The Different Girl Read online

  I began to walk up the hill.

  “Where are you going?” called Isobel.

  “May doesn’t know about the storm.”

  The others didn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t have known, either—whether to follow or to call out to Irene and Robbert or whether to keep quiet. By the time I’d reached the path, they’d all seen May, too. Behind me the hammering had stopped, but Robbert and Irene didn’t call out. As I came near, what had been a shadow became a face, with two bright eyes. This time I waved. May didn’t wave back, but she didn’t run, either. Since she was faster, maybe she thought she could run whenever she liked.

  May rose halfway, hunched like she was ready, so I stopped.

  “How are you feeling, May?”

  May looked past me and I glanced back. Caroline, Eleanor, and Isobel had followed, but just to the foot of the meadow path. Robbert and Irene watched from the roof.

  “Everyone is worried, May. We thought you might have been hurt.”

  May shrugged, as if to say she wasn’t hurt, and didn’t care about our worry, either.

  “Can I come closer?” I asked. “I need to tell you something. If you get scared, you can always push me over again.”

  “I said I was sorry.” May didn’t say anything else, so I came nearer.

  “Did you enjoy the rice?”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Making a rain trap.”

  “Why?”

  “To catch water.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because there’s going to be another storm.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. You should come inside with us. It isn’t safe where you are.”

  “You don’t know where I am. No one does.”

  “But inside it will be warm. We’ll make soup and hot tea.”

  May shrugged.

  “You’ll be cold.” I took another step and May drifted backward.

  “What is wrong?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “It’s them.” She meant Robbert and Irene. “They’re going to hand me over.”

  “They won’t,” I said.

  “They will. I heard them. You don’t know what would happen.”

  “What would happen, May?”

  “They know. Everyone knows. Will had seen it. That’s why we were so careful. You have to be careful. You can’t just meet people.”

  Her words were like islands, just the visible tips of mountains underneath.

  “But I’ve thought about it, May. They can’t send you away. You’ve seen us.”

  May glared downhill. “Then that’s even worse.”

  I could see her chin shake, how ready she was to run. But to where, and for how long?

  “Come with me, May. Let’s take a walk, just us.”

  I held out my hand. May didn’t say anything, but when I took another step she didn’t run. I kept going until she was near enough to take my hand, even though she didn’t. But that was fine. I started to walk up the hill. May walked with me, and neither of us looked back.

  • • •

  While I was worried I would say the wrong thing and May might really push me down—and not on soft sand but on hard rocks or even near the cliff—I had other thoughts that kept me walking.

  “Do you think about your uncle Will and Cat?”

  May’s eyes went darker. “Why?”

  “Because I think we feel the same.”

  “No we don’t. You can’t feel like I do.”

  But I shook my head and explained what Robbert had told us, about the two planes and the explosion and our parents and the people who would be very frightened and angry if they found us. “Just like you were frightened. You saw me and you screamed.”

  “You can’t blame me for that. Anyone would have.” May’s eyes focused on her feet as we walked, but she also peeked over, like she was trying to see me for the first time all over again. I stopped walking and let her look.

  “I’m your friend. I’m a girl like you.”

  May glanced back down the hill. The other three were where they’d been, still watching. I waved to them, and they waved back.

  “Why do you do that?” May asked. “Wave.”

  “Irene says that saying hello is a nice way to make sure everyone is okay. Waving says ‘I see you’—and when someone sees you, it tells you where you are.”

  “I know where I am.”

  “But where is that, May? Where is that without anyone to help you?”

  She looked like she wanted to push me.

  “I heard them!” she shouted. “Of course she’s going to tell! Of course they’ll come! We can’t take the chance!”

  May made a croaking sound in her throat and spat, stabbing her head forward to send the spit as far as possible. I had almost never seen anyone spit, and didn’t know that it could be another kind of speaking, angry and hard.

  “They were worried, May, because of the explosion that happened with our parents. And because of the plank with three holes.”

  “‘We can’t take the chance!’” May shouted, and swatted at the grass with her feet. “What do you think that means?”

  I braced myself to be kicked like the grass, but May didn’t come near me. She stumbled farther up the hill and angrily swung her arm as if it could push us all away.

  “But the boat hasn’t come, May.” It was important for her to know. “That’s why we need the rain trap. Because we don’t know when there will be more supplies. There may never be a boat again.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” called May, retreating farther.

  “But what about the storm? May! You won’t be safe!”

  May broke into a run. I tried to follow, but I moved too slowly. I had only gone a few yards before she was lost between the trees. She hadn’t understood me at all. I needed to explain how she was wrong.

  I turned to something touching my arm. It was Robbert. I hadn’t heard him. Had May?

  “Let her go, Veronika. We have to get back.”

  “But she might get hurt.”

  “May will be fine. She knows she can come back any time. She knows you’re her friend.”

  “She thinks you and Irene want to put her on the boat.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “Or even worse.”

  He frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, but bad.”

