School of America in Paris. I’m pleased to see so many familiar faces, and I’m even happier to see the new ones.”
Apparently school speeches are one thing France can’t improve.
“To the students who attended last year, I invite you all to give a warm welcome to your new freshman class and to the new upperclassmen, as well .”
A smattering of polite applause. I glance around, and I’m startled to find St. Clair looking at me. He claps and lifts his hands in my direction. I blush and jerk away.
The head keeps talking. Focus, Anna. Focus. But I feel his stare as if it were the heat of the sun. My skin grows moist with sweat. I slide underneath one of the immaculately pruned trees. Why is he staring? Is he stil staring? I think he is. Why why why? Is it a good stare or a bad stare or an indifferent stare?
But when I final y look, he’s not staring at me at all. He’s biting his pinkie nail.
The head wraps up, and Rashmi bounds off to join the guys. Meredith leads me inside for English. The professeur hasn’t arrived yet, so we choose seats in the back. The classroom is smal er than what I’m used to, and it has dark, gleaming trim and tal windows that look like doors. But the desks are the same, and the whiteboard and the wal -mounted pencil sharpener. I concentrate on these familiar items to ease my nerves.
“You’l like Professeur Cole,” Meredith says. “She’s hilarious, and she always assigns the best books.”
“My dad is a novelist.” I blurt this without thinking and immediately regret it.
“Real y? Who?”
“James Ashley.” That’s his pen name. I guess Oliphant wasn’t romantic enough.
“Who?”
The humiliation factor multiplies. “The Decision? The Entrance? They were made into movies. Forget it, they all have vague names like that—”
She leans forward, excited. “No, my mom loves The Entrance!”
I wrinkle my nose.
“They aren’t that bad. I watched The Entrance with her once and total y cried when that girl died of leukemia.”
“Who died of leukemia?” Rashmi plops her backpack down next to me. St. Clair trails in behind her and takes the seat in front of Meredith.
“Anna’s dad wrote The Entrance,” Meredith says.
I cough. “Not something I’m proud of.”
“I’m sorry, what’s The Entrance?” Rashmi asks.
“It’s that movie about the boy who helps deliver the baby girl in the elevator, and then he grows up to fal in love with her,” Meredith says as St. Clair leans back in his chair and nabs her schedule. “But the day after their engagement, she’s diagnosed with leukemia.”
“Her father pushes her down the aisle in a wheelchair,” I continue. “And then she dies on the honeymoon.”
“Ugh,” Rashmi and St. Clair say together.
Enough embarrassment. “Where’s Josh?” I ask.
“He’s a junior,” Rashmi says, as if I should have known this already. “We dropped him off at pre-calc.”
“Oh.” Our conversation hits a dead end. Lovely.
“Three classes together, Mer. Give us yours.” St. Clair leans back again and steals my half sheet. “Ooo, beginning French.”
“Told you.”
“It’s not so bad.” He hands back my schedule and smiles. “You’l be reading the breakfast menu without me before you know it.”
Hmm, maybe I don’t want to learn French.
Argh! Boys turn girls into such idiots.
“Bonjour à tous.” A woman wearing a bold turquoise dress strides in and smacks her coffee cup down on the podium. She’s youngish, and she has the blondest hair I’ve ever seen on a teacher. “For the—” Her eyes scan the room until they land on me.
What? What did I do?
“For the singular person who doesn’t know me, je m’appelle Professeur Cole.” She gives an exaggerated curtsy, and the class laughs. They swivel around to stare.
“Hel o,” I say in a tiny voice.
Suspicions confirmed. Out of the twenty-five people present—the entire senior class—I’m the only new student. This means my classmates have yet another advantage over me, because every one of them is familiar with the teachers. The school is so smal that each subject is taught by the same professeur in all four grades.
I wonder what student left to vacate my position? Probably someone cooler than me. Someone with dreadlocks and pinup girl tattoos and connections in the music industry.
“I see the janitorial staff has ignored my wishes once again,” Professeur Cole says. “Everyone up.You know the drill.”
I don’t, but I push my desk when everyone else starts pushing theirs. We arrange them in a big circle. It’s odd to see all of my classmates at the same time. I take the opportunity to size them up. I don’t think I stand out, but their jeans and shoes and backpacks are more expensive than mine. They look cleaner, shinier.
No surprise there. My mom is a high school biology teacher, which doesn’t give us a lot of extra spending money. Dad pays for the mortgage and helps with the bil s, but it’s not enough, and Mom is too proud to ask for more. She says he’d refuse her anyway and just go buy another el iptical machine.
There may be some truth to that.
The rest of the morning passes in a blur. I like Professeur Cole, and my math teacher, Professeur Babineaux, is nice enough. He’s Parisian, and he
waggles his eyebrows and spits when he talks.To be fair, I don’t think the spitting is a French thing. I think he just has a lisp. It’s hard to tell with the accent.