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 still staring? I think he is. Why why why? Is it a good stare or a bad stare or an indifferent stare?

But when I finally 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 smaller than what I’m used to, and it has dark, gleaming trim and tall windows that look like doors. But the desks are the same, and the whiteboard and the wall-mounted pencil sharpener. I concentrate on these familiar items to ease my nerves.

“You’ll 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.

“Really? 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 totally 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.