weeks alone, we’ve spent two in Tashkent, one in Doha, two in Sarajevo, and then the past seven days in Tunis.
Shivering, I let go of my necklace, a delicate gold chain with a pendant that rests at my collarbone, and fold my arms across my chest.
Tunis.
I glance down at my shins. I’m wearing a pleated wool skirt and black opaque tights, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing it—the way my bare skin looked with his blood spattered all over. Like someone dipped a brush into a can of crimson paint and flicked it at me.
It wasn’t until we arrived in Waterford last night that I scrubbed it off completely. I used a toothbrush, scouring the pores of my skin until the bristles went limp.
The drive is short. Moments later, we enter a circular driveway in front of a symmetrical brick building, two stories high. Stone-engraved words arch over the front entrance amid neatly trimmed ivy: Waterford High School, est. 1954.
My father stops at the curb. “Bearings?” he asks.
I wave my hand flat in the direction of the sharp granite peaks. “North,” I answer. We both stare ahead at the majestic range.
“Mountains make it too easy.” He smiles. “Now, go straight through the main doors.” He hands me a schedule with a map stapled behind it. “We’ll see you this afternoon. Unless …”
“I don’t want to wait until Monday,” I insist.
“Sophia, a few more days won’t make a difference. Who starts school on a Friday?”
I open my door. “I do.” Slinging my backpack onto my shoulder, I get out of the car.
“We’re good?” my father asks.
I study the map and pass it back to him. “We’re good,” I say.
As soon as I close the door, he drives away. This is his way of encouraging me. Expressing confidence in me.
It doesn’t work.
As he turns the corner, my thoughts spiral.
It’s all happening too fast. It’s been eighteen months since I last attended school. Now I’m supposed to step beneath an ivy-covered plaque and be a student again—an American one—just another teenager in high school.
But how do I pretend that forty-two hours ago I wasn’t alone inside that sweltering safe house? Pretend I hadn’t heard his footsteps? Hadn’t wondered why they left me alone if they knew he would come?
Listening to the empty street, I stand in front of this enormous brick building and check that my ironed, white-collared shirt is tucked in.
A crisp autumn wind whistles past my ear and chills the backs of my legs.
This is just school. School.
I’ve done this dozens of times. There is no reason to be nervous. No reason to be afraid.
Except there is.
Because this new American life I’m expected to live? It terrifies me. Now, I’m expected to belong. To fit in. To accept that for the first time in my life, we plan to stay.
I can’t do this.
CHAPTER 3
I can do this—all I have to do is blend in.
Class has started by the time I check in at the office and reach my second-period classroom. I pause at the doorway. The students look like the American kids at my international school in Brussels—except rather than Chanel and cashmere, they are wearing Patagonia and denim.
“… just the questions on the board,” the teacher says from his perch on an oak desk in the front. He is dressed as casually as his students—a frumpy shirt tucked into tan trousers.
In the front row, a petite girl stands. “Bonjour. Je m’appelle Lydia …”
When she finishes, the teacher looks over at me. “May I help you?” he asks politely.
I straighten my blazer and step inside. He glances at his clipboard. “You’re new?” he asks, squinting at me through his eyeglasses.
“Yes, sir.”
He corrects me. “Oui, monsieur.”
“Oui, monsieur,” I repeat.
“Welcome.” He inclines his head, switching back to English. “I’m Monsieur Steen. Why don’t you sit over there?” He motions to an empty seat in the corner. “I assume you took the requisite courses at your last school?”
“I believe so, sir.” I walk across the classroom, sit down, and put my backpack beneath my desk.
The girl beside me is wearing skinny jeans, a cream sweater, and red sneakers. I can’t help feeling self-conscious in my pleated skirt and tights. Doesn’t my mother know how casual they dress here?
“We’re practicing introductions. You can listen and then have a turn,” Monsieur Steen tells me.
A brawny boy named Cole Richards stands next. He was born in Waterford, has two brothers, and wants to be a cake farmer—or so he says in French.