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I hadn’t noticed the two girls before because they were sitting at a table in the far corner of the vast Dining Hall, almost in the shadows. There was no banner hanging over their small table but it seemed clear that they, like me, didn’t belong to any of the four main groups.
Hesitantly, I went towards them. Was this a trick? Was it going to be a repeat of Nancy Rattcliff’s hostile behavior?
But the girl who had called me over had an open, smiling face. She wasn’t exactly pretty—but she wasn’t ugly either. Nondescript might be the best way to describe her, although at the moment she looked beautiful to me, waving me over with her welcoming smile.
“Hi,” she said, when I came up to their table. “I’m Emma Plunket and this is Kaitlyn Fellows.”
“Megan Latimer,” I said cautiously.
“Yes, we know.” Emma smiled. “Your reputation kind of preceded you. We would have called you over sooner but we thought you might sit with the Sisters and wouldn’t want to be with us.”
“What? Why not?” I asked. At that point I wanted to be with anyone who wasn’t Nancy Rattcliff.
“Well, we’re Norms,” Emma said. “The only two Norms in this lunch period, actually. Most of the Others don’t want to mix with us.”
“Norms?” I asked, sitting down beside Emma and across from Kaitlyn, who shyly glanced up and nodded at me. I still couldn’t see anything but one of her eyes which was a startlingly lovely pale aqua blue that stood out in the creamy brown of her face—what I could see of it, anyway.
“Sure you know—normal humans. There are a few of us here, even though Nocturne is the premier Other Studies Academy in the entire Southeast US,” Emma said wryly.
I shook my head. “So you’re saying all the other students here are abnormal in some way?”
“No—I’m saying they’re not human.” Emma looked at me closely. “You knew that, right? I mean, you look so freaked out right now. Please tell me you already knew that.”
“I…I don’t know anything,” I said honestly. “And how can they not be human? Are you trying to play a joke on me? Because I’ve taken enough crap for one day.”
I started to get up but Emma put out a hand to stop me.
“Wait, please—I swear I’m not teasing you! I would never act like Nancy Rattcliff just did—believe me, all us Norms have had run-ins with her.”
“She’s horrible.” Kaitlyn spoke for the first time in a shy, soft voice filled with feeling. I noticed she was sitting with her hands beneath the level of the table, and peering out from the curtain of her hair intently, as though trying to size me up.
I shook my head again.
“I just…I don’t know what to believe anymore. This has been the weirdest day of my life.” And that was saying something, considering all the strange things that had happened to me lately—including the black key necklace which still hung like a weight around my neck.
“So…you didn’t know anything about this place before you applied?” Emma asked, frowning.
“My Aunt Dellie put in the application for me when she found out I was coming to live with her,” I confessed. “I didn’t even know she had until this morning when the acceptance letter came in the mail. I was all set to attend Frostproof High up until then.”
“Ugh!” Both of the girls made faces at my mention of the local high school.
“Well, you really dodged a bullet there,” Emma remarked candidly. “Kaitlyn and I both went to Frostproof High for our freshman year. It’s about as interesting as watching paint dry.”
“Boooring,” Kaitlyn agreed, nodding emphatically.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I could use a little boredom right about now.”
“I bet you could if you didn’t know anything about Nocturne before this morning,” Emma said. “But did you at least know about the Other world?”
“Other world?” I asked, frowning. “What other world?”
“Not ‘other world’ like a different world from this one—I’m talking about the world of the Others,” Emma emphasized. “You know—the Drakes and the Faes and all the rest.”
“Oh my God—she didn’t know anything.” Kaitlyn sounded shocked and horrified as she read my confused expression. “How awful!”
“I still don’t know anything,” I pointed out. “At this point—”
Just then one of the cafeteria ladies—the same one who had served me—came up to our table and gave me a new tray and a new glass of iced tea. I thanked her, glad to see the tray contained exactly the lunch I had lost—baked fish, lemon wedges, and salad. I squirted one wedge over my fish and one over the brilliant greens while I waited for her to get out of earshot and then continued where I had left off.
“At this point, I feel like I’m going crazy,” I said to Emma and Kaitlyn. “I mean, at least now I know what Norms are but what is a Null? And if all these other people aren’t human, then what in the world are they?”
