“Go sit in the next row,” Anne said to her. To the rest of the class she said, “You had all better be reading. There’s going to be a quiz this afternoon.”

Groans of dismay ran through the room.

Anne squatted down beside Dennis Farman’s desk and looked at his face. He continued to crouch over his notebook, pretending not to notice her. His eyes narrowed and his mouth puckered into a tight knot of concentration. He looked angry. He flipped to a fresh page in his notebook and started scribbling again, gripping his pen so hard his knuckles were white.

“Dennis,” she said very quietly. “Is there some reason you can’t sit down properly today?”

He didn’t answer her, but his cheeks flushed red and tears suddenly welled in his eyes. He dug the tip of his pen into the paper so hard it tore.

Anne’s mind went to the night before, to the Farman household, and Frank Farman’s promise that he would deal with Dennis.

She glanced at the clock and stood up. “All right, everyone. Quietly go line up in the hall for lunch.”

Dennis went to bolt from his seat. Anne put her hand on his shoulder. “Not you.”

He winced and jerked away from her touch as if she had burned him.

Wide eyes glanced back at them as the rest of the class filed out the door. The speculation would now run rampant as to the fate of their resident troublemaker.

“Last one out closes the door, please,” she said.

The tension in the silence after the door closed was like a balloon filling and filling and filling with air until it was about to burst. Anne pulled the chair away from Cody Roache’s desk and sat down.

“Did you get in trouble for skipping school yesterday?”

Dennis looked away from her, his face flushing darker.

“You know, it doesn’t help you to keep all those feelings bottled up, Dennis. If you’re angry, say you’re angry. We can deal with that together. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

He screwed himself around in his seat until he had all but his back to her. Anne said nothing for a moment, not sure what tack to take. She had a terrible feeling about what might have happened. She had stood up to Frank Farman. He might have even taken it as an embarrassment. And he might have taken that out on Dennis.

Her father had never raised a hand to either her mother or herself, but Anne knew well all other forms of punishment that could be dished out by an angry man with a fragile ego. How many times had her father reduced her mother to a quivering, sobbing mass of inadequacy with his vicious words? And how many times had he tried to do the same thing to her?