Chapter 1

By the time the Moretti family found me after I slipped away from the party, Walter, the butler, and I were already getting along like old friends.

Walter had clearly decided he liked me.

"Poppy says she'll help me open a sports bar after I retire," he announced.

My mother's expression turned grim. She dragged me to the guest room and locked the door from the outside.

There was no television, no radio, and no one else in the room. After three minutes, my skin began to crawl. After five, I called a hotel's customer service line.

"Thank you for calling. How may I help you?"

The moment someone answered, I could breathe again.

"Nothing urgent. I just wanted to make sure you're having a good day."

The representative paused. "Ma'am, are you trying to book a room?"

"No, but you sound tired. Did you have a difficult customer today?"

"Ma'am..."

"Do you have the weekend off? Any plans?"

Half an hour later, I knew she owned a dog named Milo. She politely begged me to end the call and give her five stars if I received a survey.

The next morning, Mom drove me to St. Augustine Academy, an elite private school heavily funded by the Moretti family. Before I got out of the car, she held my hand and repeated her warning.

"Keep a low profile, Poppy. The students here come from influential families. You can't meet someone for five minutes and act as if you've known them for ten years."

I nodded solemnly.

Within my first minute on campus, I had fixed gatekeeper Frank's fantasy football lineup. By the third, the dean of students and I had agreed that the husband in our favorite true-crime podcast was lying. By the tenth, I had rewritten the cafeteria manager's son's dating profile.

Half an hour later, my voice came over the school's PA system.

"Testing. Can everyone hear me? Friendly warning: the cafeteria put double icing on today's cinnamon rolls. Athletes in training should approach with caution, and anyone watching their blood sugar should not trust the smell."

The school erupted.

When I left the broadcast room, a crowd followed me. Some wanted the cafeteria's secret menu. Others invited me to volleyball practice or asked me to deliver Homecoming messages. Bianca stood in the middle of the hallway, growing paler by the second.

The girl beside her waved at me. "Poppy, do you want to get something to eat with us after school?"

Bianca's eyes filled with tears: "She's my best friend."

I understood at once. "Great. Then all three of us can go."

I pointed between them. "You two can decide where, and I'll make sure the drive never gets awkward."

The other girl burst out laughing.

Bianca ran away crying.

That evening, the Morettis held their first family meeting about me. Luca dropped a stack of printed social media records onto the table.

"You added more than four hundred contacts on your first day. Do you consider that normal?"

I glanced at the pages. "You're missing three."

He frowned. "What?"

"The headmaster, the school nurse, and the owner of the taco truck outside the front gate." I flipped through the stack. "Your people weren't thorough enough."

Luca stared at me, speechless.

Bianca sat beside Mom, her shoulders shaking.

"She knew they were my friends, but she approached them anyway. She isn't trying to fit in. She wants to prove that everyone likes her more."

"I'm not trying to take anyone from you," I said quickly. "Friends aren't assigned seats. I don't make you stand up just because I sit down."

Bianca cried harder. Mom rubbed her temples. "Poppy, you do need to change this habit."

My smile faded. "I just like talking to people."

"You don't just like talking," Luca said. "You cannot tolerate a moment when you aren't the center of someone's attention."

He pushed a printed plan toward me. The title read: 72-Hour Social Silence Protocol.

Starting at eight the following morning, no student, teacher, or staff member at St. Augustine would speak to me. My messages would be filtered through the school's communication system. No one was to answer my calls or acknowledge me in person.

I looked up. "This isn't therapy. You're ordering an entire school to isolate me."

"It's a behavioral intervention," Luca corrected. "The administration approved it."

St. Augustine received millions from the Morettis. Luca was Don Lorenzo's heir and the family's school-board representative. No one would defy him for a foster kid who had arrived yesterday.

I looked back at the document. "No one in the entire school can speak to me?"

"Correct."

"Not even one word?"

His expression did not change. "It's seventy-two hours. You won't die because no one answers you."

I caught Mom's sleeve, but she avoided my eyes.

"We're trying to help you, Poppy. Once you get through these three days, you'll learn how to be alone. You won't depend so much on other people's attention."

I slowly released her sleeve and set a seventy-two-hour countdown on my phone.

Before each of my seven foster families decided to send me away, their houses became quiet too. They stopped answering my questions. They stopped looking at me. They never told me what I had done wrong. Usually, three days later, I had to pack my bags.

That was why being ignored terrified me more than I cared to admit.

But their decision wasn’t mine to make. At eight the next morning, the announcement went out across St. Augustine. Every conversation in the hallway stopped.

I stood in the middle of the crowd while everyone took out their phones and blocked me to my face.