One | determination

Her hands sticky on the wheel, Mae takes another sharp curve way too tight as the clock in her mom’s old Volvo ticks down another minute she doesn’t have. 

Now, “Road Work Ahead.” Really—today, of all days? 

“Be here by eight a.m. sharp,” Mrs. Rooney warned. “No delays. Anyone who’s late will simply miss the trip.” 

Which could actually be okay, depending on how you look at it. All those Foxmoor faces, with their endless chatter and probing stares—just waiting to gawk at Mae. She wouldn’t mind at all missing that. Those girls think Mae Reynolds is so screwed up she can’t do the one thing everyone looks forward to most at Foxmoor—Mrs. Rooney’s famous Wilderness Week. 

Mrs. Rooney is the best, but her trip sounds more like an excursion with a bunch of girls who think “wilderness” is what happens when the gardener doesn’t show up. And with all eight girls from Junior Bio stuffed into one tent … how’s that supposed to work?

Yet Mae won’t miss this trip—her best chance to show them there’s a lot more to her than they saw on that one sickening day. If she doesn’t grab it, she’s toast at Foxmoor, for good. 

“Turn green, damn it,” she commands a traffic light, beads of sweat gathering on her forehead. “If I have to run after the bus as it leaves, they’ll all laugh their gorgeous heads off.”

She winds through a damn detour, then almost runs a stop sign. “This must feel like a racecar ride, Mom. I know it can’t be fun.”

Her mom’s knuckles go white as she grips her armrest. “It is hair-raising, I’ll admit. But I wanted to come see you off. Still, I do wonder …” Now she’s using her “I’m Just Concerned” voice, that Mae knows so well. “You’ve had to deal with so much at Foxmoor … should we have tried harder to find a different school? It was all you wanted, that last day of summer school.”

“The day of my freak-out-of-the-century, you mean. I really was done with Foxmoor.” Mae sighs. “Still am, actually.”

It’s all a blur … her final presentation on Leonardo, for European History. Within what should have been an easy half-hour, her weeks of research on his masterpieces—all wrecked.

Using their own unique brand of torment, Foxmoor’s snake-in-lip-gloss, Jessica, and her crew pushed every button Mae managed to keep un-pushed for years. They really hit it big that time. Now Mae has to figure out a way to live it all down. If there is one.

“I couldn’t have gotten to another school that quick, anyway. But remember, no law says I have to go to any school—at sixteen you can just take the GED and be done with it.” 

Her mom winces. “You know Dad and I think ‘testing out’ is too much like ‘dropping out’. It’s not something to rush into—not with your talent for art, and with Ms. Strand as a mentor. You’ve always said there’s no place better than Foxmoor, because of her.” 

“She really does know painting. And she gives me all the studio space I need, for any project. But some of those girls … they’re another story, to put it mildly.” Like the time Jessica and her two bitches, Chloe and Olivia, posted a pile of filth about Mae and some scuzzy guy they totally made up, then tweaked and reposted it for days. Somehow, she got through that hell. 

But their next one really came out of the blue. So soon after their cyber-bomb, it was one hit too many. How Mae ended up lying face-down in the grass under the bleachers, where Ms. Strand found her, she had no clue. Or when the Psych Emergency Team took her away.…