  Robbert sighed. “Veronika, you know we only want to help her, don’t you?” I nodded. He gently turned me around and started us both back down the path. “You know that. And you can tell her so when you next speak. But now we have to go home.”

  “But May—”

  “Look at the sky, Veronika.”

  I looked. The clouds beyond the beach had become a high dark wall, advancing straight toward the island. Irene and the others were already indoors.

  “Quick as you can, now,” said Robbert. The wind had risen, a chilled hiss cutting through the palms.

  I went as fast as I could, though downhill is harder than going up. Robbert put a hand on my shoulder. The dark clouds came quickly and the light began to dim.

  “Did you finish the rain trap?”

  “We did. Let’s hope it holds together.”

  I stopped at a sudden, unexpected impact. The center of my smock was darkened by a blotch of wet cotton. A raindrop. I looked up and another spattered on my face. At once Robbert was towering over me, his body shielding mine as he tore at his white coat.

  “Don’t move, Veronika. Don’t worry. Tuck in your arms.”

  I pulled both arms tight to my sides. Robbert draped his coat over my head and torso. I stood for a moment in soft darkness, and then felt a hand behind my knees and another across my back. The raindrops probed against the coat, isolated taps growing into a ragged, continuous volley. Robbert grunted with the effort of lifting me, and I shook with the heavy lurch of his steps. I felt the thud of his feet on the grass and then the harder surface of the stairs. Th
e rain slapped on the porch. The wet coat clung to my body. The screen door wheezed and then we were inside, Irene helping to set me down and both of them wiping me with warm towels and making sure I was fine.

  The others were on their cots, asleep. Outside the rainfall grew to a roar. It had happened so fast. I hoped May had reached her hiding place, and I hoped it kept her dry.

  • • •

  Every few weeks—the exact time depended on what we’d been doing, especially how much time we’d spent near the beach—Irene and Robbert would talk to each of us alone, asking simple questions and making us do all sorts of simple things, like moving our arms in different directions, picking up objects of different weight, making different sounds, and that was just the start. This was called “basic diagnostics.” On the shelf in the classroom were four blue binders, one for each of us, where the details of every basic diagnostic had been noted down, all the way back to our beginning.

  After they made sure I was dry, Irene asked me diagnostic questions, and when I was able to answer they had me walk across the room and move my arms and legs and lift things and read small type and identify sounds they made behind my back. When I did all of it, just like always, Robbert let out a big sigh and sank onto a chair. He ran his fingers through his hair and asked Irene if she wanted any tea, which was also his way of asking Irene if she would make it. I offered to make it instead, but Irene was already filling the kettle from the filter. She set the pot on the cooker and lit the blue gas ring.

  Before she sat in her own chair, Irene turned out the kitchen light. This only left the glow from the gas ring, which gave a faint halo to each of their heads. I looked at my bare arms and saw them both reflect pale blue. Outside, the rain fell hard as before, and the wind pressed tight against the glass.

  “Primitive man around the fire,” said Robbert.

  “Stop it,” said Irene.

  “Irene likes to listen to sounds in the dark,” I said.

  Robbert nodded. “I know.”

  I wondered when they would put me to bed with the others. I didn’t want them to. The water began to hiss inside the kettle.

  “What did you say to May?” Irene asked me, but at the very same time I had a question of my own.

  “What is primitive?”

  Our words overlapped, but since Irene’s questions were always important I began to tell them everything I had said to May and what May had said back. I wasn’t sure how they would react to the part where May got so angry—about overhearing Robbert and Irene—but since I didn’t understand that either, I hoped they would explain it. I also wasn’t sure about my telling May about the explosion, but again it seemed like she needed to know how we shared losing parents—that being the same was the best way for her to trust me.

  “It’s good to know she isn’t hurt,” said Irene, after I finished.

  “But will she be hurt in the storm?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Veronika. We don’t know where she is. She must have found some place. I hope it’s dry.”

  I looked up. Even though Irene’s bedroom was directly above us, I could still hear rain pounding on the roof. “What place could be dry?”

  “Maybe she found a cave,” said Robbert.

  “Are there caves?” I asked.

  “There might be,” Robbert’s pale fingers scratched in his hair. “On the cliffs. A person would have to climb.”

  “How could anyone even find them to begin with?”

  Robbert smiled. “How do you think, Veronika?”

  “By going right to the edge and looking down? Even though that’s too dangerous?”

  “How else?” asked Irene.

  She leaned forward to watch me thinking, and I knew they both already had the answer—that they’d known about the caves before May had ever arrived. Now it was a problem for me, to imagine a part of the island that had always been there but somehow lay beyond our consideration. I thought of the cliffs, and where May had stood, farther out, looking down.

  “By the birds.”

  “What about them?” asked Irene.

  “The patterns where they fly. From the cliff wall, when they go out of sight. The angles don’t make sense unless there are places down below to stop and then start off again.”

  “But why is that a cave?” asked Robbert. “Why not just an outcropping of rock?”

  “Because of their speed, and the angles. They have to be going farther in.”

