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Jess’s face had gone blank, like someone had given her an injection of a numbing drug.

Before I could ask her anything else, Elise began striding over. When she saw we were looking at a piece of paper, she swiped it from Jess’s hands. “Who wrote this?” she said.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” I said.

“Emma,” Jess said, trying to rein me in. But I was furious. I took the note and tore it in half, throwing it back at Elise. The rest of the class had fallen silent, watching us. And then, Brewster got wind of the situation and began making her way over to our table. I gestured for Elise to get rid of the note, but Brewster had already spotted it.

“What did you just put in your pocket, Ms. Fairchild?” Ms. Brewster said.

“Just a piece of paper,” Elise replied.

“What?” Brewster said.

“You know, material made from pulp and plant fibers, most often used to write things on?” Elise was trying to defuse the situation, but her comment only made Brewster more livid.

“Is that supposed to be funny?” she said. “Give it to me.”

“Really, it’s nothing,” Elise said.

“I am asking you one more time to hand over the note, or I’ll be seeing you in detention this afternoon.” Elise clenched her lips but still didn’t produce the note. “Perhaps another tactic,” Brewster said. “For example, a phone call to the scholarship committee for that French school you’re so keen on attending.” Elise remained unmoved but I could see she was losing her composure. “Yes, we teachers talk in the faculty room,” Brewster said. “And I know what you want most, Ms. Fairchild, is to get away from this place. But one phone call from me, and Paris will be nothing more than a pipe dream.”

Elise’s face collapsed, and she pulled the two halves of paper reluctantly from her jeans pocket and handed them over. Brewster reconstructed the note and read it to herself. “Is this intended for me, Ms. Fairchild?”

“No, Miss Brewster,” Elise said. “It has nothing to do with you.”

Brewster slammed her hand against the table. “I’m so fed up with your smug, self-important attitude. You think just because your father is on the school board that you can get away with anything. I am not a person to be trifled with, and until you learn proper respect, you’ll be spending every afternoon in the dissection closet.”

I suddenly had the strong sense that Elise had not written the note. And as much as I couldn’t believe what I was about to do, I heard myself saying, “Wait a minute, Ms. Brewster.”

“Yes, Ms. Townsend?” Brewster said, her eyes narrowing in on me now. “And before you say anything, I know that you are on that scholarship list as well.”

“I know,” I said, “but Elise didn’t write the note. And it’s not about you. She was telling the truth.”

“So the note is yours then,” she said.

“No,” I insisted. “But it’s not Elise’s either.”

“Then whose is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, who was it intended for?”

“I don’t
know,
” I said with a little too much attitude.

“Well, Ms. Fairchild,” Brewster said, looking at Elise, “it looks like Ms. Townsend will be joining you in the dissection closet today. I’m sure you two will find much to talk about. Now, everyone back to your seats, this instant!”

She strode back to the front of the room, and Jess let her head fall into her hands.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Elise whispered to me, glaring because I’d stuck up for her.

I glared right back at her. Michelle was staring at us all, looking like she was in agony. But why? Because her new BFF had gotten detention?

After class, I tried to talk to Jess on the way to History, but she said she felt sick and began running back to the dorm. I didn’t blame her. The gossip mill was wound tighter than I’d ever seen it.

But the story gradually unfolded as the day wore on.

Apparently, Jess had come out to her parents over winter break, and her mother had flipped out. Convinced that someone at Lockwood had corrupted her daughter, Mrs. Barrister had called the school. Overbrook, in his zeal to appease another wealthy Lockwood parent, brought in Jess’s roommate for questioning, and since Chelsea had about as much discretion as a car alarm, she told everyone what she’d learned. That Jess was gay, and that she’d had a lesbian relationship with another girl on campus.

I didn’t know what to believe.

In History, Overbrook was giving a lecture on westward expansion, telling us about the Donner party, a group of American pioneers who got snowbound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and had to resort to cannibalism, surviving on the bodies of those who had died of starvation or illness. I gazed out the window watching the snow fall, wondering how many inches would accumulate and just how long it would take before all of us on campus succumbed to a similar fate and turned on each other, taking advantage of each other’s misfortunes to ensure our own survival.

