“Can this book get any more borin’?” Emily didn’t even look my way. This was a territorial dispute. She might have dumped me, but she certainly didn’t want to see Old Man Ravenwood’s niece anywhere near me. “Like I wanna read about a town fulla people who are completely mental. We’ve got enough a that around here.”

Abby Porter, who usually sat on the Good-Eye Side, sat down next to Lena and gave her a weak smile. Lena smiled back and looked as if she was going to say something friendly, when Emily shot Abby a look that made it clear that the famed Southern hospitality did not apply to Lena. Defying Emily Asher was an act of social suicide. Abby pulled out her Student Council folder and buried her nose in it, avoiding Lena. Message received.

Emily turned to Lena and expertly shot her a look that managed to work its way from the very top of Lena’s un-highlighted hair, past her un-tanned face, down to the tips of her un-pinked fingernails. Eden and Charlotte swung around in their chairs to face Emily, as if Lena didn’t exist. The girl freeze-out—today it was negative fifteen.

Lena opened her tattered spiral notebook and started to write. Emily got out her phone and began to text. I looked back down at my notebook, slipping my Silver Surfer comic between the pages, which was a lot harder to do in the front row.

“All right, ladies and gentleman, since it looks like the rest of the lights will be staying on, you’re out of luck. I hope everyone did the reading last night.” Mrs. English was scribbling madly on the chalkboard. “Let’s take a minute to discuss social conflict in a small-town setting.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Someone should have told Mrs. English. Halfway through class, we had more than social conflict in a small-town setting. Emily was coordinating a full-scale attack.

“Who knows why Atticus is willing to defend Tom Robinson, in the face of small-mindedness and racism?”

“I bet Lena Ravenwood knows,” Eden said, smiling innocently at Mrs. English. Lena looked down into the lines of her notebook, but didn’t say a word.

“Shut up,” I whispered, a little too loudly. “You know that’s not her name.”

“It may as well be. She’s livin’ with that freak,” Charlotte said.

“Watch what you say. I hear they’re, like, a couple.” Emily was pulling out the big guns.

“That’s enough.” Mrs. English turned her good eye on us, and we all shut up.

Lena shifted her weight; her chair scraped loudly against the floor. I leaned forward in mine, trying to become a wall between Lena and Emily’s minions like I could physically deflect their comments.

You can’t.

What? I sat up, startled. I looked around, but no one was talking to me; no one was talking at all. I looked at Lena. She was still half-hidden in her notebook. Great. It wasn’t enough to dream real girls and hear imaginary songs. Now I had to hear voices, too.

The whole Lena thing was really getting to me. I guess I felt responsible, in a way. Emily, and the rest of them, wouldn’t hate her so much if it wasn’t for me.

They would.

There it was again, a voice so quiet I could barely hear it. It was like it was coming from the back of my head.

Eden, Charlotte, and Emily kept firing away, and Lena didn’t even blink, like she could just block them out as long as she kept writing in that notebook of hers.

“Harper Lee seems to be saying that you can’t really get to know someone until you take a walk in his shoes. What do you make of that? Anyone?”

Harper Lee never lived in Gatlin.

I looked around, stifling a laugh. Emily looked at me like I was nuts.

Lena raised her hand. “I think it means you have to give people a chance. Before you automatically skip to the hating part. Don’t you think so, Emily?” She looked at Emily and smiled.

“You little freak,” Emily hissed under her breath.

You have no idea.

I stared more closely at Lena. She had given up on the notebook; now she was writing on her hand in black ink. I didn’t have to see it to know what it was. Another number. 151. I wondered what it meant, and why it couldn’t go in the notebook. I buried my head back in Silver Surfer.

“Let’s talk about Boo Radley. What would lead you to believe he is leaving gifts for the Finch children?”

“He’s just like Old Man Ravenwood. He’s probably tryin’ to lure those kids into his house so he can kill them,” Emily whispered, loud enough for Lena to hear, but quiet enough to keep Mrs. English from hearing. “Then he can put their bodies in his hearse and take them out to the middle a nowhere and bury them.”

Shut up.

I heard the voice in my head again, and something else. It was a creaking sound. Faint.

“And he has that crazy name like Boo Radley. What is it again?”

“You’re right, it’s that creepy Bible name nobody uses anymore.”

I stiffened. I knew they were talking about Old Man Ravenwood, but they were also talking about Lena. “Emily, why don’t you give it a rest,” I shot back.

She narrowed her eyes. “He’s a freak. They all are and everyone knows it.”

I said shut up.

The creaking was getting louder and started to sound more like splintering. I looked around. What was that noise? Even weirder, it didn’t seem like anyone else heard it—like the voice.

Lena was staring straight ahead, but her jaw was clenched and she was unnaturally focused on one point in the front of the room, like she couldn’t see anything but that spot. The room felt like it was getting smaller, closing in.