“What?”
“I never threw you from our table.You stopped coming.” Her voice is tight.
“But you were mad at me! For . . . for what I did to Mer.”
“Al friends fight.” She crosses her arms, and I realize she’s quoting me. I said it last autumn after she fought with St. Clair about El ie.
El ie. I’ve ditched Rashmi, just like El ie.
“I’m sorry.” My heart fal s. “I can’t do anything right.”
Rashmi’s arms loosen, and she tugs one of her long braids. She’s uncomfortable, an unusual emotion for her. “Just promise me next time you attack
Amanda, you’l actual y break something?”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Relax.” She shoots me an uneasy glance. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.”
“You know, I stil have another week of detention for that fight.”
“That was a harsh punishment. Why didn’t you just tell the head what Amanda said?”
I nearly drop my tray. “What? How do you know what she said?”
“I don’t.” Rashmi frowns. “But it must have been something seriously nasty to make you react like that.”
I avert my eyes, relieved. “Amanda just caught me at a bad time.” Which isn’t entirely untrue. I place my order with Monsieur Boutin—a large bowl of
yogurt with granola and honey, my favorite—and turn back to her. “You guys . . . don’t believe what Amanda and Dave are saying, do you?”
“Dave is a jerk. If I thought you’d slept with him, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
I’m gripping my tray so tightly that my knuckles are turning white. “So, um, St. Clair knows I never slept with him?”
“Anna. We all think Dave is a jerk.”
I’m quiet.
“You should talk to St. Clair,” she says.
“I don’t think he wants to talk to me.”
She pushes her tray away. “And I think he does.”
I eat breakfast alone again, because I stil can’t face Mer. I’m five minutes late to English. Professeur Cole is sitting on top of her desk, sipping coffee.
She narrows her eyes as I creep into my seat, but she doesn’t say anything. Her orange sundress sways as she swings her feet. “People. Wake up,” she
says. “We’re talking about the technical aspects of translation again. Do I have to do all the work here? Who can tell me one of the problems translators face?”
Rashmi raises her hand. “Wel , most words have different meanings.”
“Good,” Professeur Cole says. “More. Elaborate.”
St. Clair sits next to Rashmi, but he’s not listening. He scribbles something fiercely in the margins of his book. “Wel ,” Rashmi says. “It’s the translator’s job to determine which definition the author means. And not only that, but there could be other meanings in relation to the context.”55
“So what you’re saying,” Professeur Cole says, “is that the translator has a lot of decisions to make. That there are multiple meanings to be found in any word, in any sentence. In any situation.”