«Welcome your new classmate, Ren Volkom.»
With these words, Professor Ashley Velbury—a striking woman in her forties, with long ash-colored hair tied in a ponytail and piercing emerald-green eyes—introduces me to my new class. It's much smaller than my previous one, just like the school itself: a modest building, far less prestigious. Then again, the town I was forced to move to—about an hour's drive from my old home—has only a few thousand residents, nearly ten times fewer than my hometown.
My father, Arthur, was thrilled. Of course, he was told a completely different version of the story. Since we couldn't afford a new house, the Secret Service assigned us one—a cozy little villa, not too big, with a small garden around it. A thousand times better than the cramped apartment we'd lived in until recently.
