I was both curious and mildly disconcerted that my father was just ignoring the fact that I'd lied to him. I mean, he was so tense about the crime in the city I couldn't imagine him just letting it slide. Each second it took me to lace up my running shoes and loop my hair into a ponytail built my dread of the upcoming interrogation. I traded my silver chain for a house key on a knotted shoestring and hurried through the front door to get it over with.

He was already waiting outside, rolling his ankles. I bent over next to him and became temporarily woozy as the blood rushed to my head and the stretch moved up my hamstrings.

"When's the last time you ran?" he asked.

"Uh, I think I ran twice in Paris, in the very beginning."

"That's not much to keep your lungs in shape, Adele."

When I was a kid, I developed juvenile asthma, right around the time my mother left. Even though the doctor told him the attacks were anxiety based, my father became obsessed over the health of my lungs. I hadn't had a panic attack since the seventh grade, but he still kept the house stocked with inhalers, and we used to run together three mornings a week before school.

"I ran every day in Miami," he continued.

Good for you.

Normally, I would have said it, but something about this trite conversation warned me to proceed with caution, so I held back on the sarcasm. "My dad, the fitness buff—who'd have known?"

He did his best not to crack a smile. "Well, what else was I supposed to do without you around to bug me all the time?" He tossed me his second bottle of water and took off jogging.

So we're joking now? My father could never stay mad at me for long, but this was a record. Something else was brewing.

"Wait up!"

"Catch up!"

"Oh, this is going to be loads of fun."

The quick sprint left me panting. I took his right side; my father was adamant about the man's position always being on the street side. He seriously watched too many Mafia movies.

We jogged in silence through Jackson Square, up the cement stairs of the amphitheater, and over the two sets of nonfunctioning tracks (one for the train and the other for the streetcar), finally arriving at the riverfront, otherwise known as the Moonwalk.

The Toulouse Street Wharf was annihilated. Pieces of it bobbed on the river, along with a mass of other buoyant debris, and heaps of floating trash occupied the large, empty space where the SS Natchez had been docked since the early 1800s.

Just as my breathing began to even out, he broke the silence. "Up or down?"

"Up." And that was the end of our conversation for several more minutes.

The murky Mississippi was calm. I pretended the paddleboat was just out on the river, lazily taking mint julep–drinking tourists on leisurely rides. The absence of the old riverboat was another reason the city now felt so eerily silent. If I concentrated hard enough, I could hear the steam shooting out of the whistling calliope—I'd heard that pipe organ at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., like clockwork, almost every day of my life. My eyes burned, and I had to tell myself not to cry over a missing riverboat. Pathetic.

"I heard the Natchez is docked somewhere in Baton Rouge," my father informed me, as if he knew it was bothering me.

"Oh good." I sucked in a breath of air, and then we were back to silence. The muscles in my legs eased, and side by side, we fell into a steady rhythm. I spaced out for a while.

We passed the open-air French Market, which was now a ghost town, and crossed the border into the Faubourg Marigny. When we approached NOSA, just a few blocks from where I'd found the body, my father said, "So, we need to talk about school."

I picked up the pace. He followed suit.

"Dad, I am not going back to Paris just because I found a dead body and didn't tell you. I'm sorry I lied about going down to school. I was just scared you were going to freak out and try to send me back to live with Brigitte!"

"Adele—I'm not sending you back to Paris . . . Not yet, at least. Although, you have one more encounter with a dead person and I will quickly change my mind."

My brow momentarily unfurled.

"I got a call from your guidance counselor. NOSA is in line for the city-state-fed-whatever government to allocate funds for rebuilding, so who knows when they will reopen."

My chest tightened. I could already see where this was leading: my father was going to try to send me away again.

"In the meantime, students have been placed in arts high schools around the country, including the Chicago School for Visual Arts and some place in Florida. A couple even went to New York City."

I could've undoubtedly listed the students who'd gone to NYC. I had many Broadway-bound classmates working night and day to become triple threats.

"She told me about a program you might be interested in, a high school that agreed to autoadmit a few displaced Storm kids. They have a textiles program; you'd get to meet real designers and work with real fashion labels."

I jogged faster. His longer stride easily kept up.

"And where's this dream school located?" I mumbled.

