To say that an awkward, plump white girl was a fish out of water in that particular school would be the understatement of the decade—no, the century. Olivia stood out like a tampon in an elevator, because everyone looked at her, but no one was going to acknowledge her unexpected presence. Not even the teachers, whose eyes widened when she entered the room, pulling the class’s attention her way. In the teachers’ defense, they had their hands full. Her schedule, done at the last minute, had placed her in general classes rather than the advanced courses she was normally accustomed to, which meant she felt even more out of place among raucous students who didn’t seem as concerned with academics as her former classmates.

Finally, in seventh period, a very frazzled-looking woman with three pencils shoved in her bun and glasses askew appeared at the door asking for Olivia to gather her things and come with her. Olivia had risen, and the woman had taken her by the elbow and steered her outside to the temporary buildings clumped into a circle.

“I know it doesn’t look like much, but this is the brain trust,” the woman who had introduced herself as Margaret Thomas said, gesturing at the sad little clustering. “Well, not officially, but that’s what we teachers nicknamed it. The state was supposed to release funds for a new math-and-science building, but those disappeared—poof!—as they’re wont to do. So we’re left with this, but we don’t have many qualifying students for AP courses, so here we are making do until we get the funding. If we get the funding.”

Olivia had never seen advanced students shoved into temporary buildings. In most schools, they coddled the brightest with fancy science and computer labs. Her world had indeed been turned upside down.

“Okay, so this is your last period class,” Ms. Thomas said, licking her fingers in that disgusting teacher manner and thumbing through papers that stuck up in disarray from her binder, “and here is your schedule. The highlighted classes are in the main building. That would be your foreign language—no honors or AP for Spanish—and your PE class, which is, of course, in the gymnasium. Oh, and film studies. That’s also in the main building in the auditorium. Okay, then. Go ahead. Mr. Littman and biology await you.”

She turned Olivia toward the weathered metal door, knocked, and shoved her forward. “A new one for you, John. Have fun.”

The room smelled like sulfur and formaldehyde, and the diminutive man wearing an odd polka-dot shirt and weathered jeans looked only a few years older than her sister Neve, who was in her freshman year at USC.

“Oh, well then.” The teacher adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and gave a soft smile. “We’re honored.”

And of course, Olivia turned three shades of magenta.

Then as she stood there, nudged forward by Ms. Thomas’s knee while everyone in the classroom stared at her, a boy wearing high-top Converse tennis shoes, holding an old-fashioned camera, rose and buzzed around her.