We make it to the dining hall in time. The big girls are already seated with their meals, and we push into line ahead of the little girls. They don’t complain. Lottie and I get extra-large helpings, and vacant seats magically appear at the table when we turn to find a place.

Boys follow us with their eyes, and if this was a week ago, I would have happily walked the entire length of the dining hall to soak up the attention.

Delia smirks at us, and Peaches shakes her head like she’s witnessed a fatal car accident. I see Lottie and me through their eyes: filthy shoes, sunburned faces, and clothes covered in red dust from our expedition. We are a disgrace.

Old Adele kept herself neat and sweet. New Adele is a mess and doesn’t care. Fighting the fire and eating strawberry-cream biscuits with Lottie by candlelight has changed me. I live in a different country from the pretties now, a country where I hear my own thoughts and share my food, because eating and reading at the same time is wonderful.

I snag the seat next to Lottie and take a bite of my green beans. Lottie is oblivious to the stares. She falls on her roast chicken with soft mmms and licks her fingers. She’s in heaven, her lips slick with gravy, which she laps up with her tongue.

Mother roasts a chicken on the maid’s day off, and afterward Rian and I have a cup of sweet tea with a jam biscuit. But I’ll never replicate the pleasure that Lottie finds in eating what I take for granted. She’s got nothing, yet her experience of the world is richer than mine. It makes me jealous and annoyed and grateful, all at the same time.

Ramona, Beatrice, and the other pet, whose name I can’t remember, sit directly across from us. They ought to know better. Delia, of course, notices their act of treason. She and Sandi are seated five down from us and across the table from Natalie and Peaches. Now, on top of stealing Sandi Cardoza’s necklace and disgracing the female sex with our dirty clothes and flyaway hair, we have also let their pets sit with us. Delia’s attention is so intense that even Lottie feels it.

“Should we move?” she says through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

“No. If we move, we’ll insult the girls who are already here. We have to stay. Might as well make the best of it.”

“How do we do that?”