She blinked twice, rather rapidly.

The boy standing opposite her did the same. There was something strangely familiar about his warm brown eyes, and how one lip was pulled down absurdly low, teeth gnawing at it furiously. It was a motion that she performed too, whenever she was unable to recall something. But it wasn't just that - it was the curve of his pale nose, his freckled skin, the way his black curls seemed to stand on end and crackle with energy. Maybe she was somebody he knew, Isabella thought desperately, maybe she'd helped him before ...

And then he spoke. "Izzy?"

"Yep, that's me!" Izzy forced herself to say brightly, and smiled, although it felt like it wasn't what the boy was asking.

The boy shook his head impatiently, and brushed his dark hair out of his eyes in a slow and steady gesture. In the heart beat it took for him to do that, Izzy took in absolutely everything about him; she counted the freckles on his wrist, let her eyes trace the veins pulsing delicately underneath his skin. And then her gaze settled on the student council insigna emblazoned on his blazer, with his name stitched below.

'Kieren House'.

She summed it up in one glance; her skinny, dark-eyed, dark-haired form, and his lithe, dark-eyed, dark-haired form. What were the odds of them meeting with the same surname?