I grab the chance to hunch over and slot my impago box between my feet. I stay hunched and press my eyes against my skirt until the cotton absorbs my tears. My stomach aches. Everything inside me hurts. I replay the last five minutes in my mind, hoping to find that my demotion to third class is the result of a terrible misunderstanding. No. The truth is simple. Delia dumped me.

I should have seen it coming. Delia wants the best of everything: the prettiest dresses, the best gossip, the most popular friends. Sandi’s rich Portuguese father loved her mother enough to take her to church and make promises in front of God while my father, well, he only made promises to Mother. Mother says, Hold your head up high, Adele. I’m as good as any church wife, but the married women and their baptized children know they are superior. Their names are written in the official marriage registers and in the Great Book of Life on God’s bedside table. If properly married women are diamonds, then the unmarried “little wives” and their unbaptized children are tin.

Delia has traded me for a diamond.

Now I’m stuck next to a girl from the bush, who spits and swears and fights with boys and girls. Lottie wins all her fights, but still . . . it’s not nice.

“Hey.” A finger taps my shoulder, and I glare at Lottie from my tucked-over position. She points out of the window and ignores my sharp expression, which says, We are not friends. We will never be friends. Our being next to each other is a horrible mistake. A catastrophe. It means nothing in the long run. She taps the window again, insistent.

I sit up and lean across her to squint into the swirling dust of the Manzini bus station. Mother and Rian stand on the dirt footpath, their bodies backlit by the strengthening sun. They seem unreal. Phantoms from the life that I’m about to leave behind for too many months to count. The thought of leaving suddenly terrifies me. I don’t want to go back to boarding school, where I’ll be alone and have to hunt down new friends. And there’s a small chance that no one will even have me now that I’ve been dumped by the top girls. I want to get off the bus and lug my suitcase across the fields until I’m safe at home again.

“Wait . . .” Mother pulls a book from her bag and runs to the window. She reaches up on tiptoes to give it to me. “Daddy forgot this in his car. It’s for you. All the way from Johannesburg.”

I grab the book through the open window and glance at the title: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. The book is thick, which is good. Thick books take longer to read. Thick books soak up the time between study hall and dinner and help to make the long Sunday afternoon hours fly by. Books are better than gossip, though Delia doesn’t think so.