Prairie Ostrich Read Free Page A

hallway with Vice Principal Geary by her side, Mrs. Syms talks of God’s watchful care and how she is always vigilant for the sparrow’s fall.
    To Egg, Mrs. Syms towers, all jiggly jowls and flaring nostrils. Her fingers are curled like a raven’s, and her eyes are a bloodless blue. Her hair, lashed back, is a bleak winter’s grey.
    The line trudges to the classroom before the bell, before the doors slam open and the older years rush through the corridor. In the hallways, Mrs. Syms uses her singsong voice but in the classroom it sounds very different.
    â€œChildren.” Mrs. Syms’s voice is flat as a ruler. “Silence.” She slaps her pointer against the wall. Egg notes the strap hanging behind Mrs. Syms’s desk — a dark brown leather cut from a worn crupper. She shudders.
    Mrs. Syms continues, “I will now call out your last name and you will take your desk.” She looks down at the attendance sheet. “Allen, Brennan, Brown.” Her pointer, like some darting insect, hovers, then slashes to the front row.
    Egg holds her breath.
    â€œCollins, Cochran, Easton.”
    She grips the handle of her lunch box.
    â€œFisken.”
    The letters ring the room, above the chalkboard, beginning with A is for Apple. A is always for Apple. Egg knows this. It is never Apes or Apricots. Kathy says Ah pricots but Egg puts the apes in Ape pricots. Egg knows that if enough people say Ape pricots it will be real. Language is like that.
    â€œJohnson, McClure, Murakami.”
    Her desk is right behind Martin. Martin Fisken: her nemesis.
    She slides into her chair ever so quietly, quelling her fear.
    â€œSimpson, Taylor, Williams.”
    As Paulie Williams takes his seat behind Egg, she whips around and whispers, “Trade seats for two dollars?”
    Paulie’s eyebrows pop, like a jack-in-the-box weasel. He takes a moment to pull at his cowlick as he leans forward; he’s a dead ringer for Dennis the Menace. “Two bucks every week,” he says, as his eyes dart to the pursed lips of Mrs. Syms who peruses her attendance sheet.
    Egg squints. “One buck one week, a Tootsie Roll the next.” She knows that he favours the sticky caramels and taffies that he can pull into strings. He has lost two fillings already, rattling them in his daddy’s tobacco tin that he keeps in his back pocket.
    â€œSponge toffee,” he counters.
    She gives a curt nod, “Deal,” and slips sideways out of her seat. Luck is with her, for at that moment Mrs. Syms turns to the blackboard, writing her name with great sweeping letters against the pristine slate. Egg nods to Paulie — she is halfway to his seat, her arms already on his desk. Beside them, little Jimmy Simpson raises his eyebrows but he does not say a word. It’s a smooth swap all around.
    At least now she is closer to the back of the class and she has something between her and Martin Fisken. A dollar is worth it. That and sponge toffee. She holds her breath when Mrs. Syms looks over her classroom but no, her teacher does not suspect a thing.
    Egg rocks back in relief.
    Last December Martin Fisken chased Egg down the hall, shouting that she killed Pearl Harbour. Egg always gets chased at Pearl Harbour — that was when the Japs were evil. But for now, December is an eternity away, just as August is long past. For Egg, December and August are the hardest months. In August, Martin and his gang caught her by Gustafsson’s store with the worst game of all, something he called Atomic Bomb — the knees and elbows hurt the most. Grown-ups tell you to turn the other cheek, but that doesn’t help if the blows keep coming. In the Greek myths, Nemesis is the Goddess of Retributive Justice but Egg knows that nemesis in the Dictionary means something different. Egg had to look up the word retributive. Sometimes the Dictionary is like a puzzle, going from word to word, like the thread in the Minotaur’s