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By Root 626 0

in the center of double rows of eight—sixteen of us in a long, drab room with a creaking, dark wood floor and a crucifix made of what appeared to be olive wood hanging over each bed. There were no sheets on the thin, padded mattress or the equally thin pillow. All the other beds were unmade, and the pillow of the bed directly across from mine—number twelve—lay on the floor. The bed of the dead girl, then. Annabelle had been found at sunrise, white as a sheet, eyes glassy and half-open. I’d been only minutes at the orphanage, and I had already heard all about it.

My hair stood on end. I didn’t want to sleep anywhere near that bed. But it seemed I was to be given no choice.

“Put on your uniform and come to my office,” Mother Mary Patrick ordered me. Then she looked hard at me and said, “You’re quite old enough to be on your own. I only took you in as a courtesy.”

To whom? I wanted to ask. She wasn’t courteous in the least.

“Please, miss, I mean Mother, where should I put my suitcase?” I asked her.

She looked confused for a moment. Her eyes were milky, and I wondered if she had trouble seeing. If maybe that was why she kept glaring and squinting at me.

Then she said, “Under your bed, I suppose. Hurry and dress, then come to me.”

I tried to do as she asked, but my tears made everything hazy, like her milky eyes. I had never dressed myself alone before; I’d always had a maid, and then my mother had helped me. I was helpless.

The room swam; shaking, I lay down on the bed that was directly across from the dead girl’s bed, and cried.

Two hours later, after I had washed and swept untold numbers of floors, I was sent to dinner.

I staggered down a hall, so hungry, tired, and frightened I could barely move. The din in the enormous room buffeted my ears as over seventy girls sat down to eat. Some girls were still crying over the death of Annabelle. Others were laughing and chatting. I missed my mother. I wanted her arms around me, holding me against her bony chest. I would rather have that than the watery soup and pieces of unbuttered bread being served by six young girls wearing all-white habits to orphans seated at six plain wooden trestle tables, a dozen to each table.

Then I forgot my longing as I caught sight of a tall, uncommonly thin girl seated at my table. She looked to be near my age and was wearing my fox stole around her bony shoulders.

“Look at me, lahdidah, the new girl,” she announced, grinning at me, swirling the stole around her shoulders. A couple of the other girls at the table—my new dorm mates, I supposed—grinned as they gazed from her to me, watching to see what I would do.

“You went in my suitcase,” I blurted; then I realized she’d done something even worse. My suitcase was locked, and I wore the key around my neck, beneath my pinafore.

“What about it?” she asked, dangling the end of the stole over her steaming bowl of soup, as if she meant to dip it in and ruin it. “Who cares? You’re not rich any more. Can’t lord it over us any more.”

Her followers chuckled and nodded. Their eyes gleamed like the eyes of predators.

“I only just got here. I’ve never seen you before in my life,” I told her. She was so tall and skinny and mean-looking that I stayed rooted to the spot instead of walking past her and taking my seat at the far end of the table.

“You’ve never seen any of us,” she said, picking up her spoon. “We were your stupid servants and the coarse, low-class girls your parents would never let you talk to. And now . . . this place is ours, and you aren’t welcome.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Annabelle thought she was too good for us, too.”

I sucked in my breath.

She lifted her chin. “And so did Sarah.”

The other girls at the table blinked and shifted uncomfortably. “Now you’ve gone too far,” said one of them, thin-faced and freckled, with a single wheat-colored braid down her back.

Then all heads turned as Mother Mary Patrick swept into the room with a tall young man who was dressed in priest’s black, wearing a priest’s white collar. His hair was the color of a tawny, sun- kissed lion, and