In the school's atmosphere of privilege, where everything is arranged to ensure each student's success, we wait in vain for [Lee Fiora] to blossom and find her place in the world. Even narrating the story from a remove of several years, having finished college and begun a career, Lee remains obsessively focused on her experiences at Ault, as if she is probing a wound that may never heal. Her cadre of peers grows older and wiser, yet as one girl tells Lee, digging for an insult, " 'You're exactly the same as you were when we were freshmen.' " In the end we can only wonder, with Lee, whether she might have been better off in public school.