The boy next to her is mercifully silent. He looks at her, notices the withdrawn, empty look - but he's smart enough to not ask. He's been on the other end of that forced classroom introduction, a year ago - not fun. Also on the other side of the questioning classmates that followed - even less fun. No, thank you, he is perfectly happy to leave the girl to her privacy.

He also remembers showing up in the middle of the term and being utterly lost, and working double time to catch up. There's no easy way to fix that, but - he does keep notes. They're retrieved, glanced over for spelling errors, and then he writes, 'So you're not lost, not a charity, please return after class' on the first page's header.

Onto Bella's desk they go.