Was she joking? She had to be joking. It was literally the same style as yesterday.

I didn’t have time to respond because class started right then, but I was floored. And suspicious. The entire class period I waited for the other shoe to drop, for Naomi to lean forward and whisper something vicious, but by the time class was over, nothing.

In fact, as we packed up and left, Naomi and her crew actually waved goodbye and chorused, “See ya, Luna!”

Yeah, today was definitely a weird one, but I’d take it. Maybe the universe decided it owed me one after yesterday. I wasn’t going to question it.

On my way to my next class, I noticed Olivia coming up the hall, surrounded as usual by at least three people all basking in her presence. I moved to the side so I didn’t get bulldozed, fully expecting her to just walk past me, but she stopped.

“Luna! I’m so glad I ran into you,” she said enthusiastically, waving off her fans. Even though she’d just clearly said my name, it was hard to believe she was actually talking to me outside of the newspaper. “Please say you’re free for lunch. I was hoping to talk through some story ideas.”

“With me?” I asked, almost certain there was something I was missing.

But Olivia laughed and said, “Of course, with you. You’re one of the best writers we’ve got. So, you free?”

Play it cool, Luna, don’t mess this up! “Sure, yeah, of course!” My voice was way too loud, and I cringed internally, but Olivia just smiled.

“Great, I’ll see you then!”

I watched her go with my mouth half open in shock. Did that really just happen? There was no way Olivia just asked to have lunch with me! The warning bell snapped me out of it, and I hurried to my next class, my other least favorite: physics.

Every time I walked into the room, I questioned again why I let my dad convince me to take it now instead of my senior year. Or college. Or never. But he and Kamari found it so easy I couldn’t just say no. I took my seat reluctantly, because I knew there was no way my random good luck would last here.

“Alrighty, guys, books away, take out a sheet of paper—pop quiz time,” the teacher crowed, grinning evilly at the chorus of groans around the room. Yep, I knew it.

As the quizzes were passed out, I watched Alex to gauge my chances. If he seemed even a little bit confused, I was going to fail, but if he breezed through it like everything else, it wasn’t any harder than usual and I might stand a chance. I watched him look over the page, nod to himself, and begin, totally unfazed. Okay, so then I had more than a zero percent chance of passing.

When the quiz landed in front of me, I braced myself to mentally wrestle the numbers and formulas into something I could make sense of. But…well, it wasn’t that hard. I was pretty sure we’d just gone over these formulas, and by some miracle they hadn’t faded from my mind yet. I worked my way steadily through the problems, gaining confidence as I went. Physics was never this easy before!

“Alright, pencils down,” the teacher called. For once, that phrase didn’t fill me with dread. “Everyone, grab a pen, we’re going to go through the grades together.”

Good, no one will witness my shame, I immediately thought. But as we went through the answers, the teacher writing out the solutions and how to get to them on the board, I realized…I was getting a lot of them right.

Not just the final answers, but the actual formulas and how to use them. I was floored. Maybe deep down inside somewhere, I did know some physics. Maybe the day’s good vibes just unlocked the part of my brain that didn’t panic immediately at the numbers. Maybe it really was in my blood, like Dad kept saying.

A quiet groan made me turn. Alex was sitting with his head in his hand, frowning down at his paper like it was speaking Chinese. I craned my neck to look at his quiz—and found it all marked up in pen. He’d gotten almost every single question wrong.

A tiny spark of—happiness? Relief?—something warm lit in my chest. It wasn’t that I wanted to see him fail, but it just felt so good to do better than the smart kid for once. Though I definitely couldn't deny, this day just kept getting weirder and weirder.