“You stopped where I did?” That’s a big, fat lie. Once Lottie is inside a story, she reads till the end. She’s greedy that way.

“I did. Honest. It would be rude to go past where you are, to know what happens before you do.” Lottie throws herself onto her cot with a groan. “I can’t believe how slow you read. It’s excruciating.”

She’s the one who did wrong by touching my things, yet somehow I’m the one in the wrong? I am clever but ignorant. I read too slow. And now, thanks to reading through The Oxford Dictionary resting on top of our shared chest of drawers, she has new and better words to describe my faults and life in general. Homework is laborious. Mr. Newman, our lazy leans-too-close science teacher is a degenerate, and the sunset sky is suffused with color. Show-off.

“It’s excruciating how fast you read,” I say. “You miss all the details, and the story ends too quickly.”

To prove the point, I open the book and carefully set aside the bookmark. Lottie sits up: a bright-eyed puppy who might, if patient, be given something from the dinner table. She’s too proud to actually beg, though.

I like that about her.

I shift closer to the pillow, the same way that she moved closer to the window of the Ocean Current when Lazy-Eye Matthew croaked, “Adele. Adele,” to get me next to him in third class. Lottie accepts my silent invitation. The cot springs creak, and we lean our backs against the wall. I find my spot and, afraid that Lottie will race ahead and get to the good bits first, I read out loud.

“I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus; that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: ‘Then,’ I cried, half desperate, ‘grant me at least a new servitude!'”

“Thank heavens,” Lottie breaks in. “Jane is ready to make a move. I was afraid she’d stay at that school till kingdom come.”

“Same here,” I say. “Imagine being stuck at Keziah forever? I’d go crazy like Mrs. Thomas, for sure.”

“Me too. But ‘a new servitude’ sounds dull. I want Jane to have excitement in her life.”

“Maybe she will.” I think about Jane’s future for a moment. “Jane’s got no money, so she has to find work, but work that’s new and different from what she knows. It’s the same for us. We’ll have to find jobs when we graduate from Keziah after next year. Just like Jane.”

“True,” Lottie says. “What are you going to do?”

If I was still with the pretties, I’d know the right answer to give, right away. It would go like this: I want to marry a good-looking man with money. We’ll live in a big house and spend the summer holidays in Durban or Mozambique.