Samantha’s hands were pink and torn, but they were very clean as she walked down the hallway, thinking to herself that there was more to life than this place, that she would be out of this place soon.

“I know what she’s thinking,” I said, walking behind Samantha with Messenger just a pace behind me.

“Yes,” Messenger said, and that voice carried notes of warning coiled within the single syllable.

Samantha had spotted someone in the crowd ahead of her. I knew the name: Kayla. Kayla McKenna. K-Mack, some people called her, and it was like a brand name. It meant more than this one tall, willowy blond girl alone; K-Mack meant a group. K-Mack meant a power within the school. A force.

Kayla was more than pretty. Kayla had large brown eyes framed by absurdly long lashes. She had perfect cheekbones. Her every movement was graceful and assured. She was dressed impeccably. Her hair tumbled, liquid, like honey, like something out of a shampoo commercial. Her skin was flawless, untouched by blemish.

Samantha instinctively put a hand to her face, traced her finger over the bump that had begun to emerge just beside her nose, a zit in the making.

Having touched it once, Samantha had to touch it twice more. Three times touch. Or something awful would happen, something unspeakable.

Kayla was surrounded by people. Three girls and two boys. Certainty and smugness oozed from them all, but they were planets circling Kayla’s sun.

“Stop touching it, Samantha,” Kayla said. She had an interesting way of inflecting, Kayla did. The “touch” part of “touching” was punched with a humorous uplift. Like the word itself was funny.

Samantha’s hand froze in place. Kayla had disrupted the count, and now she would have to do it again. Three times.

“It’s just a zit,” Samantha said, and touched it.

“Yeah, I didn’t think it was a unicorn,” Kayla said. The emphasis on “didn’t,” with the same comical uplift. “Oh, my God, you’re touching it again. Stop touching it! You’re making me sick, honestly. No offense.”

The way she spoke was an invitation to a conspiracy—it invited all to see the humor, all to see that she was just joking, just having fun. Her eyes mocked, but was there anything to point to as proof that she was aware of the effect on Samantha?

“No offense,” Samantha echoed, and smiled a sickly smile and strained with all her will to keep her hands at her sides, not to touch.

All of them were looking at her now, the K-Mack crowd, staring at her, expectant, waiting on the signal to laugh at her.

“How’s your . . . um . . . book coming?” Kayla asked. The word book got the uplift this time, in a way that clearly cast doubt on the possibility that there was such a book.

“Okay, I guess. I have to get to class.”

“Aren’t you done writing it? You said in Mr. Briede’s class you were done.”

Samantha fought down a wave of anxiety. Mark Briede was the teacher who had most encouraged her to write. But she didn’t want to talk about the book, or think about the book, or think of how she wanted to touch her face. She had to begin the count again, had to make it three times. The book was just stupid. She would probably just be a huge failure—what were the odds of some sixteen-year-old girl publishing anything?

And if she did? She had revealed bits of herself in the story. One of the characters would be blindingly obvious as herself, as a prettier, cooler Samantha, an aspirational Samantha. She would make herself even more of a target, she would have painted a bull’s-eye. . . . No, a targeting map, like the military used—strike here and here and here to inflict maximum damage.

“I’ll see you guys later,” Samantha said, and fled, touching her bump. Touching it. Touching it again. Relief.

I looked at Kayla rather than Samantha now.

“Is she doing it on purpose? Does she know she’s being cruel?”

“Is that important?” Messenger asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Listen to her thoughts,” Messenger said.

And I heard them. Kayla’s thoughts. As clearly as if she was speaking. In fact, when I looked, I saw her lips moving. She was speaking but not to the others around her. It was more as if I’d given her a truth serum that caused her to explain herself honestly.

“I don’t like Samantha. She’s very smart, but so am I. And I’m prettier by a mile and also much more popular. I pick on her because she’s weak. It’s that simple. She’s obviously got problems, so anything I say can make her freak out.”

It was bizarre the way Kayla spoke, unsettling even by dream standards. She wasn’t looking at me—she wasn’t looking at anyone—she was just voicing her thoughts, like I’d thrown a switch just by wondering about her. She was Richard the Third in Shakespeare’s play, pausing for a moment to enlighten the audience as to motive and malice.

“Why shouldn’t I pick on Samantha? It’s fun for me and entertaining for my friends. It reminds my friends to be a little afraid of me, and that’s useful. It reminds them that they could be next if they disappoint me. Besides, I can’t stand that she—”

She stopped just like that, in midthought.

I laughed. Not because it was funny but because it had the ring of truth and I had not often heard truth spoken so bluntly and so utterly without self-justification.

I turned my laughing face to Messenger, who was watching me, waiting for my reaction. Judging me, I thought.

“If this is a dream, why aren’t we at my school?” I asked him. “I should dream about places I know. This place probably isn’t real.”