The Different Girl Read Free Page A

kept going. When they were inside the other building, Robbert let go.
    “That was a curious question, Veronika.”
    I told him I was sorry, but he stopped me. He knelt to look into my eyes, like he wanted to see something on the other side of them.
    “It was a good question. Why did you ask it?”
    “Because we’re paying attention to things we can’t see.”
    He stood up and patted me on the head, and told me to go help Irene. He walked back into the classroom. I thought about following him, but I didn’t.
    Irene had the others helping make rice and opening cans of meat, so no one even noticed when I came in. When she saw me, Irene shoved a plastic bottle of mineral water to me, and I unscrewed the cap and then helped get out the plates and napkins and spoons and chopsticks. Robbert came in just before everything was ready and sat down, rubbing his eyes. He rubbed his eyes whenever he took off his glasses. Everyone helped carry things to the table.
    After dinner Robbert went back to the classroom, and we sat with Irene on the porch, listening to the ocean and to the parrots, who were pretty loud. She asked us to sing. Eleanor asked what she would like to hear, and Irene told us to choose—she wanted to hear what we wanted to sing.
    No one could decide. Irene touched my arm.
    “Veronika, you asked a good question in school today, why don’t you choose what to sing?”
    She smiled. I started to sing, and the other three sang with me, happy to have it settled.
     
The honeybee flies in a line
That zigs from side to side.
To make its honey nectar wine
It journeys far and wide.
 
No matter where it finds itself
A bee can find its home.
 
    We knew many more verses, all about bees—finding flowers, drinking coconut milk, building hives, tending the queen—but all of them have the same chorus about bees finding their way home, no matter where they’ve gone. We kept singing until Irene said that was enough, and we watched the sunset until it was dark. Irene poured her last cup of tea and told us to get ready for sleep. We helped one another untie our smocks and fold them. We climbed onto our cots and waited for Irene to turn out the lights.
    After five minutes she still hadn’t come. Caroline turned to me and whispered. “What did Robbert say?”
    “He wanted to know why I asked why we went on different walks.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I said I was sorry.”
    “But you’re not sorry,” Eleanor whispered, from my other side. “Because I’m not sorry, either.”
    I nodded. I don’t think I was ever sorry, really.
    “What did he say?” whispered Caroline.
    “He said it was a good question.”
    Everyone thought about that. Isobel whispered, from the other side of Caroline. “It is a good question.” We all nodded and thought the same thing she said next. “That means they don’t know what we’re going to learn, either.”
    We heard Irene and stopped whispering. She came in, turned out the light, and bent over each of our cots in turn. First Isobel, then Caroline, then Eleanor, then me, leaning close to my face and whispering, “Go to sleep, Veronika.”
    Then she pushed the spot behind my ear, with a click, like always, and I did.
     

2.
     
    After that we always started mornings with thirty-minute walks, with each of us going a different direction. At first we just described what we’d seen, but since we had become so good at looking, this began to take up the whole morning. After a week, Robbert and Irene asked us to do things differently, because whenever we got good at something they would decide to change. They had us ask one another questions about comparing smells, or light, or sounds, or times—so we had to think about places we’d been to before as well as the place we’d just been now, and think about both in a way we hadn’t either time. The questions weren’t hard, but they were surprising. Each day we took naps and then helped with dinner. On special nights we went for a second