Read the First Three Chapters of The Knowers

CHAPTER ONE

If we can find a reason,

a reason to change,

looking for the answers.

“Cigarette Daydreams”

Cage the Elephant

***

We live in a world in which there are two types of people: the raindrops and the meteorites.

The majority of the population comprises the benign raindrops, who fall to the earth at a gentile twenty miles an hour and barely make an impact in its soil. Then they evaporate back into the sky in the blink of an eye, leaving no trace of their existence in the first place.

A select accursed few, the meteorites may be drastically outnumbered, but they don’t rely on quantity to leave a resilient dent in the planet’s crust. Like a fiery paintbrush streaking across the sky, they vaporize raindrops, incinerate entire cities, and cause explosive chaos just by existing. They are the ones who are remembered, the illustrious, exalted for destruction. The days are named for them, the memorials constructed—there they are, in every third grader’s social studies book, the namesake of elementary schools, their bronze statues erected in parks, their distinguishable faces adorning posters and oil paintings.

One would think that a meteorite’s life would be a miraculous saga of adventure after adventure, and one would think they should like to be one, as a planet in upheaval at a breath from your mouth sounds like a wondrous way to be living. But the world needs the raindrops more than the meteorites. If the world were completely made of meteorites, we would live in unadulterated pandemonium, and the fires would never be put out. Earth would turn into yet another circle of Hell reserved for the living.

If you indeed are a raindrop, relish each moment of your typical, commonplace life. An existence full of minutia and pointless worries like your cereal preference or color of your socks is one that is calm, orderly, and fulfilling. You never need to be concerned about saving the world, or saving someone’s life, or even saving yourself. To you, the world isn’t a blank canvas, but a Monet painting you’ll just sit back and enjoy without daring to take a brush to it and risking the contamination of such a masterpiece. You’ll never concern yourself with someone who lives in a country you’ve never heard of, or even a neighbor who lives a few doors down. Your life is solely yours, until the day the sun finally reaches you as you lie about a scorching chunk of pavement in a languid yet anguished puddle.

You will never amount to much because you are a single drop in an ocean.'

And it is for this reason that I, an unobliging meteorite, envy you.

***

“You’re skipping.” 

Hallie and I can finally walk to school again. The very last snowman-cores have melted, and the air smells like freshwater with twinges of fish from the river instead of stale snow and misery. I soak up the feeling like a sponge, the cool air warming up my chest and my arms through my sweater. The whispers of leaves on the trees against a milky blue sky and the squish of mud beneath my feet—I walk on the grass for that very reason—ignite a smile on my face.

“Oh. Sorry.” I try to make my walking more methodical, but the day is just so beautiful that I can’t contain myself. We’re no longer at the mercy of the bus. “Everything is just so springy today, which accounts for the increase of energy, and I swear I saw a robin this morning. Surely it’s about time. It’s April. This time last year, they’d already built their nests.”

“I guess it’s nice not having snow,” Hallie agrees. A very tiny smile dances on her face, but she doesn’t let it show. “And having a day with something to be excited about. Doesn’t happen a lot.”

“Every day is exciting,” I say. “Yesterday was a full moon. That was slightly unusual.”

“That happens every twenty-eight days or whatever. Doesn’t count.”

“Still. It’s somewhat interesting. And tomorrow, there may be even fewer muddy snowdrifts in the grass. And soon there’re going to be dandelions—”

“Oh, fun, weeds my mom will make me pull.”

“No, they’re flowers, and they’re pretty flowers at that.”

“They’re weeds, Skylar.”

“Well, then they’re beautiful weeds.” I sigh a sigh made half of awe in the weather and half of boredom with everything but the weather.

Hallie pulls her jacket closer to her and brushes a strand of hair out of her face, one that the the breeze blows right back. Somehow the Great Hallie Giovia can make a drab school uniform of an evergreen polo and a khaki skirt look effortless. 

“Five bucks says we’ll have a pop quiz in global,” Hallie decides.

“I hope not. I didn’t do the reading. What was it on?”

“You think I can remember? That was, like, nine hours ago.”

“Well, could you please try?”

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye and sighs. “One of the Henrys, I think. The one with all the wives.”

