She didn’t sound even remotely sorry. Boo eyed her, then removed the earrings and set them on the table next to her spoon.

“You’re head girl?” Boo asked, picking up her knife and chopping up a sausage.

“Yes. You can come to me any time you like to help you get settled in.”

“I’m all right,” Boo said. “I have these two.”

She indicated Jazza and me as if we had been friends all our lives.

“And it’s Boo,” she added. “Not Bhuvana. Boo.”

Boo didn’t exactly flex her muscles or punch her fist into her palm, but there was a certain pulling back of the shoulders that suggested that Boo was used to dealing with things in a very different way than Charlotte was used to. It wasn’t hard to imagine Boo grabbing hold of Charlotte’s updo and putting her face down in a plate of mashed potatoes. It was not difficult to imagine this at all.

“Boo,” Charlotte repeated coolly. “Of course.”

Back in our room, Boo continued to unpack. Jazza watched in silence, staring at the pile of heels and sneakers Boo had just dumped out of a plastic bag.

“So, yeah, I was in Mumbai, and I got really sick . . .” She pulled an electric kettle out of a pile of clothes.

“We’re not really supposed to have that in here,” Jaz said worriedly.

“It’s just a kettle,” Boo replied with a smile. “I’ve got to have my tea.”

“Well, me too, but—”

“I’ll hide it, then.”

Boo shoved the kettle on the windowsill and half covered it with Jazza’s lovingly hung curtain.

“But it’s the electricity, I think,” Jazza went on. “I think that the—”

There was a pounding at our door—the kind of heavy thump, thump, thump you might get during a friendly police raid when they come at your door with a battering ram. Jazza jumped a little and mouthed “the kettle, the kettle!” but Boo was already opening the door. Call Me Claudia was standing there, resplendent in a bright plaid dress.

“Bhuvana!” she boomed. “Call me Claudia. Settling in all right?”

“Brilliant, yeah,” Boo said.

“Coming in midterm can be quite difficult. I assume you two will do everything to help her along?”

Jazza and I nodded and mumbled our yeses. Claudia lingered for a moment, a widening smile on her face. She was staring at Boo as if Boo were the source of true Enlightenment.

“Excellent hockey skills,” Claudia said. “Truly excellent.”

“I was captain of mixed hockey at my old school, yeah.”

“Excellent. Well, finish settling in. You know where I am if you need me.”

Boo closed the door behind Claudia. “See?” she said. “No problem with the kettle! So what do you lot do around here?”

“We study,” Jazza said. “And there’s tea and cereal down the hall.”

“For fun?” Boo said.

Jazza was stumped.