The remaining few days of summer vacation were tense for Flanna, who did not know what to expect when her days of relative idleness ended and she would be forced into the company of hundreds of children she could never relate to. Penny’s shared memories of Dogwood School did not give her hope for a smooth transition or an easy time. She could speak and write in English well enough, but was bad at arithmetic—her tutors had long ago concluded that trying to teach her complex sums was wasted effort—and she knew virtually nothing of Old Earth’s history and science.
The thing she looked forward to least was socializing with the other young people. She had almost no interaction with them in her own world, and the young people here had their own habits and customs that she was not familiar with.
