Read Online Blow Out the Moon by Libby Koponen - Free Book Online Page A

ballet, too,” he called after me; as I ran out I heard him talking excitedly and my mother sort of laughing and saying, “Honestly, Art!”
    My mother and I went shopping right after breakfast. First, she ordered name tapes (a long strip of white material with your name on it over and over in little capital letters: you could choose the color of the letters and I chose blue), and the man PROMISED that they would be ready by the end of the day. These had to be sewn inside all my clothes, even the socks, my mother said. She was worried about getting it done on time.
    “I’m such a slow seamstress.”

    This is the list, with my mother’s notes and check marks. Walking shoes laced up and had thick soles. House shoes were like Mary Janes, only made of brown leather. The shorts were culottes: they were made out of wool. “Fawn” was a sort of warm beige color. “Knickers” were brown and a little bigger and heavier than underpants. You wore them OVER your underpants (why you needed them I never knew). “Vests” were undershirts
.
    I had to try on a lot of clothes. The only interesting ones were the string gloves for riding — they really did look and feel like they were made out of string! Maybe they were! They didn’t have the jodhpurs and tweed jacket in my size. The man who measured me seemed surprised that I was going away to school, and when my mother said I was eight he said, “She’s a bit small for her age, isn’t she?”
    It was true. I kept hoping that someday I would get taller; both of my parents are tall, and Emmy was tall for her age, too. In fact, by this time we were about the same height. But, so far I hadn’t grown.
    My mother and Jill started sewing on the name tapes as soon as we got home — my mother’s stitches were tiny and perfectly even. As soon as things were done my mother checked them off on her list and put them in a trunk.
    There was also a small brown suitcase called an “overnight case.” She packed a dressing gown like the ones the girls in the books had and pajamas and a “sponge bag” — that was a pink plastic bag filled with soap, a washcloth, shampoo, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a brush and comb. She said I could put the rest of the things of mine that I wanted to bring in this case myself, and that I could choose what to take.
    I didn’t bring the dolls — in the stories no one had dolls and it wouldn’t be any fun to play with them without Emmy anyway. I chose
Pride and Prejudice
(the book about the five sisters; my parents had given me my own copy for Christmas),
Little Women, Melissa Ann
(a book about an orphan), and a fat blue book called
Blackie’s Schoolgirl’s Omnibus
that had three novels about boarding school in it. I wrote my name and our address in America in each book. I packed the card with Henry’s address on it and all his letters inside the books so they wouldn’t get ripped. I was going to leave the fortune-catcher at home, but then I unfolded it and put it in, too, very carefully. And I put in the diary and pen I had gotten for Christmas — I’d only written in the diary once, but maybe at the school I would want to. I put in an ink bottle, too, but my mother took that out.
    “But then how can I write?” I said.
    “They’ll have ink at the school,” she said quietly, without looking up from the ink bottle in her hand.
    When she did look at me, I thought she looked a little sad, but then she smiled and said, “You’ll have a lot to write about, and you can write letters to all of us to tell us what it’s like: I’m putting in lots of envelopes and stamps. Daddy and I will write to you, of course, and Emmy, too — it will be good practice for her — and Willy and Bubby can draw pictures.”
    When I woke up the next day, the day I was leaving for boarding school, it was very sunny.
    “Emmy! Are you awake?”
    She didn’t answer, so I got out of my bed and went over to hers. She sat up slowly and sleepily.
    “I want to ask you