“Oh, then it must be Henry the Eighth,” I tell her. “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. If we can remember that, we’ll be fine. That’s practically all of French history.”

“Henry the Eighth was English.”

“This is why global readings are essential.”

My phone rings. There’s only one person in the world who calls me, and it’s because her mom won’t let her have a cellphone and is therefore confined to the landline. “Hold on, it’s Harlow,” I tell Hallie, answering my phone and putting it on speaker. “You’re supposed to be at school.”

I hear my cousin sigh from the other end of the line. “No one’s school starts as early as your island school,” Harlow reminds me. “Just calling to see if you’re freaking out about this weather. I’m taking a wild guess and saying you are.”

“She’s actually skipping,” Hallie says into my phone. “Like she’s five.”

“I woke up and saw that the boys’ snowman was gone and knew you’d have an aneurism as soon as you saw,” Harlow says. “The three of them—man, you would’ve thought someone died. They’re planning a funeral, I swear.” She makes a sound of disgust. I can barely deal with one brother, so I have no idea how Harlow deals with three. Being the only girls in our family, we have a special bonding that straddles the two-year age gap and the river between us.

“I almost wish it would snow again so she wouldn’t be so annoying,” Hallie says. 

“I feel you. ’Kay, I have to get ready. Don’t lick a tree or eat a butterfly or anything.” She hangs up.

I look go Hallie. “You can belittle my excitement all you want, but it doesn’t make the first day post-snow any less enthralling.” 

She exhales, almost a laugh, but not quite there. “Almost as enthralling as the last day pre-snow.”

“Even more so if you hate the cold.”

“And you hate the cold.”

I smile at the springtime—the sunshine, the birds, the squishy grass—and resolve never to change it. Summer can come with its heat and its plethora of beach balls, and I’ll still long for spring, the seasonal hanging fire.

CHAPTER TWO

Yours is the first face that I saw,

I think I was blind before I met you.

Now I don't know where I am,

I don't know where I've been,

but I know where I want to go.

“First Day of My Life”

Bright Eyes

***

The only thing worse than being a freshman in high school must be being a freshman in high school who has to take algebra. I am strict in my belief that there is no way there should be that many letters in any form of math. I should not have to use the entire alphabet to graph a line. (Not only that, but I don’t think I should ever have to graph lines.)

Miss Felding smiles at us as we walk into her class. Wearing a black and white polka-dot dress and a red cardigan, she looks like a china doll: her pale face is accentuated by rosy cheeks, her brown hair would be plain if it weren’t for the fact that it falls in perfect ringlets, and her hazelnut eyes could pass for handblown glass. Dainty and delicate, she teaches our class in a calm, even voice with a gentle smile on her face. I wish that I, like her, could float instead of walk and constantly glisten like ripples in a pond. Though she certainly can’t be over twenty-five, she’s as timeless as a clock without arms. 

I take my seat between Jacob Connelly and Blake Kingston as Miss Felding glides from the back of the room to her place in front of the whiteboard. Then she twirls to face us and says, “Good morning, everyone! I have some very exciting news for you all.”

“About math?” Lexie Petterson says without raising her hand, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wait for permission to speak. “Sorry, Miss Felding, but the words ‘exciting’ and ‘math’ just don’t go together.”

“I certainly hope to change your opinion on that.” Miss Felding’s grin only grows as she glances at each of her students. As always, her gaze stays on me a little longer than it does on Blake. I self-consciously smooth out my hair and adjust my glasses. “Today, we will be starting an in-class project to finish up our unit on systems of equations!”

“Sounds riveting,” Hallie mutters.

“I promise, it’ll be quite fun.”

“Give it a chance, Hallie,” Lexie responds with a smirk. 

“How big of a chance?” she replies.

“It could change your entire perception of math. You could walk out of class today a different person.”

“Yeah, right.”

Miss Felding beams again before explaining. “You’re going to all become teachers!”

We blink back at her.

“Isn’t that exciting?”

Blink, blink.

“That doesn’t sound exciting to anyone? Not even to you, Skylar?”

“I guess I just need more information on the matter,” I answer carefully. 

Miss Felding doesn’t falter. “Jacob? Please, tell me you’re interested.”

