Diamonds in the Shadow Read Free Page B

relieved, because the last thing he wanted was to end up with Mopsy, who would babble. To his surprise, he felt the family separation intensely, as if from now on, the four Finches would be strangers.

    Mopsy loved sitting apart from her family, because such a thing rarely happened. She was heavily supervised, from what after-school snack to have to what television show not to watch. If she played games, it was in a group with a coach. If she metfriends, it was after conference calls between parents. If she went shopping, it was with somebody's mother, and even when she went next door, it was with cell phone in hand.
    Mopsy had heard of girls who were mall rats and could wander around on their own. She had never known anyone allowed to do that. She had heard of parents who let some ten-year-old babysit their newborn, but where Mopsy lived, the ten-year-old still had a babysitter, over whom a hidden camera panned.
    Mopsy loved this vast airport room packed with people who did not resemble anybody in Connecticut. She loved their clothes—Indian women in gleaming saris over heavy winter trousers, Arab men with turbans, Americans back from Disney World with tans and souvenirs.
    She had been awake half the night thinking about the new family. It was as exciting as Christmas Eve. She hoped these poor people wouldn't have a son, who would have to live with Jared and would end up wishing he were back in Africa. Surely one of the people in those two lower photographs was a girl. What would she be like? This was a difficult year for Mopsy, because she had no best friend. Beth and Kelly had moved away, and Meghan had become best friends with Aimee instead, and Rachel was too into sports for Mopsy's taste, and Quinnie was too new to be sure of. Mopsy planned to be best friends with this new roommate.
    She could not actually imagine the Africans. Everything Kirk Crick said was hard to grasp, especially how there were no good guys. Mopsy rejected that. Everybody was a good guy deep down.
    Except…if so… what about Brady Wall? Was a guy who stole from his church still a good guy?
    Mopsy did not like thinking about bad people who stole. She liked talking. She said to the total stranger sitting next to her, “Are you American? Are you coming or going? We're not doing either one. We're waiting. Guess who we're waiting for!”

    The fifth refugee was not only in the last row, he also had the window seat. He could not even stand until his row chose to move.
    In his native land, he would have permitted no man to block his way. But an airplane was not anyone's native land, so he could not beat a path down the aisle and catch up to the other refugees.
    In his native land, he would have been armed. But in the land of airplanes, men could not carry weapons. He was pretty sure weapons would be as easy to get in America as they had been in Africa.
    Every passenger between him and the exit seemed to be old or fat or crippled or whiny. They took forever to gather their things, and then each one dawdled in the aisle.
    He stared at his watch, a thing he had never owned before, because in his former life, he had controlled time. He had never measured it. It took eleven minutes to empty the massive plane.
    But it was not minutes he cared about. It was days. He had thirty-nine of them.
    And then for one weekend, and one weekend only, the dealer would be in New York.
    This gave the fifth refugee plenty of time to learn everything he needed to know about the city. The familiar hot excitement of combat filled his heart and he barely restrained himself from kicking his way to the front.

    The African family was twitchy with nerves, looking this way and that.
    The mother clutched the spiral-bound paperback given to everyone in her situation:
Welcome to the United States: A Guidebook for Refugees.
Many of the refugees George met had not just read it, but practically memorized it. “In the United States,” they might tell George, “great value is placed on