By the time the dorms went quiet the file in Dani's pocket had a second column with nothing in it yet.
Soren knew about the first column.
He did not know about the second.
He had spent the evening doing the math on a fold of paper he still had not opened, and not on the girl who had started a list with his name at the top of the watched side.
◆◆◆◆
By the third morning the looking had stopped being a Class A thing and become a whole-floor thing.
It spread the only way it could.
One girl told two girls. The two told a hallway. The hallway told a stairwell.
Soren walked to breakfast and counted seven heads turn that had no reason to turn for someone from the bottom class.
He was not bottom anymore. That was part of the problem.
The ranking board had his number with the asterisk beside it, and the asterisk did what asterisks do, which was make people ask what it meant.
Nobody knew. So they made it up.
◆◆◆◆
He sat at the Z table and Mona homed in beside him.
