Tuesday’s Rat’s easy day. All she’s got is French and math in the morning, sports and civic education in the afternoon.

At lunchtime, she and Angélique go to their usual spot behind the skate park and sit, sharing a joint, each with one bud of Rat’s MP3 in her ear. Angélique was the first kid Rat knew to get an MP3, but Angélique’s is broken.

She finishes at four. When she gets through the metal detector, Jérôme’s waiting for her on his motorbike. Two older girls in halter tops and cling-tight jeans are hanging around him, flirting.

Last year, when Jérôme was still at Victor Hugo, he was just this nerdy-looking white kid with an ass too skinny to hold up his jeans. No girl would give him the time of day. Then over the summer, Jérôme shot up three inches and started lifting weights. Now he’s at Lycée Arago in Perpignan, and when he shows up at Victor Hugo on his motorbike, it’s, Hey Jérôme, can you give me a ride to Moulin-à-Vent? Hey, Jérôme, would you like to come to a party Saturday night?

Rat suspects he’s been going out with her friend Marie’s older sister, but Jérôme would never tell.

“Did you bring my sleeping bag?” she asks.

He hands her the backpack with both their sleeping bags attached. She gets on the back of Jérôme’s bike, and they take off, wobbly, engine sputtering.

To Vanessa, it’s incomprehensible that Rat spends most of her waking and sleeping hours with a healthy adolescent male who nonetheless isn’t her boyfriend.

Last summer, when the grown-ups finally agreed that Rat and Jérôme were old enough to go off camping alone, Vanessa’s only question was, “Are you using protection?” Not, have you got ground cover, a lighter, a water bottle, but have you got a condom.

Rat was more nonplussed than angry. “Mama, I’m not sleeping with Jérôme! That would be, like, incest or something!”

Next time Vanessa tried to give Rat her little contraception speech (I don’t care what you’re doing as long as you’re safe) Rat cut her short.

“Mama, I’m not sleeping with any boy. End of subject.”

And Vanessa, offended, had inquired, “You aren’t gay, are you? Because I think you should tell me. Not that I’d mind. I don’t have any prejudices, as you know.”

Rat burst out laughing, but Vanessa persisted. “What?! What’s so funny? Well, I’m glad you think it’s funny having a daughter like a clam. I mean, you’d tell me, right?”

“Tell you what? If I’m gay or if I need protection?”

“You think I’m funny?”

“Mama, leave me alone, I’m only fourteen.”