He took a deep breath. "It's in California. Los Angeles."

My eyes welled up.

"I already talked to the Joneses, and they would love to have you stay with them."

The tears began to drip. I shouldn't be upset. There were thousands of kids crammed into schools in Baton Rouge and Houston, without books, friends, or routines . . . But I couldn't help it; I'd just gotten home, and I didn't want to leave.

"Sounds like a cool opportunity, Dad," I choked out.

He stopped running. As did I, gasping at the ground.

"Then why are you crying?" He sucked in a couple breaths of air.

I did everything I could to hold in the tears, which made the words come out in a near scream. "Why do you keep trying to get rid of me?"

"Sweetheart, that is ludicrous. I am not trying to get rid of you. How can you even say that? I just don't want you to miss out on any opportunities because of the Storm. You have to be in school, so I figured you'd like this much better than going back to your mother's, although I wish you'd consider that option."

I scowled.

"You'll be with Brooke, and you can come home for Christmas."

It was a perfectly rational justification, but I still didn't want to hear it. I stayed hunched over my knees, unable to look up at him.

"I don't care about school, Dad. I am not leaving New Orleans again."

He put his hand on my shoulder. "I thought you might feel that way . . . and I may have a happy medium. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?"

I smeared away the tears with the back of my hand. Is my father actually executing a classic bait and switch? I filed a mental note to use the tactic on him in the future.

He continued with caution. "So, I made some arrangements."

My back shot straight up. "Some arrangements?" The last time my father had "made some arrangements," I ended up on a plane, flying across the Atlantic, only four hours later.

"If you want to stay in New Orleans . . . then Sacred Heart Preparatory Academy has agreed to permit you a seat."

He must be confused.

"Surely you don't mean the Sacred Heart? As in uptown? As in Désirée Borges's Academy?"

"The one and only."

"They agreed to permit me a seat? What does that even mean?"

"It means they're taking in three displaced students per grade, and they agreed to offer you one of the slots, starting as soon as they can get all of your records together."

"So, I'm a charity case?"

"Well, it's not exactly charity."

"Dad, there's not a chance in hell we can afford something like that."

"Don't curse, Adele!"

"Don't be evasive!"

"Well . . ." He looked behind me, up at the sky. "Your mother made a call."

"What? Since when does Brigitte get to take part in making decisions about my life?"

"Well, I'm sure your mother didn't make the call," he said, trying to get me to laugh. "I'm sure she had her assistant do it."

But the thought of Émile helping my mother plan my little high school life only made my jaw clench.

I started jogging again, back the way we came. Do not overreact.

He quickly caught up. "Adele, if you want to stay in New Orleans, then you are going to Sacred Heart, because I know you'll be safe there—and that's final. Take it or leave it. It's your choice."

"So my choices are imprisonment in my own personal hell of cotillion balls or banishment to the land of Barbie dolls?"

"Well, there is a third choice," he said with a curt smile.

I looked at him with a glimmer of hope. After all, he'd said there was good news too.

"You can always go back to Paris with your mother." He laughed and took off running.

"Ugh, I hate you!" I yelled, chasing him back down the river.

"Don't be so melodramatic," he yelled back. "Whatever you choose, it's just temporary."

I had less than two years of high school left, but at the rate aid was coming to the city, "temporary" might as well have been "forever."

He slowed his pace until we were back together.

"So, what part was supposed to be the good news?"

"Well . . . in order to keep your status at NOSA, you'll have to continue your mentorship training, so you only have to attend Sacred Heart for half the day."

At NOSA, we spent the mornings doing regular classes, like biology and literature, and then spent the afternoons doing intensive workshop-style training in our focus area. I'd spent my sophomore year apprenticing with the head seamstress at the University of New Orleans's theatre department, working on the school's spring production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was dying to show her my Halloween costume. I'd spent every weekend in Paris working my fingers to blisters, hand-stitching embellishments. The haute couture master classes had been the highlight of my trip. Not to mention they were how I met Émile. Those were the only times my mother parted with her assistant—so he could escort me between my dormitory and the classes every Saturday and Sunday. On week two, we had moved from her car to the back of his Vespa. On week three, he was lying to her about what time my class ended.

"Does that mean I get to work at UNO again?" This situation was starting to appear slightly more tolerable.

