CHAPTER 2

I was still thinking about Jonah as the class ended and the bell rang.

“Hey,” I said to him. “Do you want to walk me to my next class—”

But at just that moment, all the kids rushed from their seats and my voice was drowned out. He couldn’t hear me and when the crowd cleared away, I lost sight of him.

I shuffled into the hallway. It was the widest school hall I’d ever seen and it was completely packed, all the kids crammed in. There must have been thousands of kids in these halls, a sea of faces stretching endlessly.

The noise was terrible, bouncing off the walls, and I wanted to cover her ears. I felt claustrophobic.

Hundreds of kids stood there, clamoring, screaming, and shoving each other. It looked like a prison yard. It was all too loud. These kids laughed too loud, cursed too much, shoved each other too hard. I closed her eyes and wId it would all go away.

Why me? I wondered.

Looking out at the sea of new faces, I felt alone. Not because I was the only white girl—I actually preferred that. Some of my closest friends at other schools had been Black, Spanish, Asian, Indian—and some of my meanest frenemies had been white. No, that wasn’t it.

I felt alone because this school was urban.

I looked up at the massive school, bars and cages on all the windows, and it didn’t make me feel any better.

I was jostled roughly by a large girl and dropped my journal. I picked it up and clutched it. It was the only possession I had, and the only thing I cared about. I kept notes and drawings of every place I went. It was a roadmap of my childhood.

I made my way to the cafeteria. It was an enormous room, with a thousand kids inside, all screaming.

As usual, I had no idea where to go. I searched the huge room, and finally found a stack of trays. I took one and entered what I thought was the food line.

“Don’t you cut me, bitch!”

I turned and saw a large, overweight girl, half a foot taller than me, scowling down.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

“Line’s back there!” snapped another girl, pointing with her thumb. “And don’t you think about cutting again. Next time you won’t get off so easy.”

I looked and saw that the line stretched back at least a hundred kids. It looked like a twenty-minute wait.

As I started heading to the back of the line, a kid in the line shoved another one, and he went flying in front of me, hitting the ground hard.

The first kid jumped on top of the other and started punching him in the face.

The cafeteria erupted in a roar of excitement, as dozens of kids gathered around.

“FIGHT! FIGHT!”

I took several steps back, watching in horror at the violent scene at my feet.

Four security guards finally came over and broke it up, separating the two bloody kids and carting them off. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

I scanned the room, hoping for a sign of Jonah. But he was nowhere in sight.

Finally, I took a seat at an empty table towards the back. There was just one kid at the far end of it, a short, frail Chinese boy with braces, poorly dressed, who kept his head lowered and focused on his food.

I felt alone. I looked down and checked my phone. There were a few Facebook messages from my friends from my last town. They wanted to know how I liked my new place. They felt so far away.

I barely ate. I closed my eyes. I thought of my new apartment, a fifth-floor walkup in a filthy building on 132nd street.

My nausea worsened. I breathed deeply, willing myself to focus on something, anything good in my life.

My little brother. Sam. Fourteen going on 20. He was the only constant in my life, the only one I could rely on.

“Caitlin?”

I jumped.

Standing over me, tray in one hand and violin case in the other, was Jonah.