We Run the Tides(52)

Ewa is spending a few days with another au pair, so Maria Fabiola will sleep in Ewa’s bed in the room next to mine. I get into bed and instantly my eyes are leaden. Maria Fabiola’s room is between mine and the hallway. She’s standing in the doorway, a prison guard in a Lanz nightgown.

“Sleep now,” she says, “and tomorrow we’ll polish our stories on the way to school. Then at lunch I’ll use the office phone to call ABC and tell them we can talk to them together. Eulabee?”

I’m already nodding off. “What?” I mumble.

“I’m so glad it was you who was kidnapped,” she says.

I don’t know what to say to that. Sleep is dissolving me.

“I was thinking of saying that to ABC,” she says, as she stands high above me. “‘I’m so glad it was you.’ What do you think?”





29


I wake up to Maria Fabiola’s stomach. She’s standing by my bed, shaking my shoulder. “Good, you’re finally awake. Your parents wanted to let you sleep in, but we have to leave for school. We’ve got fifteen minutes.”

I close my eyes.

“No, no, don’t go back to sleep,” she says. “Your mom talked to Mr. Makepeace. He’s going to welcome you back at assembly. Then he wants to talk to us at morning recess. Then the Chronicle wants to do a joint interview this afternoon. We have a full day, Sunshine.”

I can’t believe this person, the multitudes she contains.

“What are we going to say?” I ask.

“We’ll get our stories straight on the walk,” she says. “The Chronicle will be good practice for ABC. I’ll have to call the producer and let them know that because they took their sweet time, the Chronicle is now interested. That’ll get them motivated!” She lays my uniform on the bed.

“But just get dressed fast,” she says. As I sit up I see my mother has not only washed but pressed Maria Fabiola’s middy and blue skirt—I can smell the scent of an iron wafting from her uniform. We usually wear our socks to our ankles, but now Maria Fabiola’s wearing them pulled up almost to her knees, and with a pair of my loafers that I rarely wear.

She turns her back to me and rummages through the change drawer of my desk. “Don’t tell me you’re putting pennies in the loafers,” I say.

“Just get dressed,” she says. “We’re in a hurry.”

We’re about to walk out the door when my dad calls out to us. “No, no, no,” he says. “I’ll drive you girls.”

“That’s okay, Joe,” Maria Fabiola says. She calls my parents by their first names and they somehow go along with it.

“We can walk,” I say.

“Not a chance,” he says. “I’m driving you.”

In the car we have no time to coordinate our stories. My mom is in the passenger seat, and Svea is sitting in the back between us. Maria Fabiola tries to write me a note but her handwriting is a disaster, and besides, it’s only a two-minute drive. When we get to school we’re surrounded.

At the morning assembly my parents sit to my right in the front row and Maria Fabiola sits to my left, massaging my hand. Mr. Makepeace wears a red bow tie. When he makes an announcement welcoming me back, the applause is thunderous.

My parents depart after the assembly to talk with Mr. Makepeace and Ms. Catanese in the front office. Maria Fabiola and Julia flank me as we walk through campus, while Faith follows behind us like a lady in waiting. I’m thrilled by the sudden re-embracement of my former friends and all my classmates—the incessant hugs, the earnest welcome-back letters (a few mangled flowers) slipped through the slots of my locker.

Our first class after the assembly is English. Mr. London announces that we’re starting a new unit on Homer’s Odyssey. I know that this is another ruse to impress high schools and parents. No other kids our age are reading The Odyssey but that is the point of Spragg.

Mr. London has purchased new chalk. “HOME,” he writes on the board in big, messy writing. We’re taught to write neatly and within the lines, but we’ve also been taught that all men with sloppy handwriting are brilliant.

“What does home mean to you?” he says, his hands behind his back.

He looks at the front row.

“Food?” says Tua, a famously anorexic girl.

“Okay,” Mr. London says, and writes “food” on the chalkboard, and then adds “nourishment” beneath it.

“What else?”

“Annoying sisters,” says K.T., who is alone in thinking she’s the class clown. She shrugs and looks around the class as though to say Am I right? Everyone stares mournfully at their erasers.

Mr. London dutifully records her response in messy writing. He blows on the chalk. “Maria Fabiola?” he says.

“Home is refuge after a long journey,” she says.

He nods at her, sympathetically. “Refuge,” he says, and writes it on the board. He underlines the word three times.

I know it won’t be long before he calls on me. He will say my name as though it’s an afterthought, when in fact I know his entire lesson is geared to me and Maria Fabiola, the girls who disappeared and came back.

“Eulabee?” he says.

“Doilies,” I say.

“Right,” he says. “Good.” But he doesn’t write doilies on the board.