In English, Gallagher began our unit on the transcendentalists, beginning with Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.” As I listened to Gallagher read, certain passages rang out to me so clearly:

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.... To be great is to be misunderstood.... No man can violate his nature.... Now we are a mob, yet we must go alone.

Gallagher followed the reading with his lecture. “Surely, Hawthorne had read these words before writing
The Scarlet Letter
. In fact, Hester would have made a good transcendentalist, as she took this calling to heart—to rise above the mob and find the strength within, or as Thoreau would later say, to march to the beat of a different drummer.”

He gave a satisfied smile, and I glanced back at the empty chair where Jess should have been. I wished she had heard all of this. Michelle caught my eye briefly and gave me a cryptic look before turning around and scribbling something in her notebook.

When the day finally ended, I reported to Ms. Brewster, who unlocked the dissection room door for our detention. I was dreading the thought of spending two hours in a closet with cat guts and carcinogenic chemicals, not to mention Elise Fairchild. When she showed up, Ms. Brewster instructed us to organize the lab equipment chronologically by the month it would be used and then label each drawer and shelf by hand.

After she left, Elise took out a giant thermos of coffee and sat drinking it while I eyed her enviously from my perch on the cabinet. Then she had the gall to pull a magazine from her bag and start flipping through it while I opened new bags of scalpels and placed them into drawers.

“Aren’t you going to help?” I asked.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said. “Are you going to narc on me and tell Brewster?”

“No. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t call Daddy. Doesn’t he usually get you out of detentions? Must be nice having a father on the school board.”

“If you haven’t noticed, that’s why Brewster hates me,” she said. “So no, it’s not as nice as you think. And you’re an idiot for defending me and getting on Brewster’s shit list. Now she’s not going to let you go to Paris either.”

“First of all, I wasn’t defending you. I was defending Jess,” I said. “And secondly, we all know who’s getting the scholarship to Paris.”

“Yeah, no thanks to you. If you hadn’t ripped up that note and made such a scene, Brewster never would have had a clue.”

“Why did you come over to us in the first place?” I said. “Why suddenly pretend to be Jess’s friend again?”

“I’ve never stopped being Jess’s friend,” she said. “She stopped being mine.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Look, I don’t care if you believe me or not, but I’ve known about Jess being gay for a while, and when I tried to confront her about it, she shut me out. But I never told Amber or Chelsea. I never betrayed her.”

“Spin it however you want, Elise, but don’t pretend you actually care about Jess. Or about Michelle. With you, there’s always an ulterior motive.”

“Oh, like you’re any better!” she said. “Where do you get off acting like friend of the year? You kissed Owen. Or have you forgotten about that? Is that what you do now? Steal other people’s boyfriends?”

I got to my feet, rage shooting through every limb. “You don’t know anything, Elise!”

“Yeah, well, I know you stole Gray from me last year. Then you went after Michelle’s boyfriend. So who’s the bitch?”

I had no words. I stood staring at her, realizing that from her point of view, she was absolutely right. I had taken Gray from her. I had kissed Owen. Elise and Michelle had every reason to mistrust me.

“Look,” I said. “I made a mistake with Owen. But I care about Michelle. And you can’t blame me for doubting your motives after the way you treated us last year.”

She puffed out her chest. “If you care so much about Michelle, why haven’t you tried to talk to her? At least I tried with Jess. You live in the same room with Michelle, and you let her push you away. Why don’t you fight for anything?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You. You stand there like you’re some victim in all of this, when you should be begging Michelle for forgiveness. Last year, you would have fought harder. What’s changed? It’s like with the scholarship to Paris. I mean, you want it, don’t you? But in your mind, you’ve already given it to me. You’ve given up.”

I fell silent, reluctant to admit that she was right. I had stopped fighting.

But why? What was holding me back?

Was it fear of change? Was I afraid to face the future like Darlene had said?