Jacob Connelly raises an eyebrow. “Of course, Miss Felding. I’m always up for standing up in front of my entire class and talking about math. Sounds like a great way to spend a period.”

She paces up and down the rows of desks as she explains. “We’ve learned four different lessons this unit. In groups of four, you’ll be planning your own lesson to reteach the concept. You may come up with any way to teach that, be it a Powerpoint or a worksheet or whatever else you can come up with . . .”

I zone out around here. It’s a shame that I find math so excruciatingly boring, since the wondrous Lea Felding excels in her job of attempting to keep us engaged—the operative word being attempting. I’m guessing this project is another one of her plans to get us interested in algebra, but unfortunately for her, that probably won’t—

“Oh, and I almost forgot the most exciting part!” Miss Felding’s hands flap around like tiny bat wings. “The group that creates the best presentation will get to join me at a conference for teachers coming up with new ways to teach their students! I am hosting a panel on student-to-student teaching, and I would love to have you join me.”

There it is again, the funny, too-long look she often gives me but no one else.

“I have picked your groups for you,” Miss Felding says next. “Sofia, Meredith, Alex, and Brielle, you’ll be solving systems of equations by elimination. Jacob, Skylar, Lexie, and Hallie, you have solving by substitution. Blake—”

I conceal a sigh as I push four desks together and patiently wait for Hallie. Yes, I could have gotten stuck with a much worse group. I know Lexie from yearbook staff because she’s the only one there to whom I’ll voluntarily-yet-reluctantly talk, but I’ve only talked to Jacob twice, and one of those barely counts because he was soaked in orange juice (long story). But both of them terrify me, since I can see all their potential energy bouncing around them like sparks just waiting to set flame to whatever they can reach.

First off, Lexie Petterson is a literal bundle of energy in every way you can think of, like a capriciously blinding highlighter. Every single class she’s in is often steered off into tangents with her at the helm. She’s got this permanent smirk on her face that makes you wonder what she’s up to this time, and whenever I’m in her vicinity, I do end up wondering. She leaves her dazzling yellow ink all over your hands and makes you feel this natural high just from breathing her in. Her audacity is contagious, so I try to stay away from her—she’s got the capacity to change people just by drawing on them, turning them from whatever they were to her felicitous shade—because I don’t think yellow is my color. 

And then there’s Jacob. He’s a freaking hurricane. With strange eyes that aren’t quite brown and messy hair that’s not quite black, Jacob Connelly is perhaps the most impetuous person I’ve ever met. Yet every little mark he makes is tiny, like arguing with Ms. Redding on why articles should be considered a part of speech or his constant sarcasm (and I mean constant—he’d have a gold medal by now if sarcasm were an Olympic event). I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that the boy who just came to this school this year, the new kid, the commodity normally torn apart limb-by-limb by the kids who’ve been here since birth, has the nerve to be so there. He’s not a meteorite so much as a storm of thousands of raindrops falling at once. I avoid him at all costs. His smile alone is dangerous; it can shoot a bullet right through you.

Jacob comes over to join me. “Hey, Skylar,” he says. 

“Hi, Jacob,” I reply. Dear God, I hate using people’s names. I always worry they’ll find it strange that I know their name, which is by far one of the stupidest things I’ve ever thought, yet here I am, cringing as the word Jacob passes my lips.

Hallie pulls another desk to our circle and sets her books on it. “Okay. Solving by substitution. That shouldn’t be that hard. You just rearrange the first thing and stick it in the second thing and solve it like a long, normal thing.”

“That’s quite the minimalistic explanation, Hallie,” I say.

“It’s more than you have, isn’t it?”

“A lot more.”

Lexie comes over next and drops her books onto the floor. “Hey, guys. Who agrees that we should do the crappiest project ever so we don’t have to go to that convention thing? Okay, so what if we did a board game? Like Monopoly, but with math. That has to be so boring and so awful that she couldn’t possibly bear to watch us play it twice.” I’m amazed how many words she can get out in a single breath.

“Mathopoly,” I say. No one heard me, I hope.

“Mathopoly,” Jacob repeats to my horror. (So much for hope.) “That’s actually kind of hysterical.”

“Why don’t we just make a worksheet?” Hallie groans. “It’s so much easier, and then she really won’t want us there.”

