Excerpt from Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

More than anything she feared running up against Julietta or Pammie, both so earnest and so unself-conscious, like children. They'd be joyfully stroking whatever their hands lit upon.

She'd been found. A hand grasped her left knee, ran its palm down the front of her thigh, the swirled ridges of stitching. She could feel its heat through her jeans. Just like that, in the pit of her stomach a hollowness came, a trapdoor swinging silently open, as if Mr. Kingsley's voice had been the nagging wind, ineffectively rattling the lock, which this hand had now sprung.

The one hand remained on her thigh while another found her right hand and raised it, laid it flush on a lightly shaved face. It took her thumb, limp and helpless, adjusted its position, and pressed it as if meaning to make a thumbprint. She felt beneath the pad a slight bump, like a mosquito-bite welt. David's birthmark, a flattened chocolate-colored mole, the same diameter as a pencil eraser, on his left cheek, just offshore of his mouth.

They had not, to this point in their scanty acquaintance, discussed David's mole. What fourteen-year-olds talked about, even took note of, moles? But Sarah had wordlessly noticed it. David wordlessly knew that she had. This was his mark, his Braille. Her hand no longer passively lay on his face but held it, as if balancing it on his neck. She slid her thumb over his lips, as distinct in their shape as his mole. His lips were full but not feminine, closer to simian. Slightly Mick Jagger. His eyes, though small, were set deep and resembled blue agates. Something intelligently feral about them as well. He was not at all normally handsome but did not need to be.

Excerpted from Trust Exercise by Susan Choi. Copyright © 2019 by Susan Choi. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.