A week before Poppy’s departure, those same parents had first visited the orphanage and chatted pleasantly with Ingrid, a thirteen-year-old with a long single braid, light freckles, and a deceptive dose of charm. Whether or not the couple had returned specifically for her remained unknown. The fact she didn’t leave with them was attributed to my calculated, devious string trick—and therefore me.

“Just you wait, ya dopey Dutch,” she seethed into my ear the morning after Poppy left. During math lesson, we were in line for the blackboard. “You’re gonna be sorry you ever came here.”

I was tempted to say, Aren’t we all? But I kept the retort to myself, thinking restraint would help, that if I didn’t fight back, she’d quickly lose interest.

I was wrong.

Chapter 16

The one-sided war soon escalated.

Ingrid’s glares and snickers were quickly accompanied by stealth shoves and jutting feet to make me stumble. And though it was an “anonymous” tip that led to the quashing of my magic show, I could speculate the source.

Then came the breakfast incident. After she sabotaged her own porridge with heaps of salt and reported me as the culprit, the dining-hall supervisor accepted the word of “darling Ingrid” over my protests as the new girl. Hair plastered in a bun, the woman stabbed her thick finger in the air. “Any urchin on the street would be grateful for the hot meal you saw fit to waste. You’d be wise not to forget that.”

To suggest I ever could was ludicrous.

But pressed to apologize, I conceded, simply to move on from a battle I wasn’t going to win, unaware my punishment would be to eat the entire bowlful myself. Forcing down each salt-laden bite was repulsive in every way, yet the humiliation from what followed was worse.

On the most recent sheet-changing day, during class hours, a housekeeper replaced my linens with parchment paper when she discovered I’d wet my cot—only I hadn’t. I tried to say as much, but a room supervisor brushed away my assertions.

“I understand this can be embarrassing,” the woman said. “We just need to be more diligent about going tinkle before bedtime.”

We, she said, referring to twelve-year-old me.

I was convinced it had been a mix-up until recalling Ingrid’s remark in passing, spoken before she could have possibly known: Uh-oh, I hear somebody’s had an accident. And I realized with unrivaled disgust: as with the porridge, this was all her doing.

Hunting her down, I found the weasel in her room putting on her boots and implored her to stop.

“Stop what?” She smirked.

I had no proof. At least not in my favor.