Perfect Reader by Maggie Pouncey Page A

touch,” Madeleine said, leaving her.
    Flora sat back down at the computer, staring without sight at the glow of the page. That was it, then. A friendly reunion, old wounds just benign hazy scars whose origins had been forgotten. Or maybe she had suffered enough, finally, to be forgiven. To be welcomed back into the bosom of their perfect family. Darwin’s flawed orphaned daughter—they were ready for her now.

    In school, they spent all their time together. They talked constantly. There was so much to talk about. Georgia knew everything. She’d read the encyclopedia, volumes A through S , though that was a secret only Flora knew. In private, Georgia was proud of that fact, but in public she would be humiliated by it. This was often the way things were then. While they chatted together, their third-grade teacher, Lynn, kind and young, would look at them pleadingly, and then separate them. They were always being separated. This school was different from Flora’s school in the city, where there were only girls, and teachers were called Mister and Missus, and students wore thick maroon uniforms—uniforms Flora had despised and her mother adored, as they meant no more morning arguments over wardrobe. Flora had been taught that last names were polite, but now in Darwin, where everyone insisted on first names, they’d begun to seem rude. This school had no uniforms, no Mister or Missus, and was different in every way.
    For one thing, recess was outside, grassy and dirty, whereas back in the city it had been in the sky, on the roof of the school building. At recess in Darwin, Flora loved playing games with the boys, kick-ball and tetherball, and most of all a game called Swedish, which involved pegging other people with the red rubber ball. The rule was whoever got to the field first could choose the game of the day. Flora and Georgia always ran to the field, ran so fast their throats burned and their chests hurt and they couldn’t talk. They almost always got there first. The boys called them Flo-Geo, like the sprinter, and they liked that, having one shared identity.
    Third grade meant studying Greek mythology, making togas and bas-relief clay tiles depicting scenes of the pantheon of gods. They were staging a production of Prometheus Bound . Georgia was outraged that she couldn’t play Prometheus simply because she was a girl. She deserved the leading role because she was the only one who could remember the lines accurately, who would be true to Aeschylus’s vision of the tragedy. Instead, they were both cast in the chorus. Flora didn’t mind; after all, the chorus got to be onstage the whole time, and wasn’t that the point? But Georgia wrote a letter to Lynn, describing how unfair, and possibly sexist, she found the casting decisions, and so it was decided that Alex Tillman could be Prometheus in the first performance, Georgia in the second. After that, being in the chorus didn’t seem quite as good to Flora.
    One day during rehearsals, they got to the field first at recess and announced that the game would be Swedish, as usual. But the gym teacher, Peggy, who was short and mean and whom nobody liked anyway, intervened. “You’ve played Swedish every day this week,” she said. “I think your classmates would appreciate a change.”
    When Flora protested, Peggy rolled her eyes. “It’s not up for discussion,” she said. “We’ll play Wiffle ball today.”
    Sarah Feldman and the other prissy girls clapped. They didn’t like Swedish. But Flora hated Wiffle ball. Even the name was stupid, and made you sound like you had a lisp. She and Georgia walked off the field. They couldn’t tolerate such blatant flouting of the system. They walked in the direction of the cargo net. They could play in there instead. When they got there, though, it looked boring, hanging listlessly, a giant useless cobweb. Georgia was annoyed, but Flora was furious.
    “The rule is whoever gets there first chooses,” she said.