The Education of Bet by Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page A

at the same time.
    The machinations involved in what we were doing were enough to make my head spin!
    I looked around the familiar bedroom, the room I had slept in for so long, the only such room I could remember clearly, my early childhood now being such a dim and distant dream. No one moved or spoke in the house around me, but I could not sleep, even though the only sound was the clock in the hallway ticking me toward morning and my new life. I lay with my head on the pillow.
    Where would I lay my head the next night? I wondered. And where the night after that?
    ***
    We departed in the still-dark hours of early morning. This worked well for our plan, since no one else in the house had yet risen. If they had been up, I would have had to put on a dress; the driver of the hired carriage would have been confused when I later changed and continued my journey as a young man. As it was, the man who drove us knew only that he had two young men to convey.
    We left early so that we could reach our first destination, the inn where we would lodge at the halfway mark, by nightfall. As a result, I saw little. But then the sky began to lighten in minor increments as the horses clip-clopped their way along, and as we made our way out of the city, I began to catch glimpses of things I'd never seen before. It occurred to me then how small my world had been all my life. Why, I had never ventured any farther than church on Sundays! I had seen so little!
    "What is that?" I would ask as we passed a particular building. "What kind of business do they do in there?"
    "What is the name of this village?" I would ask. "Do you know what kind of work that farmer is doing?"
    At first, Will was very patient in answering my many questions. But as the miles passed along with the hours, he grew somewhat less so. I realized this was because none of what we were seeing was new to him, but I didn't care.
    "What?" he said. "Are you going to spend the whole day with your head hanging out the window, staring at
cows?
"
    "Yes," I said. "Cows are new to me. It's
all
new to me."
    "God," he said, not even bothering to hide his exasperation, "it's like traveling with a dog."
    I took the briefest of moments to stick my tongue out at him before hanging my head back out the window.
    ***
    "So what will the inn be like?" I asked with some excitement as the sky began to darken and we neared our first destination.
    "Just like one cow is the same as the next, one inn is pretty much the same as the next." Will yawned. "There will be lots of wooden beams. There will be lots of fireplaces, but the fires will never be big enough to warm the rooms, and the lighting will be dim so you cannot see all the imperfections about you, or because the innkeeper is too cheap to spend more on oil, or perhaps both. There will be small bedrooms, with a bath down the hall, and a small dining room for taking meals. You will be glad then of the poor lighting because at least you won't have to see the wretched food."
    The inn where we stopped for the night proved to be exactly as Will had predicted.
    He registered us as Will Gardener and Will Smith.
    "You were right that the room is small," I whispered to Will after we'd been shown up a narrow flight of stairs. "Now where is the second one?"
    "The second what?"
    "The second bedroom, of course," I said. "You know, one for me and one for you?"
    "We are just getting the one room, Bet." Then he corrected himself. "Or I suppose I should say
Will.
After all, you will need to get used to answering to that name."
    "Just one room?" I was shocked.
    "Of course," he said, unpacking some items, "because one, it is cheaper, thereby leaving you with more spending money once you get to school; and two, you will need to get used to sharing a room with another boy."
    "Another...?"
    "Of course," he said again. "What—did you think the Betterman Academy would treat you like a prince, granting you a room all to yourself?"
    "You mean that at school I will be sleeping in