Another thing Jane and I have in common? Jane reads. The two of us connect across centuries and oceans through books and the escape they provide for us. While Jane hides behind a red velvet curtain with Bewick’s History of British Birds and finds herself in a landscape—“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, / Boils round the naked, melancholy isles / Of farthest Thule”—I plant myself in the back corner of the Keziah Academy study hall and find myself in her world. I walk through “wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.” Jane and I are two girls transported into new worlds, not by airplane but by words. A strange thought. And lovely.

• • •

After study hall, Lottie and I walk to the senior dorm for a short rest before dinner. Girls walk together in the late afternoons because, in Swaziland, the twilight is short. One minute the sun is balanced on the horizon, and the next minute the world is plunged into darkness—and darkness is dangerous for girls. So we walk in pairs or larger groups to ward off whatever lurks in the shadows. No girls have been attacked or kidnapped that I know of, but that’s no reason to tempt fate.

We pass the little-girls’ dorm and draw level with the barrier of Christ-thorns that guards our window. The shadows under the Christ-thorns move, and Darnell Parns jumps out in front of us with wild hair and a swollen black eye.

“Lo-Lo,” he says, “come see.”

“What happened to your eye, Darnell? Who hurt you?”

He ignores her and grabs her hand. “New pretty thing.”

“You want to show me something?” Lottie says.

Darnell tugs her hand. “Now. Now. Now.”

Darnell’s voice gets louder on each now, and I suck in a breath. If Lottie refuses to go with him, he’ll pitch a fit for sure. He’ll scream and draw a curious crowd to the dormitory windows and onto the path, and I’d rather not be tonight’s entertainment.

“All right, calm down,” Lottie says. “I’ll come, but it has to be quick. Understand?”

“Good. Now.”

Darnell runs toward the banana field behind the little-girls’ dorm. Lottie follows Darnell, and I follow Lottie. A lone girl chasing a boy into the failing light has got to break a rule somewhere. I’m also curious about the “new pretty thing.” He might have found a diamond or a gold nugget, and I want to see for myself.

Darnell cuts right before he reaches the banana field, and Lottie and I keep up, careful of the uneven ground in the fading light. He stops just outside a grove of jackalberry trees and glances over his shoulder. He sees me, and he’s not happy.

Darnell jabs a finger into my shoulder when I get close. “Go away.”