Luce had a piece of paper with her schedule printed on it, a half-empty notebook she’d started to fill at Dover in her Advanced European History class last year, two number two pencils, her favorite eraser, and the sudden bad feeling that Arriane might have been right about the classes at Sword & Cross.

… is her bad feeling connected to the contents of her purse somehow? 

No, it’s because the other students are all standing around instead of sitting before the teacher is there.  As opposed to what, silently waiting at their desks and not doing anything?  Or maybe she thinks the classes will be bad because the classroom is ugly? 

Cam comes by and flirts with her a bit, making small talk that is only annoying because I have leftover annoyance from yesterday.

surprised to hear a flirting lilt in her voice.

Luce doesn’t decide to flirt with Cam, it just happens without her willing it or even being in control of it.

She didn’t usually get involved with rocker guys—but then again, none of them had ever pulled the desk next to her even closer, plopped down beside her, and stared at her with eyes quite so green.

Well that doesn’t tell us jack-didly squat besides the fact that she hasn’t physically been near a “rocker-type.”  So what?  At least say that she didn’t expect to be drawn to one, or that she’d never liked them before but this one was nicer than she’d expected.  Give us something to go on besides this.  Heck, all this tells us is that apparently Luce will go for whatever type of guy is near her and nice.  (And maybe not even that last qualification, since she’s still thinking about Daniel, too.)

The other kids filed into desks around her, and soon it stopped being so noteworthy that Luce was sitting prim and proper at her desk

See, Luce?  No reason to angst over the fact that they weren’t sitting down before the bell even rang.

Daniel? Cam? She’d been at this school for what, forty-five minutes?—and her mind was already juggling two different guys. The whole reason she was at this school at all was because the last time she’d been interested in a guy, things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. She should not be allowing herself to get all smitten (twice!) on her very first day of school.

I said I wouldn’t get upset about romance being romance, but the second half of that statement is a good point.  And I’d like to see some more pay-off for it.  Instead, she’s got about the same amount of flustered bewilderment as any person would in such a situation.  

Luce thinks about how nice it would be to be friends with Cam, since he seems mostly like a good egg and also having a friend around would help her settle in.  The fact that Arriane is clinging to her like a bad smell and desperate for Luce’s friendship apparently means nothing in the “making friends” department.

A closer look at the syllabus was all it took for Luce to see that Arriane had been right about being in a hellhole: an impossible reading load, TEST in big, bold letters every third class period, and a thirty-page paper on—seriously?—the failed tyrant of your choice. Thick black parentheses had been drawn in black Sharpie around the assignments Luce had missed during the first few weeks. In the margins, Mr. Cole had written See me for Makeup Research Assignment. If there was a more effective way of soul-sucking, Luce would be scared to find out.

But wait.  I had the impression earlier that Luce actual liked school and learning things and such, considering how she thought all Arriane’s complaints were just rooted in not enjoying school.  Plus, she tells us that she was in an advanced placement history class in her last school and that this is her best subject.  This does not seem like a surprise to someone who both is used to hard courses and likes them.  In fact, it seems rather easy from that context.  A bit much for a “dump your kids” school, but still a step down from ivy-league-prep-school. 

My dad makes his advanced placement kids learn how to be a whole country and then they role-play WWI, dungeons and dragons style.  The prep work for that includes massive amounts of reading and research and paper writing and they have to work with other “countries” to understand all the political play that was going on before the war even started.  And that’s just one project of many that they do, in public school advanced placement, not even prep school advanced placement.  Many private school regular classes had even more work than that.  

In short:  Luce is yet another main character who can’t live up to her claims of smartness. 

At lunchtime, Luce and Arriane get together and complain about how schools is just so terrible and such as they go off to the cafeteria.  I wouldn’t mind so much, except all their complaints are normal teens-hating-school complaints.  Sure, they can dislike it, I don’t care about that, but if you set things up as “uber tough and depressing reform school,” then you have to give me something new besides bad cafeteria food. 

Luce says she’s a vegetarian, which awkwardly segue into Arriane teasing her for wanting to “sink her teeth into” Daniel.

That pull toward him—she still didn’t understand where it came from, and yet here it was again. She made herself tear her eyes away from his blond hair, from the smooth line of his jaw. She refused to be caught staring.

You know, this is my main complaint about paranormal romance, and certain other styles of romance.  This is fucking creepy.  And I mean that literally.  If I was feeling a “pull” towards someone that I couldn’t explain, that would scare me.  It would be a legit source of confusion and fear.  But instead of all that, the characters go on with their lives as if random, out-of-the-blue emotions are just a thing that happens.  I wouldn’t mind so much if they would just admit that it’s attraction/lust and treat it as such – I can certainly understand being attracted to someone at inconvenient times – but the overblown writing turns it into something else.  