Elise began noisily sorting through equipment, and we didn’t talk for the remainder of detention. But I felt like a wall between us had cracked open today, and I could only hope it would make room for some kind of positive change.

The rest of the week was a nightmare so much worse than the mild ridicule I’d endured for kissing Owen. Because this time, beneath all the stares and hushed voices was something else, a quiet menace born of fear and ignorance. Amber and Chelsea seemed to have designated themselves head of the bigot brigade and were doing their best to fuel suspicions and gossip about who Jess’s lover was. Of course, given my friendship with Jess, I became a prime suspect. Girls kept whispering and speculating, but Jess wasn’t talking. Not even to me.

She began cutting a lot of classes, refusing to respond to my calls and texts, and generally trying to disappear. I knew what this was like. I gave her a few days’ space, but by Wednesday, I was tired of waiting. I refused to let her shut me out the way Michelle had.

After classes, I went to Jess’s room and knocked. It was all I could do not to pummel Chelsea when she opened the door, smiling sweetly.

“I’m looking for Jess,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Who is it?” someone said from behind her. Chelsea opened the door to reveal Amber, picture-perfect in pink leggings and an ombré sweater.

“Oh, are you looking for your girlfriend?” Amber said, lounging on Jess’s bed.

“Your wit astounds me,” I said. “Can you just tell me where she is?”

“Like we would know,” Chelsea said.

“She does live here, doesn’t she?” I said.

“Not for long,” Amber said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Chelsea went to Overbrook and requested a roommate change,” Amber said. “She’s not going to sleep next to a dyke.”

There was nothing I could say because any response would be giving Amber exactly what she wanted. I rolled my eyes in disgust and tried to slam the door, but it had one of those springs that made it whine slowly closed.

Infuriated, I went back to my room, empty as usual. My go-to form of therapy had become running, so I changed into my gear and set out across the quad, rage and adrenaline driving every muscle. The school buildings rushed past in a blur and then suddenly, I was across the log bridge and inside the protection of the forest.

I was so angry I could barely think straight. But the air was dry and cold here, and it cleared my head. I ran along the stream’s edge in a daze, not really sure where I was going, but feeling my feet move of their own accord. It felt good to get off campus, to shut my mind to everything that was going on and just live in the moment.

Pretty soon, I felt that blissful euphoria—a sort of bubble that made everything around me foggy and dim.

And then I came to that familiar place upstream where the boulders piled up toward the sky. I could feel myself growing numb around the edges—my fingers and toes tingling like I was losing circulation. And then the forest grew very still, and the sun burst through a gap in the trees, casting me in a spotlight.

Slowly, I looked around, sensing I was no longer alone. Sure enough, Hester was standing outside her cottage, staring into the distance. She had changed dramatically since I’d seen her last. Her face bore lines drawn by years of strife and sorrow. Her long and lustrous hair had been cut off, and with it her vibrancy and passion.

The lighting around her seemed to echo her transformation—she stood in shadow, like a sullen planet had eclipsed her share of the sun.

When she heard footfalls beside her, she turned to look at me, showing no surprise at my presence.

“I wondered if I would ever see you again,” she said. “I had begun to think you were a dream.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Perhaps I am the dream,” she said.

“That doesn’t make you any less real to me,” I said. Darlene’s words echoed through my head. If Hester was a dream, then none of this was real. And yet, I was so deep in the fantasy already that I couldn’t pull myself away.

“Last time I saw you,” Hester said, “I thought Pearl had conjured you along with her other imaginary playmates. But you are real enough. She will be glad to see you again.”

She called out to Pearl, and an elfin voice rang out from below. “I am here, Mother.”

I looked down to see Pearl dancing along the stream’s edge like a fairy. The sunlight seemed to follow her as she did. At her mother’s insistence, she scrabbled up the hillside to meet me.

“Look who is here,” Hester said. “Your friend, Emma.”

Pearl looked around, her eyes passing over me as if I were a ghost. “I do not see her, Mother.”