NEVE blanched, looking back down at the assignment in front of her. Why were they coming toward her off all people?

I have no idea. But do... act natural, as you humans put it.

Neve tried to ignore the voice in her head, ignore everything in general, but she couldn't ignore the scraping of chairs as the two students sat on either side of her. She found it difficult to keep her hand still so she laid down her pencil and set her hands flat on the desk, staring at them. Her pale hands led the way to thin fingers, nails getting awfully long. The fingertips of her right hand tapped against the desk.

Maybe if I don't acknowledge them, they won't say any-

"Hey," one of them said,

Neve slowly brought her head up to meet the gaze of the brunette. "Hey?"

"I know this might be a bit weird for you - seeing as you've never seen us in your life - but I'm Alice and that's Angelica. We just transferred here. What's your name?"

"Um, Genevieve... but you can call me Neve."

"Nice to meet you, Neve." She paused. "What are we working on this class?"

As their awkwardly polite conversation continued, Alice's eyes went from interested to bored, though her smile remained. Neve narrowed her eyes. If she was just going to get bored, why had she come over her in the first place? It was almost embarrassing.

You're beginning to bore me as well. Were humans always so dull?

Neve opened her mouth snap a response to the inner voice but silenced herself, coming back to where she was.

Alice peered at her. "Are you okay?"

It took everything in Neve to keep a civil tone, and even then, it was a bit snappy. "I'm fine."

"...Okay." Alice looked past her. "Angelica, are you okay?"

Neve had forgotten the other girl existed, having not said a word to her since she came over. She glanced at her, raising an eyebrow at her head laying in her arms, hair covering all of her face.

"She's always like that."

"Unresponsive?"

Alice shrugged. "She doesn't seem to like me very much."

Because that wasn't weird at all. They'd walked into class together, and Alice had made it sound like they transferred from the same school—but maybe that wasn't the case. Even then, it struck Neve as strange. How could someone find another transfer in a school with over a thousand students? And even if they had come from the same school, is Angelica didn't like Alice, why would she have stuck with her here?

The bell rang, cutting off Neve's train of thought. But she didn't let it go.

Something wasn't adding up here.

Lunch was probably Neve's least favorite time of the day. Sitting with Becca and Claire was already a pain but coupled with the anxiety of eating in front of other people? Neve wanted to break her head on the lunch table. But on normal days, Neve could manage. She'd been eating with the two girls for too long to feel nervous in front of them.

But today was no normal day—the transfer students were eating with them.

That was what Neve found out when she came to her regular lunch table. But there was someone else with them: A boy the spitting image of Angelica. They must've been siblings, which meant he was also a transfer student. Neve took a deep breath, and sat on the side opposite the boy, Claire, and Becca, next to Angelica. She kept a good distance away from her, staring at the macaroni in her tray.

Neve hoped that once they all started talking with each other, her angst with eating around them would dissipate. But it didn't, and all because of one person: Angelica.

She didn't utter a single word to anyone, eating her food in silence and looking miserable while doing so.

Neve cocked her head so she could see Angelica more. Why did she look so agitated when her brother and "friend" were both there? And why didn't she talk to them? Maybe she really didn't like Alice, maybe not even her brother. Regardless, anxiousness grew in Neve's stomach. With the way things were going, what if Angelica decided to talk to her? As unlikely as it sounded, things were getting a little awkward. They were the only ones in the group—if you could really call it that—not talking to anyone, and they were sitting next to each other.

A perfect recipe for more awkward conversation.

Neve figured she might as well start it—even if Angelica didn't say anything to her, she'd feel awkward anyway, so... "Hey."

Angelica raised an eyebrow at her. "...Hey."

Neve began to ask what class she had after lunch when she noticed something about Angelica's expression. Her lip was slightly curled, eyes narrowed, head tilted upward—her face basically screamed, Why do I have to speak to the likes of you?

Then it was gone, replaced with a neutral look so fast, Neve questioned whether she'd seen it at all.

She dismissed it to the back of her head. "How are—What's your favorite subject so far?"

"Algebra 2."

"Cool." This wasn't going well at all. "Have you, um... made any friends?"

Angelica shook her head.

"We should be friends!"

Angelica just looked at her, appearing as surprised as Neve felt. But what came as more of a shock was when she said, "Okay."

Neve smiled at her, but in her mind, she questioned her own sanity.

It was only in her last class that Neve encountered the transfer boy again. He sat at the window side of the classroom, toward the front. Neve took a step in his direction, then scowled at herself. Since she'd had more human interaction than usual, she was feeling a lot more sociable... but she knew it was a bad idea. It had never ended well, and it wouldn't this time. She couldn't really explain what had possessed her to speak to the other transfer students, but she wasn't eager to speak to one of them now.

The bell rang as she sat down, Mr. Allen passing out their assignment instantly. He gave the class a brief explanation of it and sat at his desk. Neve doodled on the Molar Mass worksheet, pencil lead swirling around the questions. She couldn't draw for shit, but she tended to put squiggly lines all over her worksheet when she was distracted.

She couldn't stop thinking about her weird conversations with Angelica and Alice. Something about the way Alice spoke rubbed her the wrong way, and while she'd initially been happy about her and Angelica becoming "friends", she now wanted to smack herself in the face because of it.

Angelica was a little fake, in Neve's opinion. All through their conversation, she'd either looked bored or irritated, and Neve couldn't decide which was worse. She wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she'd been down that rabbit hole too many times.

She put her pencil down and dropped her head on the desk, which reminded of when she'd cracked her head against the desk a few days ago. The top of her head still had a cut from the incident, and she had a feeling it would scar.

And it was all because of The Obscurity. Speaking of that, where exactly was it? It hadn't spoken in her head since the morning, and she was a little concerned - not about The Obscurity, of course, but of where it had gone. If it had left her head, she had a feeling she would've noticed, considering how it had felt when it went in.

A hand on Neve's shoulder had her flinching so bad that her back slammed into her chair.

"Oh, God—I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you. Are you okay?"

The pain in her back was nothing major, and Neve went to say just that when the person came into view.

It was the transfer boy.