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Nora, her new roommate, the first person outside Luce’s fa her retainer (but it was cool because Nora had one, too), was sitting in the sill, painting her nails and talking on the phone

She was always painting her nails and talking on the phone She had a whole bookshelf devoted to nail polish bottles and had already given Luce two pedicures in the week they’d known each other

"I’ you, Luce isn’t like that" Nora waved excitedly at Luce, who leaned against the bed frauy Okay, once--Lu, as that shri me about--"

"Jeremy?" Luce wrinkled her nose

"Jere

Child’s play So yeah--"

"Nora," Luce said "Is this really so to?"

"Just Jordan and Hailey" She stared at Luce "We’re on speaker Wave!"

Nora pointed out theat the dusky autu Their dor with a s out all the ti Directly across from Luce and Nora’s third-floor as another third-floor

The pane was up, tan legs dangled out, and two girls’ ar

"Hi, Luce!" one of them shouted

Jordan, the spunky strawberry blond fro, with thick black hair that fell in dark cascades around her face They see all the boys Luce had never kissed?

College was so weird

Before Luce had driven the nineteen hundred e with her parents a week earlier, she could have named each time she’d been outside Texas--once for a faional championship swim meets in Tennessee and Oklahoma (the second year, she beat her own personal best in freestyle and took home a blue ribbon for the tearandparents’ house in Baltie was a huge deal for Luce Most of her friends fro to Texas schools But Luce had always had the feeling that there was so for her way out in the world, that she had to leave home to find it

Her parents supported her--especially when she got that partial scholarship for her butterfly stroke She’d packed her whole life into one oversized red duffel bag and filled a few boxes with sentimental favorites she couldn’t part with: the Statue of Liberty paperweight her dad had brought her back from New York; a picture of her e; the stuffed pug that re the bucket back seats of her battered Jeep was frayed, and it s to Luce So was the view of the back of her parents’ heads as her father drove the speed li from time to time to read historical markers and take a tour at a pretzel factory in northwestern Delaware

There had been oneback They were already two days’ drive froia, and her dad’s "shortcut" fro the coast, where the road got pebbly and the air started to stink frorass They were barely a third of the way up to school and already Luce , the kitchen where her mom made yeast rolls, and the way, in late surew up around her sill, filling her room with their soft scent and the promise of fresh-cut bouquets

And that hen Luce and her parents drove past a long winding driveith a high, foreboding gate that looked electrified, like a prison A sign outside the gate read in bold black letters SWORD & CROSS REFORM SCHOOL

"That’s a little o up fro to school there, Luce!"

"Yeah," she said, "me too" She turned and watched out the backuntil the gates disappeared into the winding woods Then, before she knew it, they were crossing into South Carolina, closer to Connecticut and her new life at Ee with every revolution of the Jeep’s new tires

Then she was there, in her dorm room, and her parents were all the way back home in Texas Luce didn’t want her mom to worry, but the truth was she was desperately horeat--it wasn’t that They’d been friends since the moment Luce walked into the roo up a poster of Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn froirls had tried tothe first night and succeeded only in setting off the fire alar everyone outside in their pajaone out of her way to include Luce in every one of her one to a fancy prep school before Ee orientation already assimilated to life inside a dor next door, that the online campus radio station was the only acceptable way to listen toaround here, that class papers would have to be a whopping four pages long

Nora had all these friends from Dover Prep, and she seemed to ling and waving through their

Luce wanted to keep up, but she had spent her whole life in a sleepy nook of Texas Things were slower there, and now she realized that she liked it that way She found herself pining for things she’d always said she hated at hoas station fried chicken on a stick