“But that’s not any fun,” Lexie protests. “And everyone else is doing a worksheet.”

“Which is precisely the reason we should do a worksheet,” I counter.

“No, we should do a board game,” Jacob says. “Miss Felding might give us extra points for creativity, and I love being told I’m creative.”

Hallie blinks very slowly, like a sloth. “Are you told that a lot, Jacob?”

“Nope. That’s why I love it. It’s a rare occurrence.”

“Except those extra points for creativity could contribute to our chances of being chosen,” I remind him. 

“Except they maybe could not,” he replies.

Hallie capitulates. “Fine, I really don’t care. Can any of you draw? Skylar and I are out.”

“Hey, I can draw pretty great whales.”

“We don’t need any whales, Skylar. No one ever needs any whales.”

“I draw pretty epic rectangles,” Jacob says. “We’ll need some paper.”

“And a ruler,” I add.

“No, I don’t need one,” Jacob replies.

“Your lines will be all wobbly.”

In his math book, he draws a nearly completely straight line without the aid of a ruler. The steadiness of his hands is astounding. Mine would shake and my lines would go all over the place.

“I stand corrected.”

“I’ll go ask Miss Felding for supplies,” Lexie says. “If she’s got nothing good, I’ll just grab something from the art wing tomorrow.” 

Jacob takes out a smaller piece of paper. “I’ll come up with sample problems. Hard or easy?”

“How much do you hate the people in our class?” Hallie responds with.

“Hard, then.”

“No decimals, though,” I remark. “That’s cruel and unusual.”

Something indistinguishable crosses his face, bordering between annoyance and amusement. “But cruel and unusual is the best way to go in math.”

“Okay, when people start to grumble about the amount of effort needed to solve those things, you’re completely welcome to take all of the blame.”

“You’re so sweet, Skylar.”

And then maybe it's the light, or maybe I'm just being irrational, but I swear his eyes actually change color. His eyes are usually chocolate brown, but they slowly shift into a weird sepia with very tiny twinges of gold and maybe a fleck or two of green. They’re very perplexing, as if someone edited a photo of a forest but the vintage filter they used didn’t erase all the color. Those tiny flecks in the iris, they’re like trees surrounding a lake. 

“What's wrong? You're staring at me.”

“Nothing.” I turn away as fast as humanly possible. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.” 

“I wasn’t.”

“You literally were just staring into my eyes.”

“Oh my gosh, I was not.”

Hallie shoots us both glares. “You know what would be fun? Finishing this before my funeral.”

Lexie comes back with a piece of poster board, a ruler, and some markers. “Here, this stuff is good. I’ll do the sample problems, Jacob, and you design the board.”

“Can we put sparkles on it?” I say without thinking. Skylar, don’t talk about glitter, these people are dangerous.

“Ooo, I love sparkles,” Lexie says. “Sparkles are great. They’re so sparkly. Do you have any at home?”

“I’ve got some,” I say, picturing the drawer in my desk housing eight different shades. 

“‘Kay, then bring them,” Lexie says, “and we’ll add some shine.” She accentuates this with jazz hands.

Hallie sighs. “Sparkles? Really? I’d rather glue actual bones to the board.”

“Yes, sparkles,” I repeat. “They won’t hurt you. I can’t say the same for the bone idea.”

I look up from the pages of my textbook to see Miss Felding is watching us from a couple feet away. I smile at her. She smiles back quickly before shifting her eyes to another group, not before I notice the color of her eyes switch. There’s some awfully weird lighting in this classroom.

***

“You know Sasha Capernault cheated on that global pop quiz?” Hallie asks me as we walk home from school. I rely on her for all the gossip because I’m very, in her words, “out of it”. “Guess she didn’t know about all of Henry VIII’s wives.”

“She must not be a fan of the Anglican Church,” I reply. “What did Mr. Hallawin do to her?”

“Well, he put her name in the Box of Doom for the rest of the semester,” Hallie says. “And she obviously got a zero on the quiz. I don’t know what else. Knowing him, that could be it.”

“Knowing the rest of the faculty and the dogmatics of the education system, though,” I counter, “she could be burned at the stake.”