  Robbert looked at Irene and smiled.

  “That’s very good, Veronika,” she said.

  I was glad to see them smile, and also to know that May did have a cave after all, even if she had to share it with birds.

  The kettle began to whistle.

  “O let me do it,” said Robbert, waving for Irene to stay.

  “I’ve set out the green. Only half a scoop.”

  Robbert tapped the loose tea from the scoop until he had the right amount, tipped it into the pot, then poured the water in after. I knew he was supposed to warm the pot with water first, and Irene knew I knew because she saw me looking. She shrugged and leaned back again. With the gas turned off, the only glow came from the machines on the counters and shelves, colored pinpricks. But these were faint, and Irene’s face lay in shadow.

  “Is it time for you to sleep?”

  “Do I need to?”

  “You’ve had a very big day. Escaping the storm. Were you frightened?”

  “It happened so quickly, and you both were there. Are storms always so fast?”

  “Not all of them. Listen to it. What do you hear?”

  What I heard first was Robbert getting the teacups, so I turned to face out the window.

  “It’s like a finger of the sky,” whispered Irene, “dragging across the world.”

  “The sky does not have fingers,” I said.

  Irene laughed. Robbert set a steaming teacup near her hand.

  “I hope the trap holds up,” he said.

  “I wish that girl were indoors.”

  Now it was Robbert who shrugged. He sat with his cup. Irene didn’t say anything more until finally Robbert said, “I don’t want anything to happen to her, either.”

  “She’s just a child.”

  “I know it. Look, I’m going to drink my tea, and then I’m going to the classroom and make sure of the windows. You should double-check upstairs.”

  “I will. And then what?”

  “I don’t know, Irene. Except this one should say good night.”

  “This one” meant me. “Can I wait until you’ve finished your tea?”

  “Of course,” said Irene.

  I kept my face to the window. I tried to imagine the black sea and a girl struggling in its heaving waves, her body shuddering with cold.

  Irene picked up her tea. I heard her blow across the cup to cool it.

  • • •

  We woke up together. The storm had passed and the sky was back to blue, so bright and rich it bled straight into the sea at the horizon, a giant blue bowl.

  The four of us stood with Irene on the beach path, looking out. Robbert was in the classroom, testing if everything still worked. They had been up for hours, if they had slept at all, checking for damage.

  When we were putting on our smocks I asked if they had seen May in the night, or any time that morning. Irene said they hadn’t, but that she had walked to the cliff and called for May and left more food where she could find it.

  “Are you sure she’s all right?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Veronika. It was a very powerful storm. But the birds survive, and she’s hiding where they do, so I hope we’ll see her soon. She can’t be comfortable.”

  I told the others everything while we got dressed and went outside. We wanted to walk to the cliff, but Irene said we weren’t skipping class. We knew perfectly well that class after a storm was always studying what had changed.

  Three large palm leaves had blown into the courtyard, and we helped Irene put them in a pile. The day w
as very hot, without much wind, as if the storm had used it up. I knew there was no barrel of wind that could run out, but thinking like that was a way to imitate Irene, who sometimes described things differently from what they actually were, like saying the sky had fingers. When we were younger we would always ask why—if she said “that took forever” or “hot enough to fry an egg”—because we knew how long it had really taken and that there were nests in the trees where no eggs were being fried. But we sometimes made exaggerated points of our own, to be like her, even though she told us not to try.

  Irene wiped the sweat off her neck with a kerchief, folded it over, and then stuck it into the pocket of her dress. She wasn’t wearing her white coat, only an old dress without sleeves that came to her knees. Whenever I saw Irene’s bare arms I thought of how strong they were and how far she could reach. Her skin was a different color than May’s, more reddish from being burnt by the sun, though the parts under her arms weren’t burnt. They were almost as pale as Robbert, who almost always wore his white coat, no matter how hot it was. The paleness under Irene’s arms made me think of the bottom of May’s feet and the palms of her hands, which were lighter, too. I didn’t know if that was because of the sun—I didn’t think anyone got much sun on the bottoms of their feet, but May’s hands were in the sunlight all the time. The four of us didn’t change color at all, even if we went outside without our smocks.

  Irene shaded her eyes with both hands and studied the water. We were looking at the beach. Fresh footprints went off from where we stood in either direction.

  “Have you already been here?”

  She looked down at me. “We had a quick look.”

  “Maybe we’ll find something you didn’t,” said Caroline.

  “Because you’re good at finding?” asked Irene.

  “That’s our job,” said Eleanor.

  We walked together, all five in one direction—toward where I’d found May—keeping on past where Irene’s footprints stopped, until we reached the rocks. These were the same black rocks that made the cliffs, only here they were low, rising from the sand to break up the beach, like they stuck out of the water and broke up the waves. The ground on the island rose here, so while it wasn’t yet the cliffs, it was where they began. I tried to see May’s cave, but the island kept curving as the ground rose. The actual cliffs were too far away, beyond a spur of rock.