The Different Girl Read Free

in and Irene asked what we’d seen on our walks.
    I went first and told everything: the gravel, the dock, the splinter, the gap in the boards, the water, the sunlight, the sky, the birds—it took a while. When I finished, Irene said I’d done very well. The others just looked at me. Robbert reminded everyone about how dangerous the water was, and that going to the dock, just like going to the beach, shouldn’t be a habit for anyone . Then he looked at me again, like he had on the porch, not quite with a smile—because it wasn’t a smile—but with something.
    Then Isobel told about her trip to the cliffs, and everything began to change, like the air in a room getting colder when a door is opened, because I realized that I was looking at Isobel like the others had looked at me. This is part of what she said:
    “—one of the black crabs, but it was red on the bottom, bright red like sunburn or like hot sauce, and it was on its back and torn open, with four legs missing and the insides mostly gone, probably from birds except it was also wet, in a way that the cliff rocks weren’t wet, like it had been wet since the tide had gone down. So I asked myself how a dead crab got wet on a rock that was dry, and I wondered if one of the birds had dropped it or if the crab had been wet and crawled out and then been attacked by a bird, or maybe if—”
    And this is part of what Caroline said:
    “—so I kicked it—because it was on the ground, like a ball, and it was old and dried out, so I knew it wouldn’t be too heavy, so I could kick it—and it bounced off the trunk of the palm tree and rolled into the grass. I kicked it again, only this time farther into the grass, and it made a hole in the grass like a path, so I followed, and then kicked it again, in another direction, and it made another path, and I kept on kicking and walking, just where the coconut had rolled, so it wasn’t me making the path but the coconut, and when I looked back the whole patch of grass looked like the tunnels in an anthill—”
    And this is part of what Eleanor said:
    “—counting waves, because the waves keep coming, even though each one is different—where it breaks, how high, how fast, how much it’s shaped like the waves before, or the waves after, or how far it comes in or comes out—today the tide was going out—and I looked at how the sand on the beach dried as the tide went away and thought about how long it would take to dry until I could walk on it—”
    But I was outside of everything they said, like I listened to their stories through a window. I could imagine everything they said—I understood the words, but the understanding happened in me by myself, not in me with them. We’d done things separately before—Caroline had dreams, or one of us would visit Robbert while the others napped—yet this was different, because we all seemed to enjoy our time alone, but then felt strange when the others talked about their times alone, which didn’t make sense.
    I also knew that even though Robbert had specifically told me not to, I was going to go back to the dock the very first chance I could.
    I couldn’t even say why. There were birds all over. There was water all over. Was it the dock itself—that there could be a boat? But I hadn’t seen any boat and hadn’t thought about one either. Boats were only a bit less dangerous than planes, and they were the last thing I needed to be playing with—just like I didn’t need to be too near the water.
    So I asked.
    “Why did we go to different places on our walk?”
    Irene and Robbert paused, like they hadn’t expected the question.
    “So you’d learn about paying attention,” said Irene.
    Then it was time for dinner—the day had gone very quickly because of the long nap—and Irene led us from the classroom back to the kitchen. I was last going down the steps. Robbert was behind me and put his hand on my shoulder again, and I stopped. This time the others didn’t notice and