Hallie shrugs. “If she’s kicked off the track team, I’ll actually cry happy tears. She’s always dragging down our relays, since she’s always first. I’m always the anchor leg.”

I smile to myself. 

“What?”

“You’re an anchor.”

“. . . okay?”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d be suffocating from a loss of oxygen I’d be so high up. You ground me.”

“You’re such a freak,” she says, but she actually smiles a real, haphazard smile. They always start slow, like she can’t exactly remember how to form one, but then it comes back to her, like the lyrics of a Christmas song she hasn’t heard since last year. I absorb it, as genuine smiles from Hallie are like diamonds: rare, crystalline, shimmering. “You do that for everyone? Come up with an object?”

“A couple people,” I admit. 

“So what are you?” We climb the steps to her porch.

“I—” I pause. “I’ve never thought about that.”

“Come on. You must have, at least once.”

“Not in my conscious memory,” I say, “and I think that would be something I remember.”

“You, Skylar, are weird. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I walk the rest of the way home with my brother Evan, who walked with Hallie’s little brother, and he talks about something that I can’t focus on under any circumstances—I think it has something to do with squids.

“Good, you’re home,” Mom says right when we walk in. “I need taste testers for these muffins. I tried a new recipe.” A pencil holds her dark bun to her head, and her forehead is beaded with sweat. Judging by the muddy boots in the corner and the pile of garden tools in the garage, Mom couldn’t wait till the day after the snow melts to get started on her garden.

I take a bite of the muffin she’s handed me. “Carrot?”

“And apple.”

“I like it,” Evan says.

“Good. They’ve got a ton of vitamin A.” She starts rinsing the muffin tins. “How was your day?”

“Fairly boring.” I grab a towel and dry the tins. “We started a project in math.”

“I’ve never heard of a math project.” She puts some dishes into the dishwasher. My mother never stops moving, especially when there’s work to be done. “Is it a group project or just you?”

“A group.”

“Who’s in yours?”

“Hallie, Lexie, and Jacob.”

“Jacob . . .”

"Connelly,” I finish.

“Oh, I know his mom. She’s a chatterbox, that one. And which one’s Lexie?”

“Petterson,” I say. “I’m on yearbook staff with her.”

“Oh, right. Petterson.” Lexie’s family is known around the island through whispers. She’s got two dads, and conservative islanders either think that it’s an outrage or that her house is like a petting zoo. I see absolutely no big deal in the fact that she’s got two fathers and that her sister is adopted from Korea while she’s adopted from Morocco. People think of them as objects of either ridicule or intrigue. I think they’re people and it’s not much more than that. 
“Well, it sounds like a good group.”

“I hope so,” I say. “They’re . . . influential, to say the least.”

“I’m sure you’ll have fun,” Mom reassures.

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. I fiddle with a pen on the table. “I don’t know. Lately, I haven’t been feeling . . . I don’t know . . . challenged enough, yet all my classes are too difficult. It’s a pretty contradictory mentality, really—I’m always bored, yet I can’t seem to get anything done.”

“You don’t feel challenged enough?” Mom repeats. “You’re taking all honors courses.”

“Expect for math. I’m very bad at math.”

She ignores this. “What more could you need?”

I sigh, unconvinced. “Yes, you’re probably right. Maybe my classes are just so hard my brain is numb and thinks that they’re easy.” I smile at her and go upstairs.

I start my global outlines, but when Evan decides to start practicing the drums and my dad decides to blast Journey because why the hell not, I decide that this noisy house simply won’t work for the hiking of Mount Homework, so I put it all in my backpack and ask my parents if I can take a walk.

I’m bending the truth a bit, though. Strictly speaking, I do take a walk, but only down to the banks of our river. There, between the trees in an area no one knows about but me, is my favorite place in the world.

The little rock-covered beach that Harlow and I christened Starlight Cove can’t be more than eight feet long and five feet deep. Sometimes, after rainfall or snowmelt, it’s not even there because of the water level. A rock sits in the very center, one that is just barely big enough to seat two people side-by-side. An old willow tree drapes over the hideout, creating a leafy umbrella that shades the area. This is my happy place, found when I was playing Truth or Dare with Hallie and some other girls as kids and I was dared to see what was on the other side of these trees. My hideaway belongs only to me; it’s my place to read or do homework or think or work on yearbook layout. No one can ever bother me here because here doesn’t exist in anyone else’s world.  