All Luce did was take one step backward, but as soon as she did, she felt the rough shove of two hands on her shoulders

And then she flails out and knocks over a girl molly’s lunch tray.  So … who pushed her?  I guess we’ll never know.  

Molly turns out to be your typical mean girl, complete with instant hatred and extreme reactions.  Which, this is a school for people with issues, so that’s actual less annoying to me than it would be in other novels.  Molly stomps on Luce’s hand and calls out insults to her and Arriane.  Arriane responds by punching her in the face.

Arriane who caught Luce’s attention. She’d begun convulsing, her arms thrown up and jerking in the air.

 Which results in Arriane getting an electric shock from her wristband.  Why was she throwing her hands in the air?  Was it just to freak out Luce?  She does tease her a bit after, with a “got you” type statement. 

But man, this school just continues to suck donkey balls.  Tazing kids after they attack someone?  If Arriane had a knife, Molly would be dead right now, and all the electric shocks in the world wouldn’t do jack-squat after the fact.  This haphazard approach to control isn’t unbelievable, but that’s because crappy dumping grounds masquerading as reform schools really are a thing.

then Luce felt a small jolt from Arriane’s body and realized that the girl was still at the mercy of the wristband.

Wait, it’s still shocking her?  Okay, now we’re into unbelievable territory. 

The attendant from chapter one shows up to continue to be the only authority figure we see at this school.  Randy gives all three of them detention the following morning before carting Arriane off for medical attention. 

After Randy is gone, Molly dumps a plate of meatloaf on Luce’s head, which makes Luce take off in tears looking for a bathroom.

Luce could hear the squish of her own mortification as all of Sword & Cross got its viewing of the meat-loaf-coated new girl.

I had to read that, and now so do you.

 In the bathroom, Luce finds gabby, the pretty girl from the orientation.

“Whoops, ’scuse me, honey,” she said. Her southern-accented voice was sweet, but her face crumpled up at the sight of Luce. “Oh God, you look terrible. What happened?”

What happened? As if the whole school didn’t already know. This girl was probably playing dumb so Luce would relive the whole mortifying scene.

Dafuq gave you that impression?

Gabby offers her some help cleaning up, but Luce brushes her off.  After Gabby leaves, a new girl comes in and also offers to help.  But the new girl is allowed to be nice because… she’s not blond and pretty? 

New girl is named Penn, and she goes to school there despite not being required to because her dad was the grounds keeper before he died, and now she’s a ward of the headmaster.

“Not everyone at Sword & Cross is a whore or a jock.”

“Huh?” Luce said.

“Sword & Cross … Whores and Jocks. Lame nickname in town for this school. […]“All I meant was, not everyone here is a complete jerk.”

“Just the majority?” Luce asked

A, so this is going to be one of those kinds of friendships.  The kind where you two bond over the fact that you’re so nice and non-judgmental, unlike all those people that you’re currently judging?  Luce, the only person who’s been mean to you so far was Molly.  And I guess Daniel, but he struck me more as a typical teenage boy who still thinks being rude is the height of humor.  I think one person in the cafeteria laughed at her before she fled, but that’s it, and gabby offered to loan her make up to help her get over looking so freaked out.  But Luce cares not for any of that, she just hating everyone except her new friend here, because that’s just the kind of “nice” person that she is. 

Penn all informs us that she works in the school’s office because the staff trusts her as the only non-problem student there.  So she repays that trust by habitually reading everyone’s personal files.  Wow, real winner, this one.  Are we sure the school isn’t stocked with perfectly nice people and they just shun these two for being jerks?

“I’m sorry,” Luce said, lowering her voice, too. So someone else here knew what it was like to go through a major loss.

You’re in a school for kids with behavior problems, do you think those pop up out of nowhere?  I’m sure at least some of the other students have had losses in their lives, and the rest probably have other variations of horror stories.

“Then I guess you’ve got more than some other people at this school,” Luce said, thinking of Arriane. Her mind rolled back to the way Arriane had gripped her hand on the quad today, the eager look in her blue eyes when she made Luce promise she’d swing by her dorm room tonight.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Penn said. “It wouldn’t be Monday if Arriane didn’t get carted off to the nurse after a fit.”

…is Penn a mind reader?  

Then the two sit around a laugh about to Molly will probably have a “fit” too, because her medication is always being adjusted and that causes various sorts of problems for her that are… funny?  Man, I hate these two a little bit more with every page.

“When are you going to stop knowing everything about me [thanks to reading all my personal files]?”

“Not in the foreseeable future,” Penn said, tugging her down the hall and back toward the cinder-block classrooms. “You’ll learn to love it soon, I promise. I’m a very powerful friend to have.”

… Penn is scaring me.  Please make her go away.