Chapter 1

Komiko Tanaka had learned, in the three weeks since school started, to make herself even smaller than she already was.

Which, given that she stood four-foot-eleven in her sneakers, was saying something.

She kept her eyes down in the hallways. She took the desk nearest the wall. She wore her dark hair loose so it fell forward when she ducked her head — a habit so old she no longer noticed she was doing it. At home it had meant: don’t be seen. Don’t give him a reason. At Jefferson High it had become simply how she moved through the world. A posture inherited from fear.

Six months since Tenaka Tanaka had been shot dead in a bar on the east side of town.

Six months, and her body still hadn’t gotten the message.

This morning Marcus Hale had leaned into her space near the water fountain. “Shouldn’t you be catching the bus to Ridgewood?” His friends laughed. They always laughed. Komiko had stared at a scratch in the tile floor and waited for it to be over, the way you wait out weather you can’t control.

She was still carrying it when Mr. Peterson’s homeroom door opened and a girl walked in late.

Komiko looked up — she wasn’t sure why, some instinct — and for a moment she just looked.

The girl was maybe five-three, lean and straight-shouldered, with hair the color of fiery red copper that fell around a face that was — Komiko didn’t have another word for it — genuinely pretty. Pale-skinned, fine-featured, with a dusting of freckles scattered lightly across her nose that somehow made the whole picture more striking rather than less. The kind of symmetrical, clean-boned face that caught the eye before the brain had time to decide whether to look. She wore jeans and a plain green hoodie and she carried her backpack on one shoulder like she was prepared to drop it and run if necessary. Her eyes, doing a fast practiced sweep of the room, were sharp and cool — tactical rather than curious. The prettiness and the hardness came together in a way that said: yes, and don’t.

A girl who knew how to read rooms. A girl who had learned to make the beauty mean nothing, or at least to try.

She handed Mr. Peterson a slip without being asked.

“Katherine McDonnell,” he said. “Welcome to Jefferson. Take the open seat — there, next to Miss Tanaka.”

The girl — Katie — turned. And her eyes found Komiko’s.

The cool assessment in them shifted, just slightly. Something registered. She crossed the room and dropped into the seat beside Komiko, backpack hitting the floor with a decisive thud.

Then she turned and looked at Komiko directly, the way almost no one ever did. Really looked. And said, simply and without any particular ceremony:

“Boy. You’re really pretty with those big dark eyes.”

The world stopped for approximately one full second.

Komiko felt the heat climb her face before she could do anything about it — up her neck, across her cheeks, probably the tips of her ears — six shades of pink in rapid succession, each one deeper than the last. She looked down at her desk.

No one has ever called me pretty.

The thought arrived fully formed, quiet and certain, and sat there in her chest like something just placed down carefully after being carried a very long time.

Not once. Not her mother, who was too hollowed out by her own survival to have anything left over for simple tenderness. Not her sister Yuki, sealed behind her wall of silence. Certainly not her father, who had seen his daughters as problems to manage and threats to control.

Not once in fourteen years had anyone looked at her and said that.

“I —” she started, and stopped. There were no words that fit.

Katie was watching the blush with an expression that had lost some of its hardness. Something almost soft had surfaced in those sharp eyes. Like she hadn’t quite expected her own words to land that way, and wasn’t sure what to do with what they’d done.

“Hey,” she said, a little quieter. “I just meant it.”