"Not exactly. Actually, NOSA is making this exception just for you, sweetheart, since Sacred Heart isn't an art school."

"Why? I don't understand."

"On account of you knowing an amazing local artist willing to mentor you. One of the best in the city, if you ask me." His lips pressed into a smile, waiting for a reaction. I tried my best to remain poised, but my words became short as I struggled to run, breathe, and speak at the same time.

"You. Want me to go . . . to Sacred Heart Prep. And then spend every afternoon apprenticing with you in the metal shop?"

"Jeez, do you have to put me in the same category with your disdain for prep school?"

"That's not what I meant, Dad." A seagull squawked as it dipped low to investigate a pile of floating wreckage. "I'm supposed to be apprenticing in fashion. What would we work on together?" I tried my best not to sound as though there was nothing he could teach me.

"What do you mean? There's tons of cool stuff we could do. You could create a jewelry line. We could focus on your fashion illustrations, which you and I both know need serious work so you can put together a decent portfolio."

That stung a little, but he was right.

"You've been talking for ages about wanting to learn how to make your own hardware for your pieces."

He'd obviously been thinking about this a lot. His pitch was starting to sound pretty convincing.

"We could do chainmaille or something really high concept."

My mind raced with possibilities as he rattled off more and more ideas.

"Dad, stop!" I couldn't keep the giant grin from spreading across my face. "You had me at chainmaille."

His shoulders relaxed, and I saw the excitement in his eyes. "Really? You'd choose Sacred Heart and me over Brooke and a real atelier?"

I really, really wanted to be with my best friend, but how could I leave this place? There was so much to do, to rebuild. It was utterly overwhelming. My father put his arm around me and pulled me close. I concentrated on my feet so I didn't stumble in his running embrace.

"Gross, you're sweaty, Dad."

"So are you!" He squirted water in my face. Sometimes he really was a child.

"All right, now that that's settled, can we go home?" I said, letting the water run down my neck. It actually felt pretty good; the noon sun was in full blaze.

"Home? We're just getting warmed up."

"Warmed up! Maybe you are, but not all of us vacationed in Miami for the last two months," I teased. "My legs are like jelly. I'm going home." I veered onto Esplanade Avenue as he continued down the river.

"Going to let your old man show you up?" he yelled over his shoulder.

"Oui!"

"And don't think I forgot about you lying to my face yesterday."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah . . ." There was now too much distance between us to yell back and forth. What's he going to do? Ground me? The whole city was already on lockdown. None of my friends were back. There was no Internet and barely any cell phone reception.

I slowed down to pace myself for the remaining ten blocks home. Did I really just agree to go to the Academy? Images of Catholic schoolgirl uniforms, sweet sixteens, and hundreds of cookie-cutter copies of Désirée Borges popped into my head. I cut across the neutral ground onto Chartres Street and began to count down the blocks when an unfamiliar sight caught my attention.

People. There were three of them standing in the middle of the road on the next block.

A shrunken old lady leaning on a cane was looking up, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. Behind her were two goth guys who appeared to be either elated or scowling; between the makeup and facial piercings it was hard to tell. As I approached them, I realized they were standing outside the cement wall behind the Ursuline Convent, in almost the exact spot where yesterday's crying fit had begun. I suddenly had a sinking feeling that I knew what they were all looking at.

The taller goth, with the twelve-inch bleached spikes, was Theis, the boyfriend of one of my favorite coffee-shop regulars. He was contorting himself into various positions to snap photos with his phone. His aperture led my gaze straight to the attic window.

It looked just as I had left it yesterday: glass blown out and one shutter missing. The remaining shutter now swayed, although today there was a decent breeze pushing it back and forth. Anxiety pricked my stomach, warning me not to incriminate myself. For what crime, exactly, I had no clue.

"They definitely escaped," Theis said dryly to his shorter, Manic-Panic, green-haired companion.

I ducked my head as I jogged past them, but the old lady turned to me anyway. "I guess even all those nails from the Vatican couldn't hold a candle to the power of the Storm."

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I craned my neck back to her, nodded, and mumbled, "Mother Nature."

"You got it, baby. Lord, help us."

I picked up my pace.

The crazies are sure out in full force this morning, I thought, shaking my head. What did Theis mean, "escaped"?