“Wait. Maybe they blew out.” I scramble to the window and peek into the Christ-thorns, hoping for a miracle. Bees work the red flowers, but there’s no underwear hanging from the spikes or lying in the dirt. I turn to tell Lottie the bad news and notice a black scuff mark on the spotless floor. Shoe polish. Not from my shoes, which I polish on Saturday afternoons. And not from Lottie’s shoes, which she wipes with a wet rag, because, as far as I can tell, she has no shoe polish at all. The bad feeling in my stomach sharpens.

“It was them,” Lottie says. “They stole the second pair.”

“Who?” I ask, even though I already know.

“Delia and the others.” Lottie paces the room with her wet underwear bunched in her fist. “They’re paying us back for what happened yesterday.”

I want to deny it, but what she says makes sense. Never let a slight go unpunished. That’s another Keziah rule, and as far as Delia and company are concerned, we tried to steal their pets and we must be taught a lesson.

Lottie strides to the door with knotted shoulders and narrowed eyes. She’s a fighter, and a good one. No doubt she’d win a fight against any one of the pretties, and maybe even against all four of them—she’s that good—but what happens after?

“Wait.” I block the door. “Let’s think for a minute.”

“Why?” she says. “You know they did it.”

“Yes, but . . .” I get my scrambled thoughts in a row. “We have no proof that they were in the room, and Mrs. Thomas will blame us for the fight, no matter what happens. She’s in a mean mood today, and she’ll give us detention for the rest of term and ten cuts each for ruining her morning.”

“Dinah Washington,” Lottie says with a nod.

“That’s right. Two nights in a row.”

If you have the right key, Mrs. Thomas’s moods are easy to unlock. After lights-out, we lie awake in the dark and listen to the music coming from her house across the yard. “At Last” by Etta James means that she’s in a sad, soft-crying mood that leaves her tired and not much caring about who does what to whom in the dormitory. Or why. Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” is the soundtrack to a bleak moodiness that makes her snappish and quick with the switch. Dinah two nights in a row means “Do not test me.”

“We’ll get Delia and the others back,” I promise. “But not this morning. We wait for Etta James, and then we do it.”