The Vespertine Read Free

ground—
this
was a
city.
My heart beat with it. My thoughts roared with it!
    With another crisp bite of apple, I tasted—perhaps for the first time—the true sweetness of possibility.
    ***
    "We'll share this bed. And I've cleared half the armoire for your things."
    Clad in cherry silk, Zora Stewart moved as if her feet never touched the floor. She had a high color in her cheeks, her heart-shaped face delicate as a bisque doll's.
    Curls escaped the sweep of her dark hair, coppery coils that served only to draw her throat longer and more elegant still. Only the faintest spray of freckles across her nose gave hint that she was anything but perfection.
    "It's good of you to have me." I bowed my head, an imitation of her serene air that felt so unfamiliar, it could have been mockery. Lizzy was right. I'd spent too many years rusticating in the Down East, reading about manners but never truly practicing them.
    "It wasn't as though I had a choice." Lights danced in Zora's eyes, hinting at the nimble mind wrapped in such a lovely package of grace and femininity. She had not spoken crossly. In fact, amusement touched the edge of her lips. "Can you polish boots?"
    I played along. "I can, and darn socks and rebone stays..."
    "How are you, I wonder," she said, as she turned to open the window, "at making biscuits?"
    I covered my heart with my hand and confessed, "A failure, I admit. I'm told my biscuits suit nicely when there are no rocks to be had for a slingshot."
    A soft breath of wind flooded into the room, stirring trapped heat and urging it away. Zora leaned against the windowsill and smiled. "Brilliant. I'm forever running short of ammunition for my slingshot."
    "I have never been away from home," I told her.
    "I have never had a friend to stay," she replied.
    At once, we both took an accounting. Her gown was more fashionable; my hair more intricately dressed. In stillness, she held her hands with grace, and I sprawled, ungainly along the edge of the bed. In that moment, I suppose we could have decided to be rivals.
    Instead, Zora took my hand and said, "We're too grand to stay indoors today, I believe."
    ***
    Twining down streets that spread in a chaotic burst from Druid Hill Park, we took in sunshine and our fill of sightseeing—or, rather, sightseeing for me and sight-showing for her.
    "Four mornings a week," Zora told me, tugging at a locked door, "we'll come here for classes. You won't care much for Miss Burnside."
    Lifting my skirts, I rose to peer in the window. It looked like any private home on the block, though a plate by the door read SWANN DAY SCHOOL.
    "I only had a tutor."
    Zora nodded. "My friends Sarah and Mattie share a tutor, but Papa is fascinated with progress. Co-educational learning! Gaslight on tap! You should see the way he trembles in excitement when he talks about the new train line going in. Chicago's the future, he claims. We need a direct route to it!"
    "August isn't modern at all," I said. "He's quite old-fashioned, in fact. He would have married me off by now if there were anyone in Broken Tooth
to
marry."
    Wrinkling her nose, Zora asked, "What sort of name is Broken Tooth?"
    "An accurate one," I said.
    It was a hard-working village, small and spare. We had no regular doctor;dentistry was done in the barbershop. I supposed it made August feel like a lord to live on a hill above it all. Down East he could pretend to be a society man. I didn't bother explaining that, though. We Van den Broeks shared that pride, it seemed—I didn't want Zora to think I was more backward than she already must.
    With a winning smile, I changed the subject. "So I'm looking forward to going to school with you!"
    Zora looped her arm through mine to drag me away. "I already earned the first desk. It drives the boys to distraction. Have You taken Latin or Greek? You'll have to start at the last, but if you unseated them your first week ... oh!"
    Bewildered, I asked, "Unseat them how?"
    "With lessons. The first of the class