Back when they were in middle school, Mandy Marzulli had been the first one to develop. In tenth grade, her braces came off and she started modeling. At sixteen she made the cover of the “School’s Out” issue of Seventeen magazine, wearing a white bikini on a beach in Montauk. Mandy was a junior and Stuart was a senior. Getting together had seemed sort of obvious. Mandy just hung around after one of his concerts and handed him a beer. Stuart took the beer and kissed her, and from then on, they were a couple. They walked out of school every day holding hands. Mandy didn’t even finish high school. She went on the road with the Blind Mice, traveling everywhere, drinking a lot and not getting much sleep, taking exotic vacations. It was a whirlwind. Then, at twenty-five she got pregnant. A year after Teddy was born they got married and the band broke up. They were both Brooklyn-born, he from Windsor Terrace and she from Bay Ridge, but they’d bought a place in Cobble Hill because the elementary school was supposed to be good and it looked like a nice place to grow up. Stuart started the same job he had now, and Mandy hung out with Teddy and watched TV.

A photograph was taped messily to the wall behind Nurse Peaches’ desk. It was a picture of her playing the drums, her reddish-blond hair pulled up in a 1960s beehive hairdo, a giant grin on her red-lipsticked lips. She looked awesome.

“You play the drums?” Stuart demanded.

“Do I play the drums,” Peaches repeated. She dragged the comb through his hair with rapid, jerky strokes. “I do sometimes, yes. At this crazy bar no one ever goes into. I put on music and play along on the drums. It’s pretty lame, but also sort of fun.”

“I need to check it out.”

“No, you don’t.” Peaches hadn’t yet owned up to the fact that she knew who he was. Now was her chance. “You’re famous. And I’m really not that good.”

Chapter 2

Latin was Shy Clarke’s new favorite subject. She’d only started last year, and she’d hated it, but lately she couldn’t wait for Latin class.

“Latin is a dead language,” her mother, Wendy, insisted. “You should be taking Mandarin. It’s the language of the future, whether we like it or not. That’s why all the private schools are offering it.”