to peach on him in return, I would not be believed, and I would only be hated the more by Curtis and the others.
I do not understand why the rotter has it in for me. Unlike most of the other upperclassmen, I get no kick out of lording it over underclassmen, even snobbish rich ones like Curtis. I do not even require him to make my bed and shine my shoes for morning inspection. Mother raised me to take care of myself, and I do not see why turning seventeen should mean I do not have to do it anymore.
After lights out that night I broke out my electric torch and stayed up for hours reading A Wrinkle in Time. As usual, I ignored the scufflings and giggles coming from Curtis’s side of the room after he sneaked his girlfriend Martha in. Martha is a junior at Cleodolinda Preparatory, St. George’s sister school. The few times I have seen her in full daylight I have been confronted with that ancient puzzle of just what she sees in him. It cannot be Curtis’s money, or the fire-red Churchill he drives. Her bright blue eyes are too intelligent, her air too fine, for me to believe she is that shallow.
“It’s the moves, Purnell,” Curtis said to me once. He had seen me eyeing Martha and her friends.
“What?”
“The moves. You don’t have them.” Curtis always spoke to me in that condescending tone. It served him in place of friendliness.
“No, I suppose I do lack them.”
“Yep. You certainly do lack them,” Curtis said cheerfully. “What girl would look at an egghead like you?”
“None at all.” Brutal, but true. And I had learned long ago that putting myself down would ensure that the other chaps would leave me alone. Curtis laughed and clapped me on the shoulder—he is three inches taller than me, despite being two years younger.
* * * *
Darkness intensified around me. Streetlamps flickered on, barely cutting through the gloom. What a great way to spend a Saturday night, when everyone else was out playing football, kicking that round black-and-white ball back and forth on the field, or walking out with their girlfriends. Curtis must be slobbering all over Martha’s delicate white neck right now. And who was truly intelligent, him or me? After all, I was the one wandering deserted streets looking for a run-down bookstore.
I do not know what drew me back. Maybe it was that peculiar cat, Tiferet. What a strange name! After chapel, I had asked Reverend Marks if he knew what the word meant.
“Why, yes, Tom my boy.” Reverend Marks raised a single brow on his round, clean-shaven face. “I studied Hebrew in seminary, as do all in the teaching order. ‘Tiferet’ means ‘glory.’ But where did you run across the word? Do not tell me you’re so bored studying French along with Latin that you have decided to take up another language.” He chuckled.
St. George’s is very progressive in some ways, or at least Mr Kirkwood is. He introduced modern languages alongside classical Greek and Latin when he became headmaster four years ago, much to the annoyance of the more conservative faculty and graduates. They were even more scandalized when he brought in a French master, one from Europe itself. French, for heaven’s sake! So unpatriotic! Of course Madame Dantès claimed to be a defector, but someone so old and ugly and shifty-looking just had to be a spy, or that is what most of the chaps think. Her class is very unpopular—some days, I have her practically to myself. Well, that was everyone else’s loss.
“Bored with Madame? I don’t think so!” I told Reverend Marks the strange story of how I had found Tiferet in Gloria’s Gateway Books and Records.
“Really? It sounds wonderful! Where is this bookstore? You must take me there!” Reverend Marks cried, clapping his hands together.
Ah. I had to admit to not knowing where the store was or how to find it again. The Reverend and I looked in the voicegram directory, and when we did not find it there he asked the school’s babbage, but even that fine old machine, with its brass fittings lovingly polished by the underclassmen, had never heard of a bookstore by that name anywhere in Philadelphia, or anywhere as far south as Baltimore or as far north as Manahatta. Finally the Reverend had to abandon the search, but he made me promise I would take him there if I could ever find it again myself.
Which was looking increasingly unlikely. And I had thought I had left myself all the time in the world, leaving campus as soon flag raising was over Saturday morning—how I had fidgeted, standing at attention with all the other chaps while the good old Union Bars-and-Stars was unfurled. Now I had been walking for hours, and dusk was fast approaching, and I did not know where on earth I was. I could not even glimpse the tops of the gold domes of the Houses of Parliament where they rise a few miles to the south, near where the Schuylkill River empties into the Delaware River. I shivered and pulled at the zip on my well-worn but still comfortable goosedown jacket, making sure it was all the way up. A cat yowled somewhere, and the churning clouds overhead faded to a featureless grey.
There it was! I hurried to the door, now painted a bright turquoise. The store hours were still blank, however, and my heart sank when I looked through the window and saw darkness. But the door handle turned, and a welcome blast of warm air met me as I walked inside. Something brushed against my legs, startling me. Tiferet.
“How are you, girl?” I squatted and scratched under her chin. She purred, but then turned up her nose and leapt onto the counter. Oh, no. I had been so panicked about getting back before curfew I had forgotten to pay for A Wrinkle in Time. I fished about in my pockets for something, anything, of worth. All I had was a comb, my billfold (empty except for two five-shilling notes), and four halfpennies, with Sir Ben Franklin’s three-quarters profile gazing shrewdly at me. I suspected that none of these were what Gloria had in mind when she wrote her note.
I walked around the counter, found a slot in the cash register, and tried to slip in the five-shilling notes. But the slot narrowed before my eyes, like a mouth closing, and the bills would not fit in, even when I folded them.
“How can that be?”
On the countertop, Tiferet gazed at me with her amber eyes, then winked before jumping down and darting away.
“Well.” I had another look through my wallet. But I had no other money, except for the halfpence, too thick to fit in the slot. I gazed in the mirror. My too-long, thick, sandy hair was in its usual untidy state. I pulled out my comb and ran it through my hair. Granny had given me the comb—she died when I was eight, but I still thought about her every day. This comb was made of fine mother-of-pearl, with gleaming ivory teeth.
I glanced from it to the waiting slot, and without quite meaning to I slipped the comb in. It disappeared without a sound. Immediately I regretted its loss, but I knew I had done the right thing. I sighed, rubbed my eyes and began searching for history books that might interest Reverend Marks. There were many, but all were very fantastical, and I did not know if he had a taste for fantasy. Really, imagining a Europe that’s not a French-speaking empire? Ridiculous. Many would think it an impossible dream, especially the idea of the Home Islands being free of Parisian rule. Yet aspects of these imaginary worlds seemed nightmarish—this fantasy-Europe had seen two horrible wars in the twentieth century, under tyrants who made Napoléon I seem as benign as a Connecticut country curate.
Maybe I could find something that Reverend Marks would enjoy in that weird hidden room. I started to make my way back there when a noise from the counter startled me. I turned around—a mug of steaming tea waited for me.
“Gloria?”
There was no answer, but a note waited for me under the mug, in the same hand as last time. My skin prickled the way it does when
