The girl looked startled. Amanda wore the same uniform as everyone else, but hers was a little washed out, the red of her tie a little darker and duller, the black a little more gray. Her hair was duller than the other girls, a simple bob, parted and kept out of her face with a headband.

The dead giveaway, though, was the shoes. Dull and scuffed. Her family probably didn’t have a lot of money, he was guessing, in which case the haircut made some sense. It was kind of what he was doing. His own parents were having a tough time, sending him here.

“Aren’t you going to go over the project?” he asked.

The other students in class were milling around, each with printouts in hand. The teacher had told them to peer review and get two signatures in the top right hand corner.

“I’m not good at that, and I didn’t do very well on the project,” she said.

“Come on,” he said. “Trade?”

Amanda nodded, biting her lip. “It’s really not very good. I misread one of the instructions.”

“I looked at someone else’s and I don’t think they got it all the way right either,” he said.

He looked around, then leaned closer, whispering. “Blame the shitty teachers.”

“They’re not bad. It’s a good school,” Amanda said. She looked a bit scandalized by the comment.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Amanda smiled, before ducking her head down, focusing on his paper.

Her project wasn’t very good. She’d been right to be embarrassed. He held back a sigh, then set about going over it, trying to be as constructive as possible. He had to read it twice before he found some positive comments to make. The lines that had some wit to them were marked out with a ‘I like this’.

He even dared to add a smiley.

Every day was work. Making friends, holding back, playing the role.

He attended a new school, private and classy, which meant a new pretense. It meant laying new groundwork, being patient, even though being patient was hard.

He’d once heard his mother unaffectionately call him ‘the worst baby ever’. He resented a lot about how his parents had fucked up or failed him, but he couldn’t really hold a grudge about that line. It was as honest as anything he got from her, and it was kind of funny.

He’d been a shitty kid, so it wasn’t unreasonable to imagine being a shitty baby. He could remember tantrums, screaming as loud as he could scream just to see what it was like, see how people reacted, and then keeping it up for hours. Then doing it again the next day. He could remember fighting literally tooth and nail, until they decided letting him wear unwashed clothes and go without baths was easier.