Chapter 2

I was lying on my stomach on my bed, resting my upper body on my elbows, reading intently from the anatomy book propped up against the wall in front of me, occasionally highlighting important points with a yellow marker. I looked at my watch. Eleven AM—time for my classmates to start showing up.

Soon I heard growing murmurs and louder conversations starting in the hallway, and saw white-clad students walking past my door, looking for their own rooms. I got up to stand in the doorway and watched the students arrive, most of them with bags, boxes, or suitcases of possessions. Each held a slip of paper and was comparing it to the numbers above the doors.

One boy walking past caught my eye—the boy from yesterday, Grant, the one who’d seemed ... I wasn’t sure “snotty” was the best word for it, but it was a close fit. He’d been really pretty when I’d just seen him sitting in a chair. Now he was walking in the skimpy school uniform, and he was even more attractive. He had a good, strong chest, good abs but not overpowering, glutes that filled out his shorts, and beautiful long legs—another thing about him that reminded me of Miranda. I felt a sudden rush of physical attraction, muted an instant later by memories of his behavior yesterday. Today he had a sour expression on his face, kind of a do-I-have-to-live-with-these-idiots look that further solidified my negative impression of him. I was relieved to see him walk on past and go into a room two doors farther down the hall.

Moments later, I recognized the brown-haired girl who’d also asked one of the questions at the orientation. I smiled at her. “Jackie, right? I saw you yesterday.”

The girl smiled back. “Jackie Eason. You’re...?”

I held out my hand. “Amy Cameron. Which room are you in?”

Jackie looked at her slip of paper again. “Room 27.”

I pointed down the hall. “It’s close to the end, down that way. I hope nobody has to triple up. There’s only thirty-one rooms.”

Jackie shook her head. “I heard seven candidates decided not to come. It ended up being fifty-eight in the class.”

I nodded. “I guess they know from experience how many will come back after orientation.” I shrugged. “It seems weird, somebody not coming. After all that work to get in!”

Jackie nodded agreement. “I think it was partly that bit about the Honor Code, and violations and all that. You’d think they’d all have read about that in the handbook, and they knew they were going to be slaves here. But I think seeing the place and meeting everybody made it all seem ... I don’t know, more real. I can see some teens not being ready for that big of a step. Getting cold feet at the last minute.”

I looked down at Jackie’s feet and smiled. “Not cold, huh?”

She laughed. “Not a chance! I’ve wanted to be here since I was, I don’t know, twelve. It was this or be a dancer. I guess I decided I liked...” She laughed. “ ... this kind of dancing.”

Another girl came up behind Jackie, looking at the room number over my head. She grinned, happily, and said, “Hi, I’m Shawna. Are you Grant?”

“No. Are you sure this is the right room?”

A puzzled look crossed Shawna’s face, and she looked back down at the paper she held. “Oh, wait!” She laughed good-naturedly—her whole personality seemed bubbly. “Eighteen. I don’t know why I was thinking fourteen.”

I smiled and pointed. “A little farther down.”

“Thanks!” Shawna grinned and shrugged. “See you later, I guess.”

I shook my head, muttering, “Better her than me, I guess.”

Jackie raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“Oh...” I hoped Jackie wasn’t one of Grant’s old friends. “That boy, Grant. Did you see him yesterday? He’s in that room. The one Shawna went in.”

Jackie made a face. “Yeah, I remember him. Maybe he’ll lighten up later. Anyway, it’s nice meeting you, Amy. I’d better go down and see if I’ve got a roommate yet.”

“Sure. Talk to you later.”

Jackie moved down the hall. Another girl — small and slender with short brown hair, lighter than mine—was approaching from the other direction, doing the room-number-compare like all the others. She stopped in front of me. The girl was pretty—well, they all were, of course. She looked nervously up at the room number over the door. “Are you...” She looked at her slip of paper again. “ ... Amy?”

I smiled. “Amy Cameron, yeah. I guess you must be my roommate.” I backed away to let her come in.

She relaxed and followed me. “I’m Susan Fennel.” She shook hands with me while looking around. She saw the two small beds, the meager shelf space, the television, the hanging platform folded up underneath it. In the far wall of the room, a window looked out on the Academy’s courtyard, the great square area surrounded by the school’s buildings. Susan stopped for a second to look into the tiny bathroom on the right, just large enough for a shower, sink, and toilet. “It’s not real big, is it?”

“Wait till our other roommates show up—just kidding,” I added hurriedly, seeing the look on Susan’s face.

Susan suddenly saw the head on the shelf over my bed. “Oh, who’s that?”

“That’s Miranda. I get a lot of inspiration from her. She’s an Academy graduate. I saw her do her show.”

Susan’s eyes flew open wide. “Really? And you got her head??”

“She was hanged at my house. My dad bought her.” I left Andrew out of the story.

“Oh, and he let you keep her because you were coming here?”

“Not ... well, something like that, I guess.”

“She’s ... I mean, wow, she’s really wow!”

I loved hearing Miranda complimented. “Yeah. Everybody thinks that. Me too, of course.”

Susan continued looking around. “I guess you’ve got that side of the room.”

“Is that okay? I’ve been here awhile.”

Susan nodded absently. “I don’t care. Really.” She looked at me more closely. “I’m not remembering you from orientation.”

I shook my head. “When I said ‘awhile,’ I mean I’ve been here for a month.”

Susan’s jaw dropped. “How did you manage that?”

I shrugged. “Long story. I just really couldn’t stay at home. I haven’t been in classes, though. I’ll be starting from the same place you are.”

Susan’s attention was caught by the apparatus on the wall above her bed, matching the one over mine. “What’s that?”

“Oh! That’s the neck trainer. You must have read about that. You haven’t seen one before, though. Let me show you how it works.”