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"Me too," he says "She asked for you, after you left

Your na at me now, so I nod, suddenly aware that I’m naked under these blankets I draw them closer around myself "What’s your naain, that als I want to ask hiardens and clear blue pools, syes

I want to knohere he ca back I even want to tell him about my plan to escape--if I ever forerous If my brother were here, he’d tell ht," the boy, Gabriel, says "Youday" His tone i awful ahead

He turns to leave, and I notice a slight limp in his walk that wasn’t there this afternoon Beneath the thin white fabric of his unifor to for my escape down the hallway possible? These are one And I hear the click of a lock turning in the door

Chapter 3

It’s not Gabriel akes eneration, if the gray hair is any indication, though their eyes still sparkle with the vibrancy of youth They are chattering a themselves as they yank the blankets from me

One of the women looks over my naked body and says, "Well, at least on’t have to wrestle this one out of her clothes"

This one After everything that’s happened, I alot that there are two others Trapped in this house somewhere, behind other locked doors

Before I can react, two of the wo me toward the bathroom that connects to le," one of theer to keep pace with them Another woman stays behind to make my bed

In the bathroom they make me sit on the toilet lid, which is covered in so is pink The curtains are flimsy and impractical

Back hoive the i eyes of new orphans looking for shelter and handouts The house I shared with hts on a cot in the base in shifts just in case the locks didn’t hold, using our father’s shotgun to guard us

Frilly, pretty things have no place in s Not where I come from

The colors are endless One woman draws a bath while the other opens the cabinet to a rainbow of little soaps that are shaped like hearts and stars She drops a few of the a frothy layer of pink and blue Bubbles pop like little fireworks

I don’t argue when I’ naked in front of these strangers, but the water looks and s It’s so unlike the bleary yelloater that runs through the rusty pipes in the house I shared with my brother

Shared Past tense How could I let myself think this way?

I lie in the sweet-s saine real roses must smell like But I will not be hypnotized by the wonder of these ss Defiantly I think of the house I share with my brother, the house where my mother was born at the threshold of the new century It has brick walls still i since died It has a fire escape with a broken ladder, and on its street all the houses are close enough together that as a child I would hold my arirl who lived next door

We would string paper cups across the divide and talk to each other in giggles

That little girl was orphaned young Her parents were the new generation; she barely knew herI reached for her and she was gone

I was inconsolable, that girl having been ht blue eyes sometimes, the way she’d toss pepperaone, a, that when she was a little girl she would spend hours in the park flying kites I asked her for ave the toy stores and frozen lakes where she would skate swanlike into figure eights and of all of the people who had passed beneath the very s of this very house when it was young and covered in ivy, and when the cars were parked in neat, shiny rows along the street, in Manhattan, New York

When she and my father died, my brother and I covered the ith burlap potato and coffee bean sacks We took all our s, all our father’s important clothes, and stuffed them into trunks that locked The rest we buried in the yard, late at night, beneath the ailing lilies

This is s are my past, and I will not allow them to be washed away I will find a way to have thereeable hair," one of the wo warm cupful after cupful of frothy water over my head "Such a lovely color, too I wonder if it’s natural" Of course it’s natural What else would it be?

"I bet that’s what the Governor liked about her"