There were several things that woke Liberty from her deep, exhausted sleep. The leaves had become cold and damp, despite the midmorning sun shining down. A fly buzzed in her ear. Her face and neck itched, and as she scratched, she felt the welts of the mosquito bites.
She stood up and brushed off as much of the leaves and dirt as she could.
A few moments later, she heard voices from an area above her, where the bank sloped up toward a plateau. I think this is it!
The hill was steeper than it looked. Liberty climbed on her hands and knees so she wouldn’t slide, grabbing the earth with her fingers and digging in with her worn-out shoes.
What she saw when she reached the top was stunning: a green lawn stretching as far as she could see and the huge, majestic brick building, like a castle in a fairy tale, that she recognized from the brochure.
She had arrived. Finally. Liberty felt like dashing across the lawn, bursting through the door of the building, and shouting, like a child who’d run from school through a rainstorm, “I’m home!”
Across the lawn, a row of boys and girls marched in a line behind a teacher, a tall man with a walking stick. The boys wore navy pants, white shirts, and gray sweaters. The girls wore gray plaid skirts (gray!), crisp white shirts, and gray sweaters. When Liberty saw them all, so orderly and uniform, she felt like another person lived inside her skin, a much smaller one. And that person shrank deep within herself.
In other words, she felt shy.
Laughing and talking, the students marched past without noticing her. Several times, the teacher turned and held a finger up to his lips to silence them.
Liberty waited until they were past, then she followed, ducking behind the many trees that dotted the campus.
The teacher and children entered a smaller building. It reminded her of the houses she’d seen when she climbed out of the sewer. There were beautiful flowers all around it, and a beech tree that spread like an umbrella over the building, dwarfing it.
Liberty considered following them inside, but then she had another idea. She jumped on one of the tree’s low branches and began to climb. From the midsection, she could see in the windows of the second floor, where children were walking quickly down the hall and filing into rooms. She scurried to another limb.
From there she saw inside an entire classroom with lovely wooden desks in a row. This teacher reminded her of illustrations of Mother Goose. She had gray hair piled on her head and little pinchy glasses.
After the children filled the desks, the teacher began to talk, pointing to various places on a large, colorful map.
The map fascinated Liberty. She longed to hear what the teacher was saying.
Each child had a box of colored pencils on their desk. While the teacher talked, the children colored in their own maps, although a couple of girls were whispering to each other and a boy at the back of the room was shooting wads of paper out of his mouth.
Liberty watched the teacher for a long time, trying to imagine what she was saying. How she longed to be inside, listening and coloring in her own map.
Suddenly, a bell rang. Children began pouring out of the building, carrying lunch trays. Food! They sat on the ground or on benches that dotted the lawn.
What are they eating? Liberty wondered. She was so hungry. She scurried along the tree branches like a squirrel, then climbed lower so she could see.
Beneath her, a group of girls sat at a picnic table. On their trays were noodles, sandwiches, cups of soup, strawberries, carrots, potato chips, and cookies.
Liberty’s mouth watered.
“Tell us more, Riley,” a blond girl was saying.
“I’m going to have my party beside the swimming pool,” Riley said. “There’ll be dancing. It’s going to be catered with drinks that have umbrellas in them and canapés.”
“Ohhhh!” two other girls exclaimed in unison.
“What if it rains?” a dark-haired girl said. The words actually came out kind of mushy, as she had new braces.
“It never rains in July, Brace Face,” Riley said.
“Are you going to invite all of us?” the blond asked.
Invite me, Liberty thought, crawling onto a lower branch to hear more and to smell the wonderful food.
Let’s shift the point of view for just a moment to the six girls in starched white shirts and gray plaid skirts (I am what is known as an omniscient narrator, so I am allowed to do so). They were discussing the menu for a summer party, when out of nowhere, a girl dropped out of a tree, smack, on top of their lunches. The girl was filthy, with welts on her face and neck, a torn dress, and a bad haircut.
What did they think?
Actually, some were curious. The one with the braces was terribly worried that the girl was hurt.
Riley, who was bragging about her party, however, was horrified to have such a wretched creature upstage her. “Oh my God! Look at the freak the cat dragged in.” She pointed.
Somehow cats are involved in everything. Liberty scrambled off the table.
“And look what it did to our lunches!” someone else said.
Picking up the cue, two others joined in. “It’s a freak from the sky!”
Brace Face opened her mouth to speak. She was going to say, Give the kid a break and let’s find out if she’s hurt, but unfortunately she had just taken a bite of peanut butter sandwich and her braces were stuck together.
“You’re trespassing, street person!” Riley shouted.
Liberty tried to wipe the food from her dress. “But I’m supposed to live here,” she explained in a small voice.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Riley said.
“Trespasser! Trespasser!” two girls chanted.
A girl with glasses appeared from the other side of the tree. “How can I study with you geese squawking?”
“Some street person snuck into the school!” Riley said.
“Lost, are you?” the girl asked.
“She thinks she’s supposed to live here!” Riley made a gagging gesture.
“Ignore them,” the girl said. “They’re a bunch of scoundrels.”
Even here, at the Sullivan School, there were scoundrels.
“You’re not going to be invited to my party, Joelly!” Riley taunted.
“Whatever.” Joelly took Liberty’s arm. “I’d better take you to admissions. You have to be admitted before you can live here.”
As Joelly wandered with Liberty across the lovely grounds, pointing out the swimming complex, the ice-skating rink, and the huge glass library, Liberty forgot about the mean girls and became happy again. She could feel it inside, like a cup of hot chocolate warming her on a snowy day: She was going to live at the Sullivan School.