I shed my coat so I can feel the cool fishy air on my arms, and I put in my earbuds and start my entire music library before donning my hiking boots in light of the conquest of Mount Homework. It manages to take me to a different time and a different place—probably because it’s a global outline—as does my entire secret: my escape from a place that most people would escape to, certainly not from.

CHAPTER THREE

I smile 

because I want to.

“Pools”

Glass Animals

***

“Guys, hit the triplet!” I’m in orchestra the next afternoon. When we had the option to sign up for music electives at the beginning of the year, I signed up for orchestra with no hesitation. My wishful thinking had gotten the better of me that day. Getting to play the violin three days a week for forty minutes? A sizable amount of stringed-instrument experience and a drastic expansion of my musical intellect? Where could I possibly go wrong?

Well, I overlooked the detail that to be in orchestra, one must be able to read music.

I’m hopeless. I know the basic symbols, but I can’t register them in my head fast enough to sight read. They seem like foreign symbols to me. I guess I just need more practice/dedication to wanting to be fluent in music, but it’s seriously difficult, like learning an entirely new language. Sure, I can play things right because I can pretty much play something after hearing it a few times, but what’s the point if I can’t read it when it’s written? It’s like being able to speak French fluently without reading a word of it. Pointless.

My stand partner must absolutely hate me. She’s a sophomore and actually can play, and though she’s very sweet and patient, I’m sure she gets sick of me not actually reading our sheet music and just piggybacking on whatever she’s playing. The truth is, though, that I’m actually not that bad—when I learn a song aurally, that is. I mean, my vibrato sounds like a sheep and I can’t shift at all, but my notes are in tune, and I can do slurs and stuff. Reading everything at the speed of light is where everything becomes difficult. Then you throw in the time signatures—I believe Hell is composed of time signatures. The fact that some people are able to hold a note for a certain amount of time is beyond me. A sixteenth note and a whole note clearly look different, but it’s impossible for me to tell exactly how long they each are. Time eludes me.

The first time I heard the orchestra play together, I had to suppress a smile because I’d never heard anything like it before. The notes blend together perfectly, like a big, puffy cloud of a G-minor chord. I’m still in bit of awe every time we play a song, because every section is playing something different yet blending with the others so perfectly. Sometimes I wish that I could rip the walls of the room down and make the whole world listen to us. Other times I want to bottle up this sound and keep it only to us because it’s more special that way.

“Piano!” our conductor, Mrs. Darner, cries over us. We quiet down until our playing is barely audible. “Violas, play measure forty-eight with more vigor please! Remember the forte at fifty-six! Dynamics are always nice! Firsts, accidentals, please! I have pencils if you need to mark them!” She looks at the clock without stopping her conduction. “Okay, stop, guys. The bell’s going to ring . . .” she trails off and points to the clock as the bell rings. I call it the Darner Instinct; for some reason, she has the strange skill of knowing the bell schedules by heart and can tell us right as they ring. I can never figure out how she does it; sometimes this class feels like it lasts five minutes, other times five hours. I find it so impressive that she knows it’s the same length every day. “Instruments in their lockers if you’re leaving them overnight! Sign your concert permission slips! If you borrowed rosin or a pencil, on my desk please! Have a great day everyone!”

None of my friends are in orchestra, so I don’t really talk to anyone besides my stand partner, and our conversations are strictly music-related. Can I borrow your rosin? Do you want to play top notes or bottom notes? Is my A string in tune? I kind of like that none of my friends are in it, though. It’s my thing; I don’t have to share it. Just me and my violin and my inexplicably horrible note-reading skills.

Unlike just about everyone else, I never put my violin back into its tiny cage because there isn’t any room. Since my locker is on the third floor and most of my classes are on the first and second, I keep my books for those periods in my music locker rather than my regular locker. This way, I don’t have to carry six periods’ worth of books, and I don’t need to walk an approximate mile a day within the Main Classes Building—I get my fill of walking between the library and Main each study hall, as that’s (as Hallie and I have figured out) a full fourteenth of a mile. I grab my global books and slip out of the music wing.

