I trail behind them, staring around as we walk. The grounds are enormous. My entire suburb at home could fit on top of this school, I swear. We duck under a neat hedge arch, hop down some stone steps, and then cross through a flower garden. To our left is yet another towering building that Hellene says was built centuries ago, and I crane my neck to take it all in until I pull a muscle.

Even my body knows I don’t belong here. Too bad my mind didn’t figure that out until it was way too late.

Until today, the whole moving countries thing was sort of exciting. Mom met this guy, Dennis Baker, online like two years ago, and as it turned out, he wasn’t a catfish. He’s actually a pretty great guy. My biological dad dipped when Mom got pregnant, and she stayed single pretty much my whole childhood, so I never had any kind of father figure to compare Dennis to. Still, I’m pretty sure he’s one of the better ones. When he and Mom got serious, he even offered to move to Boulder at first, because he thought I should finish high school in my own country. But then Mom went to visit him in Henland and got all googly-eyed over it, and fast-forward a year and a half, here we are.

When all this went down—back when I was young and naïve—the first thing I thought was, Holy shit, I get to live in Henland? It might be a small country, but it’s freaking stunning, and it’s within driving distance of places like Paris and Brussels. Seriously, I could drive south from Boulder for longer than either of those trips and still be in Colorado. The second thought was, Wait, isn’t Bramppath there? Bramppath College (college, it turns out, can confusingly also mean high school in some countries) is famous for being one of the best schools in the world for pumping out musical geniuses. Maybe, I thought, I could be one of them.

I don’t think Mom and Dennis were exactly psyched about the idea of me going to boarding school, but they let me apply for a scholarship anyway. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure they thought I’d never get it in a million years.

Then I got short-listed. And accepted.

Which brings me to today. Touring Bramppath in person for the first time, as out of my depth as a rubber duck in the ocean.

“The ballroom is to the right of the tennis courts,” Hellene says to Mom, who makes her “impressed” noise. “The main piano is there,” Hellene adds, pointing, and I perk up. “You can book practice slots online, but I believe you’re the only serious player at the school at the moment. It’s all about the strings this year. You should find it mostly free.”