Free Dream Dark by Kami García

the Salem witch trials. Or when Emily Asher made a less than clever comparison between dear, departed Macon Ravenwood and the possessed townsfolk in the play, and a ceiling tile suddenly came loose and smacked her on the head.
    I didn’t look up again until the bel rang.
    Mrs. English was staring at me, her expression so unnerving and blank that for a second I thought both her eyes could have been glass.
    I tried to tel myself that it was the first day of school, which could make anyone crazy. That she’d probably just had a bad cup of coffee.
    But this was Gatlin, so there was a pretty good chance I was wrong.
    Once English was over, Lena and I didn’t have any other classes together until after lunch. I was in Trig and Lena was in Calculus. Link—and now Ridley—
    had been bumped down to Consumer Math, the class the teachers enrol ed you in when they final y admitted you weren’t going to make it past Algebra I . Everyone cal ed it Burger Math because al you learned was how to make change. Link’s whole schedule read like the teachers had decided he was going to be working at the BP station with Ed after graduation. His schedule was basical y one big study hal . I had Bio; he had Rocks for Jocks. I had World History; he had CSS—Cultures of Southern States, or “Checking Out Savannah Snow,” as he cal ed it. Compared to Link, I looked like a rocket scientist. He didn’t seem to care—or if he did, there were too many girls fol owing him around for him to notice.
    To be honest, it didn’t matter, because al I wanted to do was get lost in the familiar blur of the first day of school so I could forget about the crazy message in my binder.
    I guess there’s nothing like a crappy summer fil ed with near-death experiences to make the first day of school seem great in comparison. Until I got to the cafeteria, where it was sloppy joe day. Of course it was. Nothing said first day of school like sloppy joes.
    I found Lena and Ridley easily enough. They were sitting alone at one of the orange lunch tables, with a steady stream of guys circling like vultures. Everyone had heard about Ridley by now, and al the guys wanted to check her out.
    “Where’s Link?”
    Ridley tilted her head toward the back of the lunchroom, where Link was moving from table to table like he was the MVP at the state championship or something. I noticed her tray, ful of chocolate pudding, red Jel -O cubes, and slices of dry-looking angel food cake. “Hungry, Rid?”
    “What can I say, Boyfriend? Girl’s got a sweet tooth.” She picked up a bowl of pudding and dug in.
    “Don’t tease her. She’s having a bad day,” Lena said.
    “Real y? That’s a shocker.” I bit into my first deflated sloppy joe. “What happened?”
    Lena glanced back at one of the tables. “That happened.”
    Link had one foot up on the plastic bench, and he was leaning over the table, talking to the cheer squad. His attention focused on one cheer captain in particular.
    “Aw, that’s nothing. Just Link being Link. You don’t have anything to worry about, Rid.”
    “Like I’m worried,” she snapped. “I could care less what he does.” But I looked down at her tray, and four of the pudding bowls were already empty. “I’m not coming back tomorrow, anyway. This whole school thing is moronic. You move around from room to room like herds or flocks or—”
    “Schools?” I couldn’t resist.
    “That’s what I’m talking about.” Ridley rol ed her eyes, annoyed that I couldn’t keep up.
    “I was talking about fish. A group of fish is cal ed a school. If you went to school you’d know that.” I ducked to avoid her spoon.
    “That isn’t the point.” Lena shot me a warning look.
    “The point is, you’re sort of a solo act,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. Ridley went back to her pudding with a serious level of sugar dedication I respected. She didn’t take her eyes off Link.
    “Actual y trying to make someone like you is total y

    “Actual y