.r.d. But she's super nice and no one can find one mean thing to say about her."

Kaila thought they said the preps were mean. How would she figure these people out? And was it necessary to find something mean to say about everyone? She shuddered, imagining what they could say about her.

The bell rang. Kaila slurped her melted smoothie and shoved her uneaten chips in her book bag. She glanced at the far off tree. The "aliens" had vanished.

As she was jostled with the crowd inside the school, a blast of air cooled her face and neck. It smelled of Pine-Sol and dirty gym socks. She heard some boys shouting: "Three, three, three!"

Pia, noting Kaila's stricken look, whispered, "Besides dumping Douglas Lafarge in the trash, that's a lunchtime ritual too. Albert Jackson, the big fat guy up there-see him? He eats three lunches every day."

Kaila spied a huge boy close to three-hundred pounds. He kept his eyes downcast as three boys hounded him, raising three fingers and shouting "Three," like jackals feeding on misery.

This was probably why Melissa didn't want to eat a real lunch. Thinking it was shameful the way these people treated each other, Kaila bustled with the h.o.a.rd in the hall. She had to hurry to make it to her advanced physics cla.s.s in the modular unit in the back field.

As Kaila opened the door to her cla.s.s, she immediately noticed Jordyn. He sat at a desk in the middle of the cla.s.sroom. She froze. All six of the aliens were seated in the middle of the cla.s.s, and they simultaneously turned to look at her. It was creepy, as if they were one unit. The fluorescent light above emitted a low buzz.

"h.e.l.lo," the teacher said from her desk in the front of the room. She had pageboy hair, curled under, holding a bra.s.sy tint from a drugstore bottle. Too much blush smeared her cheeks. "You must be Kaila."

How did she know her name?

"I'm Mrs. Bourg," the teacher said, peering with icy blue eyes. She rose and met Kaila in the doorway. "Come," she said, taking Kaila's left hand. She stared at her three long fingers, then smiled, curling her four shorter ones around them, immensely pleased as a mother lioness to her cub. "You may take a seat next to Jordyn."

Kaila collapsed into the seat. She fumbled in her book bag for her notebook. To her left, she could feel Jordyn strong as the moon's draw on the tides. Her hands shook as she arranged paper and pen on her desk. She glanced at the clock. 1:00 p.m. The energy beside her proved irresistible. She stole a peep at him. He gazed intently at her with his large hazel eyes.

"Do not have fear," he said with a clipped foreign accent.

Kaila managed a thin smile. He was unlike anyone she'd ever met. Though she sensed something unnatural about him, he was so cute with his spiky sandy hair, slight stubble on his chin and above his lip. His black t-shirt and form-fitting silver metallic overalls were exotic and alluring.

"We think the school is quite strange. Same as you."

"Um," Kaila said. "It is a little bizarre."

How did he know that she was nervous and freaked by all the newly learned rituals and groups in school? Did he sense her fear of not fitting in? Was it all over her face? She tried to make her expression still and unreadable like his.

"We will learn it . . . together." He gazed at her intently, yet she sensed his sincerity. "My friends are new, too, and we would like to make friends."

Kaila looked behind at the others. Five more of them stared at her. They wore no emotion on their faces, neither friendly nor cruel.

"We saw you this morning," the girl behind Jordyn said. She had short black straight hair with bangs. Her black eyes were huge, almost without color distinguishing the iris from the pupils. They were like spiders set in pale white skin.

"We are glad you are in this cla.s.s so we can join together. I am called Echidna." She stood up and the other five stood too. Echidna's neck swiveled as she looked at the others. It seemed as if they communed silently. Then, the others sat down. Echidna was tall and lean. The clingy metallic overalls displayed her small rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s, tight abdomen, and long legs.

"I do not have girl friend," she said. She stuck out her long fingers.

Though afraid, Kaila accepted her hand. Echidna's touch transmitted a strange current. Kaila's stomach clamped to a fist. She wanted to withdraw her hand and break Echidna's hypnotic gaze, but as with Jordyn that morning, once she locked her gaze, she could not look away. Echidna licked her tiny lips; one corner of her lip twitched up and down as if she had no emotion, or had never expressed it. Still, her eyes remained cold and probing.

Echidna towered over Kaila's desk. "You be my friend."

"Okay, okay," Kaila blurted, wishing Echidna would go away. The other five intently observed this exchange.

