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him.
    â€œShe has a weird name,” Christine blurted out.
    â€œIt is not!” I gave her a cutting look and told Mr Black that I was named after my maternal grandmother, conjuring up a fictional melodrama from the workings of my brain’s imagination, then realized how dull it was when I saw him blink, I feared, out of boredom.
    He interjected in a low cottony voice. “Lila is a mythical name, short for Delilah in Hebrew.” My heart stopped and mylimbs became weak. Had he just compared me to the infamous temptress?
    â€œTo us, it means lollipop!” The girls giggled, then turned quiet when Mr Black gave them a dour look.
    â€œIf you girls are as clever as you think you are, then I expect ingenious papers on your next assignment. Christine will have the privilege of reading hers first,” he said with a cheeky grin. He grazed my arm with his hand as he brushed past me, saying, “See you ladies then. Ta-ta.”
    As I entered the classroom, Mr Black called me to his desk. I froze for a moment, then felt myself involuntarily floating toward him. He slid my graded paper toward me. “Fine work, Lila,” he said, and I saw the spiked thrust of an A+. “I would like you to read your story to the class. It provides an excellent example of tragedy and internal conflict in character.” I nodded stiffly. The perspective from the front of the class was jarring, but I had no time to get comfortable with the faces and eyes directed at me. I fumbled with my paper. Once I got through the first paragraph, however, I became remarkably calm, and the sentences began to flow off my tongue. When I was done, some of the girls made snide comments, but Mr Black hushed the class and praised me for my imagination and creative writing style. Instantly, his words erased the remarks from my peers.
    Soon after, I began to outdo myself with each new paper, story, and essay for English class. But I neglected my duty to my calorie diary, filling the pages with a troubling number of flowers, floating hearts, winged butterflies, squiggly designs, and incomprehensible scribblings.

    One winter afternoon after school, while waiting for the bus with Mina, I realized that I had forgotten my pencil case in the classroom. I hurried back and saw my crinkly Little Mermaid case where I had left it on my desk. When I turned to leave, Mr Black was standing before the blackboard looking at me. Behind him, the empty blackboard was filled with ghost words that wriggled out of recognition and floated into my memory of past lessons.
    â€œForgot this,” I said with a crooked smirk and showed him my pencil case.
    â€œLila, hang on a second, please,” he said. I stopped at the door and held my breath. This was the first time I had been alone with him—outside of delusional fantasies knit together from Hollywood romances and subtitled Bollywood fare.
    â€œMay I ask you something?” He took a few slow steps toward me. During that pregnant pause, I imagined him uttering everything from commenting about my writing to proposing marriage.
    â€œWhat do you think, Lila, of a drama club?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I gulped.
    â€œHow would you and your classmates like to set one up?”
    â€œThat’s not exactly a bad idea,” I said.
    He beamed at me. “Good, we shall set one up then.” He then winked and turned to carry on with whatever he’d been doing before I walked in, as though I were no longer there. My heartsank, struck by how curtly I could be dismissed. But I couldn’t get myself to tell him that I had missed my bus, let alone ask to use his phone to call Dad. Instead, I lingered like a lost kitten.
    He turned and looked at me. “Oh dear. You missed your bus, didn’t you? I am so sorry, Lila. If you’d like, I could give you a lift home.” How quickly the heart bounces back!
    As he drove, I took in the scent of his sleek silver Volvo, which smelled like