“Again, that’s not very exciting. I love our village, but we’re all quite . . . normal.”

“In our town,” I said solemnly, “that would make you a kind of god.”

She laughed a little.

“I’m not kidding,” I said. “My family—I mean, my mom and dad and me—are the normal people in town. For example, there’s my uncle Will. He owns eight freezers.”

“That doesn’t sound so odd.”

“Seven of them are on the second floor, in a spare bedroom. He also doesn’t believe in banks, so he keeps his money in peanut butter jars in the closet. When I was little, he used to give me empty jars as gifts so I could collect money and watch it grow.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Then there’s Billy Mack, who started his own religion out of his garage, the People’s Church of Universal People. Even my grandmother, who is almost normal, poses for a formal photograph each year in a slightly revealing dress and mails said photo to all her friends and family, including my dad, who shreds it without opening the envelope. This is what my town is like.”

Jazza was quiet for a moment.

“I very much want to go to your town,” she finally said. “I’m always the boring one.”

From the way she said it, I got the impression that this was something Jazza felt deeply.

“You don’t seem boring to me,” I said.

“You don’t really know me yet. And I don’t have all of this.”

She waved at my computer to indicate my life in general.

“But you have all of this,” I said. I waved my arms too in an attempt to indicate Wexford and England in general, but it looked more like I was shaking invisible pom-poms.

I sipped my tea. My throat was feeling more normal now. Every once in a while, I would remember what it was like not being able to breathe and that strange whiteness . . .

“You don’t like Charlotte,” I said, blinking hard. I had to say something to get all that stuff out of my head. It was probably a little abrupt and rude.

Jazza’s mouth twitched. “She’s . . . competitive.”

“That seems like a polite word for what she is. Is that how she got to be head girl?”

“Well . . .” Jazza picked at my duvet for a moment, pinching up little bits of fabric and letting them go. “The house master or mistress chooses the prefects. Claudia made her head girl, which she deserves, I suppose . . .”

“Did you apply?” I asked.

“You don’t apply. You just get chosen. You don’t have to be unpleasa—I mean, I like Jane a lot. And Jerome and Andrew are good friends of mine. It’s just Charlotte, well . . . everything was a bit of a competition. Who studied more. Who was better at sport. Who dated whom.”