Regardless, I got used to Jane being there, real fast. I rejoiced in the secretiveness of our conversations and started to enjoy the company. To count upon it.

As for Jane, she chatted, not constantly, but pointedly. She had her figurative index finger aimed in full accusation at human folly. According to her, there was plenty to criticize about her nineteenth-century era and homeland, and she didn’t exactly spare me her sarcastic opinions of my time period.

Take gym class, for instance.

Young ladies engaged in sport with the gentlemen? Jane said that first day, her tone incredulous. How barbaric.

I stretched in my assigned spot, wishing I were anywhere else. “Barbaric” is the word. It’s downright gladiator-like. Gym is an endurance test to see how much humiliation you can tolerate before you die.

I see, she replied, but I didn’t think she had any idea. Gym was my daily nightmare. Having Jane with me, though, made those forty-two minutes of hell pass far more quickly.

On her second day, she turned her dry wit to the world of academia. And, more specifically, to my place in it.

Our history teacher asked, “Who can name the three-word motto the people of France chanted during the French Revolution?”

I’d read the chapter and could answer this, but I didn’t want to be the one to raise my hand. Sam, who was sitting across the aisle from me and knew the answers to everything, ignored the teacher completely and played with the Velcro on his Trapper Keeper. Our teacher, however, shot us pleading looks, and, to me, it felt cruel to refuse to offer him some kind of lifeline. So, I made brief eye contact. Big mistake.

After another twenty seconds of silence, the teacher sighed and said, “Okay, Miss Barnett. Why don’t you tell us? We all know you know the answer.”

The class snickered as I murmured my now obligatory “liberté, égalité, fraternité” and some smart-jock buddy of Sam’s whispered, “She can remember that, but she can’t remember to ‘bump, set, spike’ in volleyball?”