The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant. Joanna Wiebe

got orientation today, right?” She scribbles over her crossword. I’m not even sure she’s putting letters in the boxes. “Big day for you, between getting your Guardian and choosing your PT. Big day.”

      “Sorry?” This is the first I’ve heard of a Guardian or a PT. “What are those?”

      Still staring down, her eyes dart left, right, up, and down. “Oh, pish posh,” she sings, getting chirpy suddenly. “It’s not my job to walk you through your whole orientation day in advance, is it? No. I’ve got strict orders from Headmaster Villicus. Let you bunk here. Stay out of it. And get paid.”

      “Is there something in particular you’re staying out of?”

      “Oh, what do I know? Your life! Your school! All of the above.” Her expression can only be described as panicked when she looks up at me. “You’re the first student I’ve had stay with me. Don’t pay any attention to me.”

      With an odd smile, she shakes her stringy hair. Then she’s on her feet, shoving me toward the front door, where Skippy has resumed bouncing and barking madly at me; this dog hates me. And I’m getting the sense that Gigi feels the same way, but she opts to growl and wave away topics rather than bark and bounce. After rummaging through the front closet, Gigi pivots on her heels and pushes a thick fisherman’s coat at me. It smells like old fish carcasses. I take it and stop to look her in the eyes again, forcing her to look at me.

      “Are we cool?” I ask.

      “This is just a business arrangement,” she says. Then her voice softens ever so slightly. “I can’t say if it’s a good thing you’re here. But here you are. And I can’t change that.”

      As I stumble out of Gigi’s, a frigid breeze blows over my back, but I toss the fishy coat behind shrubs—I don’t need to replace my Death Chick moniker with Stinky Salmon or something worse—and wrap a scarf around my neck. It’s far too cold for September, but I have to remind myself I’m not in California anymore; beyond the fuzzy-looking trees and wide fern fronds is the cold Atlantic, not the warm Pacific. Breaking into a trot to keep from freezing, I dash up Gigi’s gravelly walkway to the main road and tell myself not to run too hard or I’ll show up at school sweating like the devil in a church.

      The Zin mansion looms to my right. My hometown is filled with houses designed to make neighbors and tourists sick with envy, and it appears Dr. Zin’s mansion was designed with the same thing in mind. But I’m not envious. Really, I’m not. After all, it looks like Dr. Zin’s place, cloaked in fog, with sharply pitched roofs stabbing up through the mist, is about one lightning storm away from haunted house status. I turn onto the long, narrow, and empty road and start toward the school. In the distance, over the treetops and through the fog, I can just make out the peaks and steeples of the campus. Even from here, it looks nothing like the big-box school I used to go to.

      “What did Dad get me into?” I ask myself and watch my breath freeze.

      Until this morning, I’d heard nothing of getting a Guardian or choosing a PT, which, if I had my way, would be txt shorthand for getting Pretty Teeth or Perfect Tests. Having never been to a private school—never mind the most elite one on the planet—I guess it makes sense that I don’t know. Maybe Guardians ‘n’ things are standard at these places.

      “It’ll be fine,” I assure myself. “You’ll figure it out.”

      That’s when I notice it: a red line painted across the road right before the Zin property begins. The paint is bright. I near it. I spy layers of faded red below it, as if it’s been painted and repainted weekly. For decades.

      With a little hop, I cross it. I tell myself to disregard it.

      As I start jogging, hoping not to be late, a loud Ducati whizzes by me, sending small rocks and twigs swirling into the air; I have to slow to pick a particularly wiry twig from the wilds of my hair. As I do, I hear the crackle of leaves underfoot and glance over my shoulder. A uniformed girl with a short brown bob and little bangs is walking far behind me. When I look again later, she’s gone. I jog the rest of the way to school, alone on the road.

      Cania Christy is one towering stone building backed by smaller converted houses and outbuildings, which I can barely distinguish beneath the slowly lifting perma-cloud that drapes campus. Just two things catch my immediate attention: the main building, over the front doors of which the name Goethe Hall is etched, and the silence. The campus is so noiseless that a part of me wonders if I’m a day early. I hear only the squealing protest of door hinges opening and closing and the caw of gulls muffled in the foggy seascape and absorbed by greenery that is so lush it’s suffocating. In the rare moments a breeze blows a hole through the fog, I glimpse the odd student meandering silently into or out of Goethe Hall; I’m at once comforted to know I didn’t arrive on the wrong day and curious to find that, without fail, every student is walking alone. It’s a strange but welcome relief to think that this student body may be comprised of people similar to me, people who haven’t always been in the in-crowd, people who are more focused on their goals and ambitions than on trying to be popular.

      Perhaps there are no cliques here. Perhaps they’re progressive enough at Cania Christy to ban bullying and the exclusionary cliques that help create it.

      “Now what’ve we got here?” a girl with a drawl says.

      I turn to find four girls in uniform watching me with their arms crossed. They’re impossibly well groomed and flawless. Obviously besties. Proof that I was dead wrong about my anticlique idea.

      Their cool gazes roll up and down my body, assessing me in a way with which I’ve grown unfortunately familiar. Every girl knows this drill. These are the cool girls, ostensibly, and they have come to weigh and measure me. Their bodies, hair, makeup—even the way they rock their uniforms—are undeniable signs of their power on campus and their expectations of a perfectly charmed life, which their daddies will guarantee them. Like four slightly oversexed dolls, they stand at arm’s length from me, thrusting out their cleavage, tossing their straightened silky hair over their shoulders, and pursing their pouty, glossy lips. Their skin is so unblemished it glows. Their eyes are so clear they might see right through me.

      With my curls, crooked tooth, and stunningly empty bank account, I am their antithesis. Or, as I prefer to see it, they are mine.

      I’ve never gotten along well with the popular girls. And something in their collective scowl tells me I’m not about to become the fifth member of this particular clique.

      “You must be the new girl. The junior?” the ginger begins frostily, her tone warm like a Savannah summer but her eyes dead cold. Her followers—a Thai girl, an Indian girl, and a stark blonde—glare at me. “The California chick who thinks she’s some sort of artist?”

      “Unless there are two of us,” I reply. My years of dealing with rich, bitchy, and beautiful girls have given me a bit of a bite. “Why? Are you the president of my fan club?”

      “As if Harper would ever be your fan!” the Thai girl exclaims and looks at the ginger—evidently named Harper—for approval.

      I narrow my eyes. “I just meant how do you know so much about me?”

      With her friends mirroring her every move, Harper curls her lip and glares up at me. She’s barely five-two but is filled head to toe with piss and vinegar. “Everyone knows about you.”

      “And not in a good way,” the stark blonde adds, her words thick with a Russian accent.

      “It’s like when a circus freak walks into a room,” Harper drawls. “It’s hard for everyone else not to notice.”

      “Gee,” I begin, “I’d love to hear more about how your parents met, but I’ve got to get to school.”

      I try to cut through the foursome, but Harper shoves her hand against my chest, stopping me. Not cool.

      “Truth is, Merchant, we know who you are because it’s not every day Headmaster Villicus lets in some poor chick with a crazy