Echidna leaned over Kaila and put her pretty white face near hers. "Do not have fear. It is wasted thought energy."

Was that disgust Kaila saw or hatred or what? She could not read her. But the pit in her stomach alerted that something was terribly wrong.

"I sit," Echidna said. "But we are now friends." As if there was nothing more to say on the matter.

Kaila felt a tap on her back, then on her wig. She turned.

"This is long hair," another one of them said. He had bushy brown hair below his ears, a large nose, and wore black sungla.s.ses. She thought they didn't allow sungla.s.ses in school. Maybe there were different rules in the advanced cla.s.ses in the modular units?

"Um, yes," Kaila said. "I have long hair."

"Do you?" he asked. She could not see his eyes beneath the dark gla.s.ses, but sensed he played with her.

"Lucius, stop," called a boy behind Echidna. "Don't pay attention to him, Kaila. I am Toby and I say h.e.l.lo."

The boy had sparkly blue eyes, a bald head, and no eyebrows. He turned the corners of his small mouth in his chubby cheeks up to a waxen smile.

These people were odd. She spied the others observing her: a boy with red hair who emitted a scary energy and a girl with mahogany skin and huge dark eyes who gazed at her impa.s.sively. They all emitted a voltage charge like batteries.

The teacher clapped her hands. Kaila turned. She was surprised to see other students in the cla.s.s; she hadn't noticed them before she was so focused on the aliens.

There was the dork guy who had gotten dumped in the trash. A girl with stringy hair who looked nervous, licking her lips and wringing her hands. Brandy and Tara, the preps that Melissa and Pia had warned her about. Sure enough, just as Melissa had said, Tara was fiddling with her pearls and wriggling her nose at Kaila as if she smelled rotten catfish.

"Welcome to advanced physics," Mrs. Bourg said. She went to the windows and closed the blinds, leaving only the artificial gray-white light of the fluorescent bulbs.

"I am quite proud of you for having placed in this cla.s.s. Trust me, there are no dummies here. And while we are in this cla.s.s," she said as she walked to the door, closed it, and turned the lock, "there will be none of the usual high school c.r.a.p in here." She eyed the cla.s.s with stern glacial eyes.

"Everyone in this cla.s.s is to be treated exactly the same. There will be no disrespect and there will be no games. I will not tolerate making fun of anyone because they are different. Do I make myself clear?"

No one said anything. The only sound was the hum of the window air conditioning unit.

"By your superior intelligence, you will learn from some of the best minds on this planet. Perhaps some of those best minds are right in this cla.s.sroom." Mrs. Bourg smiled cryptically.

Kaila felt queasy. Her intuition nagged her, like a fish line caught on an alligator.

"You, in this cla.s.s," Mrs. Bourg said regally, "can be tomorrow's stellar rulers. If you keep your mind clear and free from high school pettiness you will excel. Now Echidna and Lucius, I'd like you to hand out this pamphlet to everyone and introduce yourself as you go."

Echidna stood, so tall and thin she looked boyish in her silver overalls. Black bangs framed her dark eyes. "Mrs. Bourg," she said, her tongue rolling the "r" in Bourg so it sounded like Berrrrg.

"I make friend." Echidna pointed at Kaila.

The preps, Brandy and Tara, t.i.ttered.

Mrs. Bourg slapped her desk. "Do you think that's funny?"

Brandy and Tara shut up, their lips forming an "O."

Mrs. Bourg marched to them, her face red. "Do you think you are so cool? You're not. You're closed-minded, prissy, full-of-yourself children, and if I hear one hint of you all making fun of anyone here again, you're out. You understand?"

Brandy and Tara nodded.

"You have no idea how small you really are. Now grow up, shut up, and learn." Mrs. Bourg turned, her black skirt too tight over her pear-shaped rear. "Echidna, please begin," she called over her shoulder.

Echidna approached Brandy first. She bent and stared intently at Brandy with her spider black eyes. "h.e.l.lo," she said silkily. "I am Echidna."

As Brandy looked up at Echidna towering over her, they locked eyes. The whites from Echidna's eyes disappeared as they turned solid black. Then, Brandy's chin lowered, her long strawberry hair falling onto her desk, as if she'd gone to sleep. Her eyes appeared blank and dead.

Simultaneously, Lucius had removed his dark sungla.s.ses and approached the girl with stringy hair who looked nervous and damp with emotion.

"And who are you?" he asked in a mocking tone. He stared at her with piercing, emerald eyes.