I’d even made a friend. After class, Yasuo and I walked to the dining hall and ate lunch together. And the food wasn’t that bad—some sort of creamy fish soup that’d looked disgusting but was actually pretty tasty. Granted, Yasuo didn’t make me feel all wiggly and agitated like Ronan did, but at least I could trust he wasn’t using superhuman powers of persuasion to put thoughts in my head.

After the shock of so many positive events, I figured I could swing gym class.

What did they mean by fitness, anyway? I pictured something like an episode of The Biggest Loser. Hopping around, doing asinine things with body bands and medicine balls, while people yelled at me about my core.

I jogged up the gym stairs before I could think twice. I sensed these vampires had exquisite taste they’d refined through the centuries, and had envisioned a glossy, high-tech health club. I was sorely mistaken. I entered, and it was how I imagined an old-time boxing gymnasium might look. In Russia.

Damp heat and the smell of stale sweat greeted me. Blue mats were stacked in a tower in the corner, faded ropes hung from the ceiling, and a set of gray high bars loomed ominously along the wall. And, of course, in the very center, was a sparring mat.

I rubbed my forehead, letting my messenger bag slide from my shoulder to hit the floor. “Damn.”

“Be careful, Annelise.” I knew that voice. It sent every cell in my body standing to instant attention. “The vampires aren’t overly fond of profanities.”

Crap, damn, dammit to hell. What was he doing here?

“Ronan.” I turned to face him, feeling ill. Seeing me swim was one thing, but he wasn’t really going to witness me floundering around in gym shorts, too, was he?

“It’s Tracer Ronan now.”

The fish soup became a queasy slosh in my belly. I’d thought maybe Ronan and I were becoming less formal with each other, not more. He’d asked Amanda to look out for me. He’d seemed sincere when he’d insisted I trust him. Being friends didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. He seemed to care. Kind of.

His attentions had probably just been about seeing the girl he picked succeed. Maybe Tracers got extra brownie points if the Acari they’d recruited were the ones to excel. The thought made me sadder than I had a right to be.

He read the direction of my thoughts. “I’m your teacher now. We must respect protocol.”

I looked at the girls gathering along the bleachers. Some had already changed into the navy gym shorts and T-shirts we’d been issued in our kit bags.

Was I missing something? Would I get to skip gym class for our private study? “Wait. Are you here to take me to swim class?”

“Our private study is later. I’m also your fitness teacher.” He walked to the bleachers, leaving me there feeling like I might gag.

Then I thought: gym class, swimming . . . Would I get to see him in running shorts? Or maybe even in one of those teensy Speedos? The prospect cheered me a bit.

Scooping up my bag, I followed him, eyeing the other girls warily. I spotted Lilac and the scrappy heart-faced girl, plus some other familiar faces, including one of the French girls and someone from my dorm floor.

It struck me that there were a few predictable types on this isle. There were the Lilacs of the world, whose lifetime gym memberships had carved muscle from calves that somehow remained perennially smooth, toned, and tanned. With their perky ponytails, they looked like they might burst into a cheer routine at any moment.

There were also what I liked to call the juvies. They were fidgety and restless, like they were ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. Who knew what’d made them such hard bodies. Running from the cops, maybe.

And then there were the girls with something to prove. They had carved biceps and probably enjoyed things like extreme triathlons and raw-egg smoothies, and dreamt of the day they could fight an upstart like me. In a cage.

The girls hailing neither from the U.S. nor the U.K. were a bit harder to pin down, though there were only a handful in that category. There were those two French girls. I’d also seen a few leggy, white-haired creatures, with frost blue eyes to match the ice that surely coursed through their veins. I’d nicknamed them the Valkyries, though there was no way I’d risk getting close enough to eavesdrop on whatever language they might be speaking.

There were a couple of oddballs, too, like Heart Face. That was the group I belonged in. No surprise there. I plopped onto the bottom bleacher with a sigh.

Ronan stood frozen, arms crossed at his chest, waiting for everyone to quiet down. I tried not to groan. It was no joke; he really was going to be my teacher.

“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Tracer Ronan.”

Damn the little shiver I got at the sound of that husky, Scottish-sounding accent.

I wondered which type Ronan might be. Despite his good looks, he didn’t strike me as the sort with a lifetime gym membership and a fondness for racket sports and wheatgrass shooters. Nor did he seem like an ex-con or a barbell-wielding gym rat. Might he be an oddball, too? There was that hot tattoo to consider—not every guy had Proustian ink on his arm.

He was explaining the rules, and I tuned back in, nervous about what I might’ve missed. “You’ll keep a locker here,” he was saying. “I expect you to be geared up and ready to go at the start of each class.”

Some girl to my right already had her navy gym shirt tucked neatly into her navy gym shorts. Her brown hair was pulled into a bouncy ponytail, and she compulsively smoothed it, looking quite pleased with herself. If there were such a thing as a Step Aerobics Olympics, she looked primed and ready.

“Today’s class will be a simple fitness assessment,” Ronan said. “We need to see what kind of shape you’re in. We’ll be gauging things like strength, endurance, balance, and flexibility.”

I slumped. Generally, whatever thoughts I gave to my body pertained only to its role as a vehicle for my head. In other words, I was so screwed.

Those frayed mats, the bars and ropes—they all mocked me. I remembered the whole miserable drill from high school. How many sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups? I sucked at every single one of the ups.

“We’ll start today with a fifty-yard dash.”

The prospect made me surly. Hadn’t I proved my jogging ability already? And if they were grooming us to become sophisticated vampire attachés, what good would climbing a rope do, anyway? I knew for a fact that rope climbing held no practical applications.

Ronan dismissed us to the lockers to get changed.

The only thing I hated more than gym class was changing for gym class. I frowned, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. Locker rooms horrified me. Mortified me. Where else could a girl suffer the torments of her peers while also braving an encyclopedia of fungal infections?

I’d once learned the hard way that sneaking into a bathroom stall to dress was a magnet for harassment. So I resorted to my usual survival drill. Pick a corner locker, face the wall, change as fast as I could.

It wasn’t fast enough.

I sensed Lilac’s approach. Felt her hovering. Heard the tittering girls who already orbited her like a bunch of dim-witted moons.

Shit. Of course I was naked, but for my bra and granny briefs. My cheeks flamed.

“Oh, Charity! How cute they were able to find a training bra for you.”

“How cute that they let a bunch of seventh graders in here,” I grumbled, not risking turning around to face her. Instead I pulled the plain navy T-shirt over my head as quickly as possible.

“As if,” she snapped. “Hey, they gave us razors, you know. You may want to shave before you make the rest of us vomit.”

“That’s the best you can do?” I stepped into the matching shorts. They were made of the same navy T-shirt material, and the whole outfit hung on me in the most unflattering way imaginable. I tucked in my shirt, hoping to give myself some shape. Plucking at the waist, I feared Lilac was right; if anyone needed a reminder of how small-chested I was, all they needed was to see me in this thing.

I sensed movement but was unable to flinch away in time. There was a quick whish-whish sound, and then Lilac’s towel rat-tailed the backs of my calves.

It stung, but not as much as the locker room full of laughing girls.

I turned. Lilac’s posse was staring me down, with her at the forefront. I wanted to show them all. “You’ll regret that.”

Lilac stood defiantly, her shoulders back in a way that showed off how well she filled out her uniform. With a flip of her maple hair, she lifted her chin. “Bring it, bitch.”

Then it hit me. As much as I wanted to escape, I wanted more to beat her. To show up Lilac and her stupid clique.

“Sure thing, von Slutling.” This time, I was the one to let my shoulder bump hers as I stormed out.