Read Online The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty - Free Book Online Page A

nice set of clothes, but two: one set for travel, and a nicer set for the selections. They had warm coats and new shoes that actually fit, caps for the boys, hair ribbons for the girls. The agents were experts at braiding hair and tying shoelaces and erasing evidence of tears or interrupted naps. When the children were clean and presentable, they were led onto some kind of stage, usually at a church or a theater or an opera house. There was always a crowd. People would come out just to watch.
    Even at the time, Cora understood the danger she was in, standing on stage after stage, staying quiet as adults milled about, looking her and the other children over, telling some to open their mouths and show their teeth. She was glad not to be a boy. Men and women squeezed boys’ skinny arms to feel for muscle, and pressed hands against their knees and slim hips. Some were clear about their needs. Have you ever milked a cow? Have you ever shucked corn? Are you sickly? Were your parents sickly? Do you know what it means to work? But it wasn’t so good to be a girl, either. At one stop, Cora listened as a man with a long beard told an older girl with thick black braids how pretty she was, and how he had lost his wife a few years back, and how it was just him in the house, alone, but that it was a big house, and did she like babies? Instead of answering, the girl had started to cough, hard and purposeful, not even putting her hand to her mouth, her face red as if she were choking, until the man stepped away. When he walked past Cora, his face grim, she started coughing, too.
    Rose was the first of her group to go. Cora didn’t see who chose her. She’d been so nervous, standing on the stage, that she didn’t even notice Rose was gone until they were back on the train, and she had the seat to herself. Mary Jane was picked at the next stop, practically jumping into the arms of a young man with a black coat and a cane who asked her if she would like her own pony. His wife was pretty, with a long green skirt and a matching, smart-looking jacket, her blond hair in coils under her hat. Walking out between them, Mary Jane had turned back and waved at Cora, a flash of loss in her eyes before she looked up at the man, smiled again, and disappeared through the door.
    Cora didn’t see Patricia go, either.
    By the first stop in Kansas, over half of the children were gone, but Cora still hadn’t been picked. She knew this was partly her fault. Some of the children sang the Jesus song on every stage, and it was true that they got more attention. But Cora was too shy. And in her young way, too suspicious. She remembered stories Sister Josephine had told, Hansel and Gretel and Little Snow White . Surely the people who showed up at the stages were as capable of disguise, of appearing good and kind as the agents looked on, only to transform into witches and child-eating goblins once they were out of sight. She wondered what would happen if she were never picked, if, stop after stop, and stage after stage, she had to keep getting back on the train, until finally—what? The train couldn’t go on forever. The agents would have to go back to New York. If she were still with them, she could go back as well.
    This was what was in her head when she first saw the Kaufmanns. They were both tall people, pale-faced and lanky. Cora stared up at them more with curiosity than personal interest. The man was older than the woman, his forehead deeply lined, his lips thin and bloodless. The woman was younger, his daughter, perhaps, but she was not pretty like the woman in the green dress who had taken Mary Jane. This woman had small, pale eyes, and a pointy nose. A gingham bonnet covered her hair.
    “Hello,” she said to Cora.
    Both the man and the woman crouched low, their faces level with hers. Cora could not cough or pretend to be slow: one of the agents was right there, watching. The man asked her name, and she told him. He asked her age, and she said she