No one hid their interest when I walked into the room. I'm not sure if it was the news about Boo or my general appearance. At home, people would have asked. People would have been crawling all over me for information. At Wexford, they seemed to extract what they wanted to know by covert staring.

I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named "Further Maths". It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance.

It was clearly one of those mornings when I was particularly American.

Were you playing with Stuart?" she asked. The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it.

Stuart, who had just witnessed me go through an entire rainbow of emotions and experiences. There was parents-have-just-been-jailed me, stuck-in-a-strange-town me, insane-and-can't-shut-up me, kind-of-snarky-to-the-strange-guy-trying-to-be-helpful me, breakup me, and the extremely popular jump-on-top-of-you-unexpectedly me.

All right. Normal rules apply." "Right." The man walked off, leaving us. "What are the normal rules?" I asked. "He walks away and has a tea break and doesn't ask any questions.

And what else is she?" Jerome asked. Jazza didn't offer any reply so I chimed in with, "A bitchweasel?" "A bitchweasel!" Jazza's face lit up. "She's a bitchweasel! I love my new roommate.