"Kids are two things. Smarter than we give them credit for and incurable gossips. Any new person that stayed in the school was going to be talked about. They were going to figure it out. She gave a put-upon sigh. "Besides, once I'd decided to stay it would have been a bad start to lie to them, no matter what they thought of me."

If they were going to trust each other, it couldn't start out on a lie. There were already enough lies and half-truths among the adults. Wasn't the whole point of raising a new generation to try to help them be better than your generation was?

"Why is it always the tragedies that bring us together?" she murmured, though she really wasn't asking him. She knew why. They all had just incompatible belief systems to not be able live together for long without clashing. Unless one of them compromised.