Swan Place by Augusta Trobaugh Page A

and they were always spotlessly clean and nice-smelling. Like maybe they used perfumed soap or something like that. Sometimes, when I felt especially lonely at school, I’d imagine what their rooms were like, in those big houses. For one thing, I bet they all had their own rooms, and didn’t share with brothers or sisters. And frilly curtains at the windows, and a maid to dust and clean and cook for them. I guess I wanted so much to be like them, only not mean or cold to girls like me.
    But Miss Madison made up for the way those girls treated me. I’d always liked her, ever since the first day of school. Miss Madison was young and pretty, and the first thing she wanted to know was what books we had read during the summer. One boy answered, “Comic books,” and everybody laughed. But Miss Madison didn’t get mad.
    “Well, that isn’t what I had in mind,” she smiled, and that smile is what lifted my hand right up into the air. “Yes?” She looked at her roll book. “Yes, Dove?”
    “I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. ”
    “Very good,” she beamed. “And what did you think of it?”
    “I loved it,” I said simply. “I read it twice, and I’m going to read it again.”
    “Why did you love it?” she pressed. I had to stop and think about that for a moment.
    “Well,” I started, still thinking. “It was about a family that had a hard time. And after the father died, things were even harder. But they made it through. And it had a girl in it I really liked—Francie—and it was about living in a real city.”
    “Fine,” Miss Madison said, nodding her head. “Now try this, Dove. Go back and tell me again, but this time, put everything into the present tense.”
    “Present tense?” I wanted to be sure I heard her right.
    “That’s right,” she smiled back at me
    “Well, the book is about a family that’s having a hard time. The father dies, and things get harder. But in the end, they all make it through. I like Francie, and the story is about living in a real city.”
    “Good! Now, do you know why we talk about books and the action in them in the present tense?”
    “No, ma’am,” I said, and I knew she was going to tell me, and I couldn’t wait to find out.
    “Because the story happens again and again and again, every time we read it. When you talk about what happens in a story, you speak as if it’s happening right now. Because it is. Every single time you read it.”
    “Oh.” I wasn’t sure I understood, but I figured I’d better not ask any more until I got that straight in my head. But maybe it did make some sense, because when I’d look up from reading, sometimes I’d realize that I’d been living another life. In another world.
    Later that first day, when I was almost done with my lunch, some of the girls in my class—girls who lived in those big, white houses way on the other side of town from our little house on a dirt road—whispered “Teacher’s Pet” real loud at me, but I didn’t care. I liked talking about interesting things. Those girls wouldn’t even sit at the same table with somebody like me, so I sat all alone, eating my sandwich and thinking about how Francie felt… feels… when she visits her old neighborhood.
    Then Michelle—who was absolutely the worst of the snooty girls—came close to where I was sitting, and in a loud, mean whisper, she said, “Dove wears old clothes nobody else wants!” But I didn’t care, because I was absolutely certain that Francie wouldn’t have cared about that, either.
    But that had all been a long time ago, and I thought maybe I wouldn’t have any more trouble with Michelle. I was wrong. My mama had died, and that made all the big-white-house girls notice me again. And I should have known that getting noticed was going to lead to trouble, but I didn’t. I was still hurting too bad about Mama to look out for anything like that. But that first day back at school after spring holidays, Michelle came up right behind me at