My least favorite thing about orchestra is having to walk to global alone—I hate doing anything by myself, especially if I’m with a lot of other people. It makes me feel like everyone is looking at me and wondering why I have no friends. I shouldn’t think this; most of them are walking alone, too.

Someone is suddenly in front of me. How they just materialized there, I have no idea, but there they are, as if they teleported, or as if I missed them walk right in front of me. Panicked, I try to move over to one side to avoid them, but I end up tripping over my own feet and spewing my books all over the floor. Embarrassed, I struggle to pick them up. The only thing worse than dropping your books in the middle of the hall with everyone watching is if you do so, but then your butterfingers inhibit you from picking them up without dropping them yet again.

“Let me help you.”

I look up and see Ms. Parkins standing over me, though she makes no move to actually help me. I gulp. “No, thank you, Ms. Parkins, I’ve got it.” Please tell me that didn’t come off as rude.

She frowns. “Why, you’ll be late to class. And you certainly don’t want a demerit.”

According to her sophomore geometry students, taking help from Ms. Parkins is like buying jewelry off a guy in the street—is it real gold, or is it dyed plastic that’s going to turn your wrist green? My guess is that she’s accepted that no one really likes her so she’s selective with her aid.

I grab everything at the speed of light and thankfully stand up without another wipe-out. “Thank you anyway, Ms. Parkins. Have a great day.” I give her a smile and walk away as fast as I can. I’m inevitably going to be late for class now, but Mr. Hallawin would have to be in a terrible, puppy-squishing mood to resort to demerits. I hurry in right after the bell rings, but no one turns to look at me.

“Okay, take out your chapter questions from last night,” Mr. Hallawin says. “Surprise! I’m coming around to check it. If you don’t have it, you know what that means.”

“The Box of Doom,” the class choruses. If someone doesn’t have their homework during a surprise homework check, their name gets written in a box on the whiteboard labeled “DOOM” in heavy black letters for the rest of the day, and they have to face the humiliation of being irresponsible. I’ve been in it four times; the first time, I cried for a few minutes.

I dig through my pile of books for my blue global notebook, where my homework is done. It’s not there. Really? I didn’t think you could find a way to mess this up, Skylar. They were just chapter questions, for God’s sake. It’s probably still on the floor of the hallway. I sift through my books again, slightly panicked. Seriously? Hallawin is extremely nice, but if he sees that I don’t have these chapter questions with me, he’ll be ruthless as he writes my name in that objectifying Expo-Marker gulag. Nevertheless, his class is one of my favorites. It’s very freeform because he’s pretty young, like mid-twenties. He often brings in people to talk to us; once, our congressman was in town and came to school to talk about the legislative branch, and another time, Ms. Redding’s brother came to talk about his job in the Department of Interior and to babble about his son’s position in Homeland Security (did you know that there are botanists that work for Homeland Security? Me either.).   

I get up and quickly grab the hall pass, hoping to be back in time for Mr. Hallawin’s arrival to my desk.

It’s not on the hall floor. The bright turquoise should stand out against the speckled gray of the tiles, but it doesn’t. Someone must’ve picked it up by accident or turned it into lost and found in the office. I don’t have the time to get to the office, though, because Mr. Hallawin will be at my desk any second and I’ll be put in the Box of Doom and forced to drop out of school and raise guinea pigs for a living. 

I retrace all my steps, from the door of the orchestra room to the door of Mr. Hallawin’s. There isn’t even a hint of blue on the floor.

“Skylar.” I hear a harsh whisper. I turn around and see Hunter Athan slip out of Parkins’ geometry room. Hunter is one of the most serious people I know, which is why he reminds me of a plain, smooth piece of shale. His thin face, olive-tinted skin, and dark hair only solidify this. Fairly smart—and kind of a know-it-all, in all honesty—he takes the geometry course usually taken by sophomores, but his laconism makes his intelligence a little hard to believe until he corrects you on something. I haven’t talked to him since seventh grade when I had to build a model cell with him, so I can’t help wondering why he’s talking to me now, and breaking the rules by doing so.

“Um, hi, Hunter,” I whisper back awkwardly. 

