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student waiting to answer a question.
    Then something strange happened. Students in the middle row – Year Eights – also raised their right arms in the air. Then the Year Nines followed. Meanwhile, the teachers at each end of the aisles raised their right arms. The befuddled Year Sevens, with whom I could identify, slowly began to copy the motion. Soon, everyone on the ground floor of the auditorium had raised an arm and was quiet. That’s when I noticed that all the girls on the top level also had their right arms raised. The entire school did! I quickly shot mine up. The room was now dead silent – you could hear every suppressed cough.
    Over the next few weeks I grew used to this technique, which the staff and teachers used to quieten the girls. I saw how effective it was: it required barely any effort on their part, and you could see almost immediately who had caught on, and who hadn’t, and how we silently policed each other.
    When all was quiet, the hands went down. The principal, Mrs Ellison, walked to the podium. A petite and pretty woman in a pale-pink silk shirt and a navy double-breasted suit with small gold buttons, she resembled a geriatric Princess Diana. She even had a string of pearls around her neck. I almost laughed – she was nothing like good old Sister Clarke with her frizzy hair and brown A-line skirts!
    “It is good to see you all back, young ladies. I hope you had a refreshing break over the summer in readiness for a new school year.” She then told us what the young ladies of Laurinda could expect from the year ahead. First, the stained-glass windows of the main wing were being restored to their former glory with glass flown in from England. This term we would have seven more guest speakers than last year, including chocolatier queen Penelope Piper. The girls cheered; apparently, Penelope had come from a rival girls’ school so it was a coup to have her. Also, the girls were probably thinking, free samples, woo hoo. Then, after the applause and cheering, Mrs Ellison reminded us once more to take the academic year seriously.
    A musical interlude followed. A girl named Trisha sat at the side of the stage in front of a grand piano. I hadn’t even noticed the piano until then, so big was the auditorium. She started to play.
    She was possessed. Her hands seemed to drag her body left and right, up and down the keys of the piano, at one point almost toppling her out of her seat. It was as if her fingers were playing some mad game of chasey with her torso, except that every time they landed on a key, they made magical sounds that made me think of ice cubes in clear cups, floors of buildings collapsing with tiles tinkering unbroken, the first chink of daylight through castle windows in faraway countries, flying fish, volcanoes erupting with fireworks, the Lamb in his white beanie, my mother’s Singer in full swing.
    When she finished, Trisha stood up and took a small bow. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen a fifteen-year-old do. She was a genius, Linh. At Christ Our Saviour she would have been on the cover of the school magazine – they’d have made her play the organ in church every week and given her a nickname like “Magic Digits”.
    But even more incredible than Trisha’s talent was the applause: I was the only one clapping like a grinning monkey-and-cymbal toy. Embarrassed, realising that everyone else was offering only a polite palm patting, I toned it down.
    When assembly ended, none of the girls mentioned Trisha’s playing as we moved off to our first class. It was only after I’d been to a couple of assemblies that I realised every musical offering would be just as intense as the first, and every reaction would be just as tepid.
    *
    Ms Vanderwerp taught my first class of the week, History. Wearing a long aquamarine dress that ended in wavy lines halfway down her calves, she looked like a Pac-Man ghost. She had enormous convex glasses, so thick that her eyes seemed to