Outrun the Moon(44)

Katie taps the toes of her boots together. “There’s a ton of scenery, long as you don’t mind heaps of dirt. And in summer, it gets so muggy you could drown yourself just by breathing. Gran got so sick of the heat, she cut her hair short as Mercy’s, and sold it for five dollars. She spent it on a cowboy hat with a turkey feather.”

Ruby wipes her hands on a rag and sits down next to her sister. “I’d like to know what it’s like in China.”

For a moment, I forget that I’m the one from China. I shake free from my stupor. “Well, there are many rivers and mountains.”

Ruby frowns. I’ll have to do better than that. “There’s a mountain range called the Precipitous Pillars. The pillars stick up like fingers, seven hundred feet, and they grow trees with blossoms like perfumed handkerchiefs. You can hardly take a step without bumping into a giant salamander or a rhesus monkey.” Whenever Ba talked about the country of his youth, his voice would grow animated and the invisible yoke around his neck seemed to lift. I once asked him if he would rather live in China, and he tapped a square finger at my forehead. “A man may not return to his mother when he takes a new wife, but it does not mean he forgets about her.”

The girls are looking at me as if I just slipped them the key to infinite wisdom.

“That sounds amazing,” breathes Minnie Mae.

Ruby nods. “I’d like to visit China one day. Maybe you can be my guide.”

The fact that she would want to travel with me catches me off guard. “Certainly,” I murmur, though of course, I would be just as lost as she.

Harry shakes the water off a plunger, splattering Katie, who grabs it and puts on a look of disdain. “Infractions will be dealt with harshly and quickly!” she delivers in perfect mimicry of Headmistress Crouch.

We all laugh.

“That old shoe,” says Minnie Mae, looking at her swollen hands again. “I wish she’d go find some other girls to step on.”

Francesca pats her forehead with the back of her hand. “Headmistress Crouch isn’t so bad. She wasn’t always an old shoe. She even had a suitor once.”

“Our Headmistress Crouch? How do you know?” exclaims Minnie Mae.

Francesca straightens out a wrinkle in one of the wet dresses. “I saw a picture of a young man in the drawer in her office once. It said, ‘To my beloved Annabel.’”

It’s odd to think of Headmistress Crouch as having a first name, almost as odd as imagining her as a young woman. Maybe there was warmth in her blue eyes once.

The sky spreads her peacock fan, though the sunlight hasn’t broken yet. A dog begins to bark, scaring up a chorus of answering barks.

The door to the laundry building bursts open, and Elodie and her cronies march out holding dripping baskets of laundry. Elodie takes in the courtyard and our finished laundry. The other girls gasp and blink in the increasing sunlight.

“Oh, bonjour,” I gush. “On as très beau temps, n’est pas?” What nice weather we’re having. My French lessons have paid in spades.

Elodie looks like a dragon about to breathe fire.





19



‘‘WHY, YOU LITTLE SNEAK!’’ ELODIE SHRIEKS. “You knew this was here all along.”

I place a finger on my chin. “If I had more time, I would show you how to work the wringer. But I was hoping for a nap before breakfast. Au revoir.”

The six of us who finished our laundry parade back to the house. I swear I smell sulfur steaming off Elodie as I pass her. “Don’t worry, we’ll save you a few Wilksies.”

Before I can take another step, I feel a sharp tug on my hair, and one astonished moment later, my back is on the hard concrete. I look up into Elodie’s face above. She grabs ahold of my neck. “You are nothing but a filthy rat who crawled up from the sewer!”

I bring my knee up and try to push her off, but she has attached herself like a giant clam, a heavy man-eating clam. Rolling to one side, I manage to loosen her hold for a second, enough to push her face away. Her hands are still around my throat, but I don’t let up, imagining I’m squashing her too-perky nose like a bug. The girls are screaming above us, a halo of navy blue.

“Get her, Mercy!” cries Katie.

“Good Lord, she’s gone rabid!”

“Someone get Headmistress Crouch!”

“But she’ll punish us all!”

Elodie and I are pried apart and hauled to our feet, and strangely, I feel myself resisting. It’s as if fighting has awakened another, more bestial side to me, a side that wants her to suffer for her meanness.

Hands pull at me from all sides, restraining. “Let me go!” I choke out, lunging for her. My voice is drowned in all the yelling.

“Mongol!” Elodie snarls. Hands also restrain her, but to my gratification, not as many.

“Pigeon egg!”

“Gutter monkey!”

Gutter monkey? That one bends my nose out of shape.

“Well,” I say imperiously, “I’m not the one whose father leaves her standing on her birthday.”

Elodie stops resisting, and instantly I know I’ve gone too far. She shakes off Francesca and points at me. “She has fooled you all. She is no heiress from China, but a slum rat from Pigtail Alley.”

A hush descends upon the crowd, heavy enough to stop my heart from beating.