A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING Tuesday morning, as Jenny was lining her eyelids with Chanel's black liquid liner for a smokey, up-all-night-effect that went perfectly with her new enormous pink Gucci sunglasses that would be the envy of Constance Billard's entire ninth grade, her dad knocked on her door and announced, "You're not going to school today, babe." Jenny put down her eyeliner and opened the door. "What do you mean? Why not?" Rufus was wearing a child-sized Mets baseball that he'd bought for Dan when he was eight. It sat like a beanie atop a nest of wild and wooly gray hair. He was also wearing blue-and-white-striped elastic-waist cotton pants that looked exactly like pajama bottoms. "Mrs. M and I had a little talk last night," Rufus told her. Uh-oh. Jenny tugged on her super-short seersucker school uniform. "How come?" she asked innocently, even though she knew perfectly well how come. Rufus ignored her Miss I-Didn't-Do-Anything act. "She basically laid it on the line. Either you repeat ninth grade, or next year you're going to school elsewhere." Jenny resisted hurling herself at her father and smothering him in a bear hug. She was going to boarding school! It was really happening! Not so fast, missy. "I'm not going here," Jenny insisted before the cab even stopped. "That's what you think," her father grumbled. He paid the cabbie and opened the door. "Come, Your Tartiness. Let's take a look." They'd pulled up in front of the Sloan Centre for Bright Minds, a hippie experimental school on a flat, wide strip of boring-looking three-story buildings in Flushing, Queens. It was miles away from Manhattan and nothing like the ivy-trimmed brick buildings of the boarding school of her dreams. On the way over Rufus had shoved a Sloan Centre brochure at her, and she'd thumbed through it. There was no real dress code, the lunchroom was organic and vegetarian, the students all had greasy hair and acne, and none of the teachers wore Chanel suits. In other words, jenny hated it already. A giant birchbark peace sign greeted them as they passed through the biodynamically grown natural oak school doors. The peace sign was hanging from the ceiling of the entryway, spinning round and round in the breeze created by the student-built watermill standing at the base of the stairs. Pure spring water cascaded down a bamboo gutter at the centre of the stairs, feeding the mill. "Our upper-schoolers built the water mill last winter," explained Calliope Trask, the school's director, at the start of their tour. "Every January we have what's called Winter Work. There are no academics, and the students focus on building something functional with their hands. The year before we had a chicken coop with twenty laying hens, right here in out gym. We had so many eggs we had an egg scale and raised money to buy new hemp mats for our pre-schoolers to nap on! Woo-hoo! Calliope Trask's hair hung in a gray braid down to her bottom and she was wearing a mustard-yellow-linen Eileen Fisher tank dress that did wonders for her frizzy black underarm hair. Her legs were unshaven too, and coarse black leg hairs stuck out between the straps of her tied-at-the-ankle beige canvas Earth shoes. "Those are wonderful sunglasses." She pointed at the gigantic pair of pink Gucci shades masking Jenny's smoldering brown eyes. "But at Bright Minds we don't allow designer labels or emblems on clothing or accessories of any sort." Before Jenny could even say, "What the fuck?" Rufus had whipped the glasses off her face and stuck them in his gray sweatpants-material jacket pocket. "That's better. Now we can see your beautiful face," Calliope trilled, as Jenny scowled hideously at her. She followed Calliope and her father up the stairs, tempted to tell them both to take the Sloan Centre for Bright Minds' hemp mats and smoke them while she ran away to the Czech Republic to live wither crazy, selfish, and neglectful mother. The Raves could do a tour of Eastern Europe and she could buy all the Gucci she wanted for half-price on the black market. They reached the second floor and Calliope opened the door to of the classrooms. "Our classes are mixed-age and broken up into 'bundles' names for the endangered species of the Galapagos. Jennifer, you'd be in one of the thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old bundles. I'll walk you to the area where the Giant Tortoise bundle is gathered for this mornings work and then let your stude............