The Girl on the Scholarship List

The first thing Wren Calloway learned at Starfall Academy was that everyone already knew which students were on the scholarship list. Nobody said it aloud. They simply looked at her blazer, which was secondhand and a half-size too large, and then at her shoes, and then very politely at nothing.

She had arrived in September with one suitcase, a library card from a town three hundred miles away, and a rule she had written on the inside cover of her notebook: Be useful. Be quiet. Don’t get noticed. The scholarship covered tuition, room, and board for exactly one year unless her marks stayed in the top five percent. She intended to stay in the top one.

The school sat on a ridge above a lake, all grey stone and ivy and windows that glowed amber at dusk. On the highest point of the grounds stood the observatory, a copper-domed tower that had been locked since before the oldest teacher was hired. Students told stories about it. A ghost, a curse, a telescope that showed you things you weren’t ready for.

Wren didn’t believe in ghosts. She believed in chemistry homework, which was why she was awake at eleven-forty on a Thursday night in the third-floor common room of Harrow House, bent over a problem set under the one lamp that still worked.

“You’re going to ruin your eyes,” said a voice behind her.

She jumped. A boy with untidy dark hair and a prefect’s pin hanging crookedly from his collar leaned in the doorway. Dashiell Okafor, who sat beside her in Astronomy and had once lent her a pencil without comment. He was the sort of student who seemed to be liked by everyone without effort, which made Wren distrust him slightly.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re working on a Thursday night in the dark.” He glanced down the corridor, then back at her. “Are you doing anything at midnight?”

“Sleeping.”

“Wrong answer, but it’s a good one.” He smiled, though it looked nervous. “Look. Some of us noticed that you got the highest mark on Pryce’s star-chart test. The one nobody could finish. There’s a group. We don’t have a name, exactly. Well, we do, but it’s embarrassing.”

Wren’s pen stopped. Every instinct she had written on the cover of her notebook told her to say no.

“What does the group do?”

Dash lowered his voice. “We go up to the observatory.”

The clock in the hall below began to chime. Wren counted the strokes without meaning to, one, two, three, all the way to the twelfth, and found that she had already closed her textbook.

“Fine,” she said. “But if I get expelled, I’m haunting you.”

“That,” said Dash, holding the door, “is exactly the right attitude.”