Perfect Reader by Maggie Pouncey Page B

“That’s the rule.”
    “I know,” Georgia said.
    “This is worse than the Prometheus casting. What’s wrong with this place?”
    “I’m not sure it’s worse,” Georgia said. “Just as bad, maybe.”
    Flora was adamant. “We should get to choose.”
    They came to the edge of the school’s driveway and could hear in the distance the sounds of their classmates cheering someone round the bases.
    “We have to leave,” she said.
    “Leave school?” Georgia asked.
    “Yes.”
    “And go where?”
    “Anywhere. We have to show them we won’t stand for this unfairness.”
    “Really? By leaving?”
    “Yes, really.”
    “Okay,” Georgia said, but Flora could see she didn’t like the idea.
    “Okay,” Flora said anyway.
    The President’s House was a mile away and they walked in that direction. There was a chance that Betsy, the housekeeper, would be there. Flora could see Georgia was hoping she would be, that she wanted them to get caught. Flora had never walked so far without a grown-up and she wanted to run and tear leaves and sing all her favorite songs. But they walked in silence. At the house, there was a long row of tall, dense bushes along the side, protecting it from the street like a living fence, and Flora could climb up into the first one and then crawl to the next and the next, inside, unseen. She’d emerge from the other end, shin-scraped and triumphant. They could play in there. But when they got to the house, Georgia said she needed a glass of water, and when the two of them went inside, there in the kitchen was Betsy, who had already received a call from the school. She shuffled them into her El Camino, stuffing them into the front seat together, and they were back and in the headmaster’s office in minutes, their protest squashed, their powerlessness confirmed.
    The headmaster and Lynn told Flora and Georgia how disappointed they were. The school functioned according to an honor system, and they had broken that trust. Flora didn’t point out that it was the school that had broken their trust first. She didn’t make eye contact with Georgia, who never said “It was Flora’s idea.” Lynn said if they were angry or upset, they should talk to someone about it, but not run away, never just run away. It was the first time girls at the school had been sent to talk to the headmaster, and Flora thought they should be proud; her mother talked about feminist milestones, and that’s what they had done—achieved a kind of feminist milestone.
    But at the end of the day, Madeleine picked Georgia up from school and Georgia started to cry, as though she regretted everything, and her mother put her arm around her and bent down to kiss the top of her head, as though Georgia had done nothing wrong, and the two of them walked to their car, Georgia tucked safely into the crook of Madeleine’s arm, nestled against her huge maternal breasts.
    Betsy was in the El Camino, idling in the school’s driveway. “Your parents are going to be pissed, Flo,” she said.
    They were both out, but later that evening Flora went into the kitchen, where her mother was making dinner. She was heating oil and chopping onions and listening to talk radio and not looking at Flora. Where was her father? Work for him often meant dinner these days; dinner meant meetings. Her mother had already learned to hate the big industrial stove, with its eight burners and two ovens and a broiler above one of the ovens. She’d singed her eyebrows lighting the broiler while making dinner for the first time in the big house—the acrid smell of burned hair lingering for days—and now whenever she cooked, Flora felt nervous. Flora leaned against the counter and pressed her palms into the sharp edge of the red Formica and she made herself cry. She didn’t regret anything, but it had worked for Georgia.
    Her mother looked up and saw the tears. She paused, and for a moment Flora thought she would put down her knife and come to her and hold her. Her