Excerpt from The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mother seethes enough for all of us. She doesn't like be-ing told what to do. Who do they think they are, sending this threatening, impersonal letter in the mail? Treating us like common immigrants!

It's easier to just obey. Besides, after three weeks of staring at each other in our tiny apartment, we all need a break. Our mourning has kept us docile. Lethargic. But our grief-induced stupor is starting to lift, and we're growing restless and more and more irritable with one another every day. Maybe school is a good thing. Even Bastien is unusually compliant with the idea.

I have one condition.

I want an interpreter. Not for language. For life. Someone who can help me understand cereal aisles and lunch lines and other small, baffling things like the posters in the hallway telling students to wear their pajamas to school for spirit day. MTV and the Cartoon Network, blaring on our television whenever Bastien can seize control of the remote, are only marginally more useful than my mother at explaining these things.

The school is quick to assist. They assign me Emmy, a student mentor. President of the international students club, though she's never been anywhere except Canada and on a weeklong beach vacation at a resort in Mexico. I know because she shows me photos the first time we meet.

I'm embarrassed to say that my first thought when I meet Emmy is a single, ugly word.

Whore.

But it isn't my fault. It isn't my voice. It's the voice of my uncles. All but one are dead now, but they still sometimes speak, cruel and accusing as ever, in my thoughts.

In my country, women wear layers. Our clothing flows and drapes. It hints and implies.

I shouldn't have reacted. I've seen enough television to know how people here dress. That the clothing here shouts. That it confesses secrets that remain better kept elsewhere. I'd seen it for myself in Paris when my mother took me on one of her shopping trips as a birthday treat. She'd boarded the airplane dressed as usual. But each hour, each trip to the first-class restroom, revealed slightly more of her. A scarf removed here. A shawl removed there. By the time we landed, my mother was transformed. Unwrapped.

At the time, I was in awe of the way she'd changed, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. And then, on the way back home, I was relieved to see the layers reappear, piece by piece, returning the glamorous stranger in the seat next to mine back into my mother.

But even my Paris mother had limits cheerfully ignored by Emmy, whose bare shoulders display peeling traces of an old sunburn and whose freckled and scratched legs climb alarmingly high until they meet a short skirt at the very last possible moment. That she can feel so at ease in her flawed skin is astonishing to me.

Emmy must feel me looking at her. Judging her. Because her smile stiffens slightly and she takes a small step back, a wounded expression on her face.

I still have power.

But I know that she isn't a whore, or any of the other, even worse things that women are sometimes called in my country. I know that, here, she is perfectly normal. My new normal.

I am the one who has to change. To transform, like my mother on that airplane ride. I offer Emmy a smile and some small talk to make up for my insult.

She accepts, perking up before my eyes. "Wow, you speak English really well," she says, slowly and too loudly."

I would hope so. I've been tutored in French and English since I was old enough to walk." It is a princess's voice. I see Emmy's face catch that, too. I have to change faster.

"But thank you," I say in a stranger's humble voice. Another apologetic offering.

Forgive me. I'm still learning.

Excerpted from The Tyrant's Daughter by J.C. Carleson. Copyright © 2014 by J.C. Carleson. Excerpted by permission of Knopf Children's Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.