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phones for me last spring, because I couldn’t afford (and didn’t care enough) to buy one of my own. When we’d first met, I’d resented the idea of being connected to him. And now I couldn’t stand being apart. The knot in my chest loosened as I thumbed through to the inbox.
    One new text message.
    Knock ’em dead today. I’ll pick you up at your place after school. I miss you. Reece.
    I glanced toward the front office, hoping he hadn’t been caught. He must have broken into the school before daybreak to leave it for me. His new school was as far from his last assignment here at West River as Lieutenant Nicholson could put him. My smile flaked away as I touched the thistle pendant, and I tried not to think about the miles between us, or the long day of classes ahead of me.
    I organized my notebooks on my locker shelf in order by period. Put my sack lunch on top. Snapped my small magnetic mirror in place inside the door. When I looked into it, a cluster of girls were whispering and pointing in my direction. I slammed the door shut and headed to my first period class.
    Computer Science. Mr. Hurley. Computer Lab 269.
    I navigated the halls with my head down, ignoring the conversations that seemed to hush as I walked by. My classroom was easy to find and I slipped into an open workstation at the back of the room. But with one glance at the door, I wished I hadn’t picked the seat farthest from it. The whiteboard beside it said “Teacher’s Assistant—Jeremy Fowler,” and for a moment, I considered walking out. I’d never dropped a class before, but there was a first time for everything. Then the bell rang and Jeremy closed the door. He stood by the teacher’s side at the front of the room.
    Mr. Hurley prattled on about attendance and bathroom passes and tardy slips, and Jeremy walked up and down the aisles, handing out syllabi. I could feel Jeremy’s gaze brush mine, neither of us looking directly at each other. Anh sat in the front row. I saw Sharissa Winters and Eric Miller from chem class last year. And Vince DiMorello, sitting with a few of his teammates at the other end of my row.
    “For the purpose of this class, you will each set up an e-mail account today. You will use this account to submit your homework and to access your weekly assignments and your grades. You may also use these accounts to communicate with your assigned partners. To keep things simple and orderly, you will create your e-mail address using the following format: Your last name. Dot. Your first name. At our school domain.” Mr. Hurley scrawled a sample on the board. “The workstation where you are seated now will be your workstation for the remainder of the semester, and your lab partner will be the person seated beside you, beginning from the left of each row.”
    There was a rush of grumbles and whispers. Eric Miller sat to my right, and I cringed inside. He’d been Alex Petrenko’s lab partner last year and neither one of them had done a bang-up job of keeping their collective grade above a C. Eric chewed a fingernail, looking equally dismayed, probably at being stuck with the school pariah for a lab partner. I gave him a small wave. He waved back. I guess it could have been worse. I could have been stuck with Anh.
    Mr. Hurley stepped out of the room, leaving Jeremy in charge and instructing us to log on and get started. I studied the syllabus: Computational Thinking, Elements of Programming, Software Engineering. I didn’t have a computer at home. I’d always used Jeremy’s or Anh’s, or reserved a workstation in the library. The other students had already signed on to their machines, pointing and clicking like it was second nature, as if they were completely at home.
    “What’s wrong, trailer trash?” Vince teased me as soon as Hurley was gone. “Never seen a computer before?” His friends laughed. Jeremy didn’t intervene. Eric reached over and dropped a slip of paper on my table. A hastily handwritten bullet point