Isle of Night by Verónica Wolff

last chance, too. Lilac and her ilk were just as desperate as me. And that meant Lilac had secrets. She and I had something in common; I just couldn’t imagine what.
    She climbed in—gracefully, I might add—and glowered at me. Gaze shifting to Ronan, she held up her parka. “Could you toss this in the back for me?” Her tone was saccharine sweet.
    At his nod, she whipped it right at my face. The metal nub at the end of the hood string snapped me in the eyes.
    â€œOops!” Smiling, she gave an innocent shrug.
    That was it. I would find a way out of this place. When he’d talked me onto the plane, I’d thought I’d be in for some cool schooling, but this was brainwashed-cult crap, and I was not down with it.
    It was only a matter of time before I annoyed someone as badly as Mimi had, and I refused to have my guts spilled in front of an audience of Barbies. My last stop would not be on some vampire’s dinner plate.
    Once everyone settled, I leaned close to Ronan’s ear. “How do I get out?”
    â€œShush,” he hissed. “You can’t get out.”
    As the other girls loaded in, I considered my situation. I was more helpless and alone than I’d ever been in Florida, only now I was surrounded by things that wanted to eat me. The driver put the truck in gear and drove. I felt as desolate as the bleak, gray world outside my window.
    I called my mom’s picture to mind, taking strength from the memory of her yellow hair, that bright yellow pantsuit. It seemed that, yet again, I’d be forced to make my own way, in a world bled dry of color.
    Ronan was wrong—I would get out. I’d survived the most difficult and loveless of childhoods, and I’d survive this, too. I leaned close again, and felt him bristle. “So Watchers aren’t allowed to leave the island? Ever?”
    â€œOf course,” he said, his voice tight with tension, “Watchers are allowed to leave.”
    â€œThen how do I become a Watcher?”
    He cleared his throat to speak in a hoarse whisper, and I had to strain to hear him over the chatting and posturing of the girls. “First, you stay alive. And then you must prove yourself better than all the others.”
    We pulled onto a rough, cobbled drive, and the truck jostled Ronan’s body into mine. I inhaled sharply. I trusted this guy about as far as I could throw him. I would not be affected by the warm press of his thigh on mine. I would focus.
    I’d focus and excel and stay alive. Long enough to escape.
    â€œYou’re here.” Ronan nodded to a forbidding structure that made me nostalgic for the fortress we’d just left. It was a rambling old mansion of pale reddish stone. Each window was a narrow Gothic archway rising to a fine point. A colonnade of lanky towers, chimneys, columns, and turrets gave the impression of a spindly, ethereal thing, reaching skyward.
    â€œ That’s my dorm?” As I got out, my eyes went to the clusters of bad girls spilling from the other SUVs, cursing their fates. “It’s like Hogwarts in Gangland.”
    â€œThis is the edge of the quad.” Ronan pointed to the tops of some other buildings just beyond the dorm. “There’s the Acari dorm, Initiate housing, academic buildings, and a chapel.”
    â€œChapel?” I was dying to walk alongside the building for a better view, but something told me that’d be frowned upon. “You’re shitting me.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Annelise, your language leaves something to be desired. And, no, I’m not exaggerating. There is a chapel, though it hasn’t seen a priest in my lifetime.”
    A tall black girl emerged from the building. Spotting Ronan, she approached us, a warm smile on her face.
    â€œHere comes one of the Proctors now.” He pointed her out, but he needn’t have.
    She’d stood out the moment she glided from the dorm. Dramatically so. She was