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squeezed him back tightly. Now, that was more like it.
    “I’m scared, Jack,” she whispered. They’d been there, that night, with Aggie. Aggie shouldn’t be dead. Aggie couldn’t be dead. It just couldn’t be true. It was impossible. In every sense of the word. But they’d seen Aggie’s body at the morgue, that cold gray morning. She and Jack had been the ones to identify the body. Mimi’s cell number was the first entry in Aggie’s phone.
    They’d held her lifeless hands. They’d seen her face, the frozen scream. Much worse, they’d seen the marks on her neck. Unthinkable! Ridiculous, even. It simply didn’t add up. It was as if the world had been turned upside down. It was against everything they’d been told. She couldn’t even begin to make it comprehensible.
    “It’s a joke, right?”
    “No joke.” Jack shook his head.
    “She’s not just cycling early?” Mimi asked, hoping against hope that they’d found some reasonable explanation for all this. There had to be one. Things like this simply didn’t happen.
    Not to them.
    “No. They’ve done the tests. Worse. The blood—it’s gone.”
    Mimi felt a chill up her spine. It was as if something had skittered across her grave. “What do you mean it’s gone?” she gasped.
    “She was drained.”
    “You mean …”
    “Full consumption.”Jack nodded.
    Mimi recoiled from his embrace. “You’re joking. You have to be. It’s just not possible.” That word again. That word that popped up all weekend, Saturday morning, when the call came: repeated by their parents, the Elders, the Wardens, everybody. What happened to Aggie just wasn’t possible. That much they all agreed on. Mimi walked toward an open window, stepped into the sunlight, and gloried in the way it tickled her skin. Nothing could hurt them.
    “They’ve called a conclave. The letters went out today.”
    “Already?But they haven’t even begun to change yet,” Mimi protested. “Isn’t that against the rules?”
    “Emergency situation.Everyone has to be warned. Even the premature.”
    Mimi sighed. “I suppose.” She’d rather liked being one of the youngest. She didn’t like knowing her novel status would soon be supplanted by a new batch.
    “I’m going to class. Where are you going?” he asked, tucking his shirt into his pants, a futile move since when he reached for his leather satchel, the motion pulled his shirt tails out again.
    “To Barneys,” she replied, putting on her sunglasses. “I have nothing to wear to the funeral.”

SIX
    Schuyler’s second-period class was ethics, a multi-year class open to sophomores and juniors completing their diversity studies requirements. Their teacher, Mr. Orion, a curly-haired Brown graduate with a droopy mustache, small, wire-rimmed glasses, a long Cyrano nose, and a penchant for wearing oversized baggy sweaters that hung off his scarecrow-like frame, sat in the middle of the room, leading the discussion.
    She found a seat near the window, pulling up her chair to the circle around Mr. Orion. There were only ten people, the standard class size. Schuyler couldn’t help but notice that Jack Force wasn’t in his usual seat. She’d never said a word to him all semester, and she wondered if he would even remember saying hello to her on Friday night.
    “Did anyone here know Aggie well?” Mr. Orion asked, even though it was an irrelevant question. Duchesne was the kind of place that, years after graduation, if you bumped into an alum at an airport, or walking around Centre Pompidou, or downtown at Max Fish, you would immedi ately buy them a drink and ask about their family, because even if you had never exchanged a word while at the school, you knew almost everything about them, down to the inti mate details.
    “Anyone?”Mr. Orion asked again.
    Bliss Llewellyn cautiously raised her hand. “I did,” she said timidly.
    “Do you want to share some memories of her?”
    Bliss put her hand down, her face red. Memories of Aggie?