I don’t know what to say. It’s a brand-new iPhone. I’ve never had a phone in my life. And now I have an iPhone and an iPod. I stop and pat my jacket pocket to check if it’s still there. Is this what the rest of the world is like? New phones and music and clothes any time you want them? I take it from her gently like it’s a baby bird. It’s too much. It would take a year of singing on street corners for change to come close to paying for this. I’m grateful and sad and amazed and confused. I am too many things at once. My throat closes up.

Ginger mistakes my silence for acceptance and moves to hug me. I flinch. She sees it. Her hands hang there in the air like she’s paused, until she turns it into a weird two-handed wave.

“Well, have a good day, Lou.”

I wave back. “Thanks. I will.” Red embarrassment creeps up my neck. Now she’ll think I’m ungrateful. It’s just another reminder that I don’t know how to be around people other than Mom. And now I have to meet a whole school full of them.

Dan listens to NPR on the way to school. Of course he does. He asks me if I want to change it, but I shake my head. The low voices are kind of relaxing.

We turn down a long driveway lined with magnolias whose leaves are still bright green even on the last day of September. When the driveway opens up to give a full view of the school, I gasp. There’s no way this white mansion is a school. But there it is, surrounded by green lawns, tennis courts, a football stadium, and a baseball field. Where’s the flat brick building with heavy locked doors? Isn’t that what schools are supposed to look like? We keep driving all the way around the back to faculty parking. Even from behind it’s beautiful—white-painted brick with turrets and ivy and heavy, dark wood beams. It looks like something out of The Sound of Music. I want to crawl under the spare tire in the back.

I sit while Dan gets out of his Jeep, a green dented thing I bet he’s had since college. There are Dave Matthews bumper stickers on the back. He grabs his satchel and his coffee. I am still sitting when he walks over to my window. I can’t look at him. I dig my nails into my palms, which are slippery with sweat. Suddenly the zipper on my skirt is way too sharp and tight on my waist. I breathe in short little puffs of air and hum a line from Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” over and over again.