Read Online The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist - Free Book Online Page A

I stood with May. Usually the two not holding hands with Irene just waited to hold hands with her on the walk back. But now we were with May, who just looked down at her feet. Since I had done it before, I reached to touch May’s hand. She pulled back, surprised.
    “We hold hands with Irene,” said Caroline.
    “O,” said May, but nothing else.
    Caroline held out her hand. May looked at it, then over at Irene, who was watching everything.
    “Why did she say ‘no pinching’?”
    “Because we don’t pinch,” said Caroline.
    “That’s right,” I said, just like Irene. I held out my hand, too. May finally took it and then took Caroline’s.
    “We’re off then,” said Irene. “Isobel, where first?”
    “The cliffs,” said Isobel.
    “Why the cliffs? Eleanor?”
    “Because we’ll see more, since the tide is out.”
    “Very good.” Irene dipped her eyes once right at me, a hidden look, and then turned to lead the way.
    • • •
    May wasn’t as good at walking with us as Irene, so there was some stumbling, which meant that the three of us fell behind, just enough that—as May realized first—we could talk without the others hearing.
    “Are you . . . okay now?”
    May’s voice was still a little hoarse, scraped in her throat. She was looking at Caroline. Caroline didn’t answer, blinking, and it seemed like May wasn’t sure what to say next, or even what words to use, like she’d met a bird or a flower that didn’t have a name. She tried again.
    “He . . . Robbert . . . this morning . . . he was . . . working . . . on you—”
    “Robbert wanted to know about my dream,” said Caroline, just as softly as May. She looked ahead to see if Irene had heard—she hadn’t—then across to me. Caroline knew this walk was about our learning to see what May saw, another version of an island we already knew. That meant paying attention to May. But since now there were things Caroline wasn’t supposed to talk about—and maybe this morning’s dream was one of them, too—she had to decide which task was more important. The easiest thing, since I didn’t have the rules she had, was to do some deciding for her.
    “Caroline has dreams, May. None of the rest of us do.”
    “Why not?” asked May. Her voice was blunt. “And how can you have dreams?”
    “I don’t,” I said.
    “But how can one of you have them when you’re all the same?”
    “We aren’t the same. We have different hair.”
    May just made a face like hair didn’t count.
    We’ve done different things,” I said.
    “Like what?”
    “Like deciding to stay longer on a walk. Like deciding at all.”
    May made another face. “Everyone decides.”
    “Not always,” I said. “Isobel and Eleanor and Caroline didn’t decide like I did, just like Isobel and Eleanor and I don’t have dreams. Just like they didn’t find you. I found you, and that was another decision. Caroline doesn’t know what that was. And Caroline found something on the beach. I don’t know about that.”
    May turned to Caroline, blunt again. “What did you find? What was it?”
    Caroline was stuck between different rules. “I don’t know,” she finally whispered. “I didn’t know what it was.”
    May glanced at Irene. “Did they know?”
    Caroline nodded.
    “Was it the same thing in your dream?” I asked.
    Caroline didn’t answer.
    “ Was it?” May demanded, pulling at Caroline’s hand. Caroline nodded.
    “Why don’t they want you to say?”
    “Sometimes that’s the way we learn. Things have correct sequences, and if one comes too soon we have to wait.”
    “But this is happening now .”
    May’s voice had become loud enough for Irene to look back. I waved at her. May looked down at her feet until Irene looked away, then whispered to me.
    “And you can’t dream.”
    “I don’t, whether I can’t or not. But Caroline does.”
    May shook her head. “No, she doesn’t. She’s doing something else.”
    Since I really wanted to know what Caroline