My mom liked to tell people that I was the "easy going" child.

I think this was mostly due to comparison with my siblings. My older brother, Evan, had been a two-year-old terror who had then evolved into a moody teenager before escaping off to college. Mallory, meanwhile, had been born with a scream that could break the sound barrier, and her volume hadn't diminished with age. Wedged between these two, little old me—Jessa Brown—was a verifiable angel.

That said, I guess I was pretty easy going—at least by teenager standards. When you're seventeen, your brain is supposed to get rewired by the rush of hormones flooding through your veins. It's why you lash out and hate your parents and start doing drugs until it all sorts itself out in your twenties.

But I'd never really felt that way. I wasn't angry at the world for existing. I didn't yell at my parents on a nightly basis. And I never had so much as a crush on a guy in school, let alone a boyfriend to whisk me off to parties where people snorted cocaine and had sex on table tops.

Honestly, there was a part of me concerned that there was something wrong with me. Did I have some sort of undiagnosed hormone deficiency? Was I dropped on my head as a child? Was I was just weird?

But then again, there was another part of me that didn't mind my drama-free life. My life so far, painted in broad strokes, was a leisurely boat ride with only the occasional wave. I didn't have any cause to be angry or mean or upset. I had a loving family, I did fine in school, and I had a best friend who I'd give up the world for. I had everything I wanted.

And then Monday rolled around and everything changed.

Taylor plopped a crinkled paper bag onto my desk in homeroom and grinned.

"Take a look, Jessa," she said, swinging her legs beneath her chair.

I peered inside the bag and my jaw dropped. "They had morning glory muffins today?"

"Yep!" My best friend grinned and took a sip of her iced coffee. "Usually some douche grabs the last one, but not today. I got the distinct honor." She gestured fancily with her arm. "For you, my dear."

"I shall honor this muffin forever," I said, taking a bite.

"Hey!" Wyatt Burger interjected, leaning over his desk. "Why don't I ever get a muffin, Taylor?"

Taylor rolled up the sleeves of her canvas jacket. "'Cause you're an ass. Maybe you'd get a muffin if you were less of one."

Wyatt's mouth dropped in mock horror, but he was cut off by the bell and the arrival of our US government teacher.

"All right everyone. Settle down," Ms. Morgan said from the front of the room.

As I slipped the muffin away, one last student walked in through the classroom door. But once my eyes fell to her, I couldn't help but double take.

She walked into class like she owned the school, in a pair of black high-heels and a short pleated skirt. She took a seat in the second row without hesitation, as if she had sat there everyday for the past month. And no one else in the class gave the girl a second glance.

All of this made the hairs on my arm stand on end.

Arlington High School may not be tiny, but it was still fairly small. So small, in fact, that I knew every student in the school. And this girl was brand-spanking new.

And because Arlington was so small, the arrival of a new student—particularly their arrival one month into the school year—would drum up a certain amount of interest. My class liked to play Guess the New Kid's Name, with bets placed in homeroom before anyone was allowed to approach the student. And the teachers were just as excited. Almost all of them would change their lesson plan for the day to incorporate strange name games and icebreakers, hoping that by the end of the day the new student would feel at home at Arlington High. And yet no one was batting an eye.

I glanced to my right. Taylor wasn't paying attention; she was sipping her iced coffee and sketching something in the margins of her notebook, likely mocking out some larger masterpiece she'd be working on in art later.

I pulled out my phone and sent her a quick text: New girl! 11 o'clock.

This caught Taylor's attention. She looked up, her hazel eyes scanning the room. "Where?" she mouthed.

I pointed as sneakily as I could. "Girl with the long black hair," I whispered.

Now Taylor looked even more confused. She sent me a short text: You mean Lana Gibbons?

You know her? I texted back.

Taylor stared at me, crinkling her brows. Then, with a buzz, I felt her text come through: What are you talking about? She's gone here for four years.

I stared at her text in shock, my breath catching in my throat. My first thought was that Taylor was messing with me, but my friend had never been a particularly good liar; her eyes were too expressive to hide her true thoughts. It was something I appreciated about her: she told you the truth, even if it stung.

But even if Taylor were trying to pull a prank on me, it wouldn't explain everyone else's indifferent reactions. Wyatt Burger prided himself on the fact that he had correctly guessed the first letter of the past three new kids' names, and his eyes were glazed over as he stared at the board, already half asleep.

"Pass your homework up!" Ms. Morgan announced, drawing me out of my thoughts.

As I ruffled through my bag for the worksheet, I kept an eye on the new girl. I expected this "Lana" to raise her hand and explain that she didn't have the assignment. Instead, she reached into her backpack and pulled out her completed worksheet.

Okay, I thought, trying to reason it out as I passed my homework up. So she's definitely a student here. Maybe she's usually in the afternoon gov class, and for some reason she needed to switch into the morning one today?

My theory made logical sense, but it still didn't sit right. Arlington was small. I was pretty sure that, given enough time, I could name every single person in my graduating class. So how was it possible that this girl had been here for four years without me ever seeing her once?

Trying my best to hide my phone, I opened Facebook and typed in "Lana Gibbons."

That's when I saw that we were already Facebook friends.

What the hell?

My stomach lurched as I pulled up her pictures, hoping these would give me more insight into what was going on. The first few photos were selfies, a nice assortment of pics of her in a bathroom, or on a beach, or waiting in line at the grocery store. I examined the images, wondering yet again how I could have never noticed someone like her around. She was gorgeous: tall and thin, with ivory skin, dark eyes, and an ethnic background that was hard to place; perhaps she was Italian and a quarter Japanese? Or maybe Russian with some Spanish in the mix?

I let that thought drift away as I uncovered photos of her with people I recognized. Kelly Zhu from my art class, Mark Lyons from AP Bio, Eleanor White from Calc...

And then, with one more swipe, I came upon a group photo. It had been taken at Taylor's birthday dinner at the end of September. We had gone out to eat at a snazzy Italian restaurant, and since it was such a small group, her mother had kindly paid for all of us.

My eyes brushed over the photo. There had only been three of us there: me, Taylor, and Samantha Stevens...

But standing in the photo at the edge of the group, her arm wrapped around my waist, her head tilted and pressed against my cheek, was Lana Gibbons.

My heart pounded wildly in my chest. This was impossible. She had not been there, I knew that. I knew that for certain.

And yet there she was in the photo, grinning at me through my phone screen, her dark eyes twinkling.

I turned put my phone away and pressed my forehead to the surface of my desk. Dear God, I thought. I've gone crazy.

- - -

Hello everyone and welcome to Devil in the Details! I like to say it's a book written for readers who like teen fiction with a healthy dose of fantasy/paranormal. It's fun and campy with some romance and LGBTQ elements... but also has a bit of a dark twist. ;)

If you see an error, don't hesitate to point it out and I'll fix it immediately. I pride myself on having good grammar but sometimes pesky typos sneak their way in...

Anyway, thanks for giving this story a chance, and I hope you enjoy the tale! :)

~Bdicocco <3