On a Clear Day by Walter Dean Myers Page A

grocery store
     was. Or, she said in her cool English accent, you could go out the back door and go to
     Marks & Spencer.
    Anja had heard of Marks & Spencer, so we went there. On the way I
     told her how to translate the English money, pounds, to dollars in her head. All you had
     to do was figure that the pound was 10 percent more than the dollar.
    We got to Marks & Spencer and it looked more like a clothing store.
     I couldn’t believe the prices on the dresses and pants.
    “But they are great!” Anja ran her hand over a skirt and
     watched the fabric seem to change color. It was a metallicmaterial
     that caught the light and reflected whatever colors were in the light and also the
     ambient colors around it.
    “These are nice,” I said, “but check out the price!
     Does that say four hundred and twenty pounds?”
    “You could wear it with anything,” Anja came back.
    “If I spent that much on a skirt, I’d have to wear it with
     everything!” I said.
    We looked at some blouses. The metallic thing was in. There were silver,
     gold, and sheer black blouses. What got me was that some of the black blouses were like
     a deep color with almost no shine, but when you turned the fabric slightly, a pattern of
     black on black appeared. Very nice. Very expensive. It was the States all over again,
     but concentrated. No poor people were going to come in here.
    The food was in the back, and we spent fifteen minutes just looking to see
     what the differences were between an American market and a British market. Anja thought
     the Brits went in for more fresh food. I didn’t think so.
    “They just have more expensive stuff,” I said. “At
     least in this store. But Javier said not to worry about how much we spent when he was
     passing out the pounds.”
    I bought a lot of fruit and fresh veggies, and Anja bought some things
     with weird British names. She showed me a dessert called spotted dick.
    “Anja, you are like a child,” I said.
    “I don’t care,” she replied. “But I’m
     not coming all the way to England and not trying this. And … my
     fine little friend, did you see the way the Brits were checking us out on the way to the
     hotel?”
    “Oh, my God, that was so funny,” I said.
     “I didn’t know you had noticed it—but you do notice a lot of
     things. They kept looking at Drego and Mei-Mei and
all of us
, really, as if we
     were some kind of freaks or something.”
    “They were checking us out pretty good,” Anja said.
     “But we are a different-looking group. They had one Indian boy with them, but the
     rest of them looked like they were cut out of the same batch of pizza dough.”
    Anja went on about how she didn’t like the pep talk they were
     giving us even though she knew they were trying to figure out if we were serious or not.
     All the time she was talking, I was thinking how much I was getting to like her. Or at
     least I felt more relaxed around her. I didn’t know why.
    We got our stuff, got sniffed at by the woman monitoring the checkout
     counter, and made our way out the door into the busy London street.
    “Dahlia, if you could be rich, I mean filthy, nasty, C-8
     rich,” Anja said, “and shop at Marks and Spencer every day, would you be
     tempted to chuck it all and sell your soul to the devil and give up the
     struggle?”
    “No, I wouldn’t,” I said. “But maybe
     I’d consent to be rich for one day a week just to remember what I’m
     fighting against.”
    “Oh, I love a smart woman!” Anja said.
    We walked back to the hotel—it was only like a ten-minute
     walk—with me remembering that I had forgotten to buy milk and Anja remembering
     she had forgotten tea.
    Waiting for the elevator and watching some of the otherguests in the lobby. Since they could afford a London hotel, I guessed that when
     they were wherever they had come from, they saw the world through gates.
    “What do you think of our little crew?” Anja asked.
    “They seem sharp,” I