“You’re looking for this, right?” He hands me my notebook. “I was gonna give it to you next period, but,” his eyes glaze over me, “you need it now.”

“Oh. How’d you know it was mine?” I ask. “Oh, sorry, thank you. For finding it, I mean. Thank you. I just said that. Sorry.”

“It’s completely covered in whales, and so are your pencil case and folder. Also, it’s got some American Girl doll stickers stuck to it, and you’re the only one in high school who still likes those things. It’s an A-schedule day, which means you go to global from orchestra, which is over in the east wing across from sciences, and you probably wouldn’t come through here unless you were coming from the east wing.”

I blink at him.

“That, and your name’s on the cover in big purple letters.”

I hope I’m not blushing as hard as I think I am. “Right. Well . . . thank you.” I quickly smile at him before hurrying back to class, arriving just in time for Mr. Hallawin to draw a smiley face on my homework, marking it as done.

***

Lexie and I sit next to each other in our after-school yearbook club meeting. She talks so much, she barely breathes between her words. I watch her for signs of suffocation rather than listen to a word she’s saying. Something about her kittens, I’ve gathered, and maybe a box of cornstarch. 

“We need the spring sport teams pics taken soon,” Mr. Hallawin announces. “Emma, I’ve got you penciled in to take those over the course of next week in homeroom. And we’ll need to finish the—”

It’s like a puzzle piece falls out of the world, because suddenly everyone is standing and surrounding the computers. I frantically glance around the room, confused as to why I completely missed what seems like a few minutes of information. I can’t even recall what I was thinking about or what the last thing Mr. Hallawin said was.

Seriously freaky, I think, but I brush it off and join Lexie at one of the computers. “I’m sorry, I missed it, what are we doing?”

She shrugs. “I have no idea. I’m just following them.” She gestures to everyone else at our computer. “They seem to know.”

“Someone grab the class list,” Emma McCarter says. She’s the editor in chief and is totally annoying about it. I’m better than you ‘cause I’ve got fine print under my name on the yearbook staff page. Whoop. 

“Oh, I gave it to Miss Felding,” Mr. Hallawin says. “She needed it for something. Skylar, why don’t you go get it? She’s probably still in her room.”

It’s just Miss Felding, I tell myself as I walk down the hall towards her classroom. Here, rehearse what you’re going to say, that always works, right? “Hi, Miss Felding, Mr. Hallawin needs the class list back. If that’s alright. If you’re finished with it. We’re doing the sport pages, I think. I haven’t been paying much attention today but—” Okay, you know what? Just stop there.

I’m about to enter her classroom when I hear her talking to someone. As the conversation seems to be very one-sided, she must be on the phone. I wait in the hall for her to finish, so I don’t count this as eavesdropping because I’m not trying to listen, but there’s her voice, the only sound in the hall. It’s just begging to be heard.

“Yes, I think I have all of them,” she says.

I lean against the wall so I can hear better. (Okay, maybe now it counts as eavesdropping.)

“They display all the signs. I . . . No, I haven’t mentioned it . . . I don’t think it’s time, Margaret, it’s such a lot to take in.”

I can hear her pacing around her classroom.

“I’m just waiting until I’m absolutely sure . . . I’ll be sure to do a pause when I pinpoint them to let everyone know . . . I’ll let Eula know as well.”

She stops moving.

“They are truly wonderful. I cannot wait for you to meet them.” A pause. “No . . . Please don’t worry. Just because they’re exceptional doesn’t mean they could ever take your place.”

She’s back at her desk now.

“Yes . . . I did. Thomas Redding is expecting your phone call within the hour. He says he can help you in any way and at any time, especially with the Serbian biohazard containment. He’s got a few contacts. I’ve forwarded all of your contact information as well.” Another pause. “I will see you at the Meeting, then. Best of luck with the containment units.”

She hangs up. I wait a full twenty seconds, counted out in Mississippi’s, before going in and asking for the class list. Miss Felding hands it to me with no fanfare or even a trace of her phone call.

Except, of course, her irises fluctuate between hazel and jade, and I really don’t know if the light is just playing tricks this time.


***

The Knowers (The Knowers Book 1)

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

The Eminence (The Knowers Book 2)

Amazon