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pajamas (even if modest), which might have made French at 8:10 in the morning bearable, if I’d had any idea what Madame O’Malley was talking about.
Comment dis-tu
“Oh my God, I don’t know nearly enough French to pass French II”
en français?
My French I class back in Florida did not prepare me for Madame O’Malley, who skipped the “how was your summer” pleasantries and dove directly into something called the
passé composé,
which is apparently a verb tense. Alaska sat directly across from me in the circle of desks, but she didn’t look at me once the entire class, even though I could notice little but her. Maybe she could be mean…but the way she talked that first night about getting out of the labyrinth—so smart. And the way her mouth curled up on the right side all the time, like she was preparing to smirk, like she’d mastered the right half of the
Mona Lisa
’s inimitable smile…

    From my room, the student population seemed manageable, but it overwhelmed me in the classroom area, which was a single, long building just beyond the dorm circle. The building was split into fourteen rooms facing out toward the lake. Kids crammed the narrow sidewalks in front of the classrooms, and even though finding my classes wasn’t hard (even with my poor sense of direction, I could get from French in Room 3 to precalc in Room 12), I felt unsettled all day. I didn’t know anyone and couldn’t even figure out whom I should be trying to know, and the classes were
hard,
even on the first day. My dad had told me I’d have to study, and now I believed him. The teachers were serious and smart and a lot of them went by “Dr.,” and so when the time came for my last class before lunch, World Religions, I felt tremendous relief. A vestigefrom when Culver Creek was a Christian boys’ school, I figured the World Religions class, required of every junior and senior, might be an easy A.
    It was my only class all day where the desks weren’t arranged either in a square or a circle, so, not wanting to seem eager, I sat down in the third row at 11:03. I was seven minutes early, partly because I liked to be punctual, and partly because I didn’t have anyone to chat with out in the halls. Shortly thereafter, the Colonel came in with Takumi, and they sat down on opposite sides of me.
    “I heard about last night,” Takumi said. “Alaska’s pissed.”
    “That’s weird, since she was such a bitch last night,” I blurted out.
    Takumi just shook his head. “Yeah, well, she didn’t know the whole story. And people are moody, dude. You gotta get used to living with people. You could have worse friends than—”
    The Colonel cut him off. “Enough with the psychobabble, MC Dr. Phil. Let’s talk counterinsurgency.” People were starting to file into class, so the Colonel leaned in toward me and whispered, “If any of ’em are in this class, let me know, okay? Just, here, just put X ’s where they’re sitting,” and he ripped a sheet of paper out of his notebook and drew a square for each desk. As people filed in, I saw one of them—the tall one with immaculately spiky hair—Kevin. Kevin stared down the Colonel as he walked past, but in trying to stare, he forgot to watch his step and bumped his thigh against a desk. The Colonel laughed. One of the other guys, the one who was either a little fat or worked out too much, came in behind Kevin, sporting pleated khaki pants and a short-sleeve black polo shirt. As they sat down, I crossed through the appropriate squares on the Colonel’s diagram and handed it to him. Just then, the Old Man shuffled in.
    He breathed slowly and with great labor through his wide-open mouth. He took tiny steps toward the lectern, his heels not movingmuch past his toes. The Colonel nudged me and pointed casually to his notebook, which read,
The Old Man only has one lung
, and I did not doubt it. His audible, almost desperate breaths reminded me of my grandfather when he was dying of lung