The scents of September: ripe blackberries, garden fires, whiteboard marker pens. The start of the school year used to be thrilling, back when Fiona McNeel was a special girl full of promise sitting up front asking clever questions. Now she’d be the one fielding the clever questions, and looking silly if she couldn’t answer them. But how clever could they be, her new students? No more than fifteen in each section (they boasted about class size in the Barrow School brochures) twelve and thirteen year olds, eager to learn and easy to mold. And the classroom was not a bad place to work, a large, airy room with big windows overlooking maple trees and playing fields.