Hyacinth Girls Read Online Free PDF Page A

brought it up over breakfast, perhaps to give me a boost before our meeting today. “She gets on the loudspeaker, you know, in the middle of class,” Callie said. “And she’ll start to make an announcement but then she forgets what she wanted to say.” She described the long, painful silences—the umming and ahing—and the way her class would burst out laughing while the teacher rolled her eyes.
    I could hear Mrs. Jameson speaking in low tones outside the door, and suddenly I remembered the incident report. Why
couldn’t
I read it? If she was so certain, why not share it? Unless she knew that her details were wrong and the report was full of misinformation. I slid my hand across the desk, glancing over my shoulder. It had been written in pencil, marked with scribbles and cross-outs, with a doodle of an owl in one corner of the page. I skimmed through it quickly, reading about the red ink and Miss Dimmock, Callie and Robyn, and then I saw a name I didn’t recognize: Lucinda Berry.
The witness
, I thought, but I couldn’t read any more.
    Mrs. Jameson was bustling back into the room, thanking me for coming in. She didn’t sit down, but gave a tense smile, avoiding my gaze. She said she’d investigate further and give me a call. Then she stood by my chair as if preparing to march me out. Another parentmight’ve remained seated until things were fully settled. They might’ve mentioned lawyers and lawsuits with cool hostility in their throat. But I hadn’t transformed so much in one day. I swallowed my objections and headed for the door.
    —
    “I feel all chattery,” Callie said that evening, as she huddled on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket.
    I’d told her that even if she was suspended, she wouldn’t be punished. She and I would know it was a farce and spend the day out having fun. We could go on a day trip to New York. Or drive up to Boston. We could stop by the vintage tractor show, eat blueberry pie.
    “I don’t know why this is happening.” She shivered. “I think I might be cursed.”
    “Don’t say that. You’re going to be fine.”
    “I don’t ever want to see her again. I bet she wants to kill me.”
    “Robyn’s not going to hurt you.” I tucked in the edge of Callie’s blanket.
    “What else did Mrs. Jameson say?”
    “Well, she claims there was a witness.”
    “She does? Who?”
    “I…I’m not sure.”
    “Great. Now two people hate me.”
    “Callie, girls can be jealous.”
    “Did she say it was a girl?”
    “Well, not exactly.”
    Callie turned and looked into my eyes.
    “Was it Lucinda?” she asked. I made a face and shook my head. But Callie could read me sometimes, and she knew she’d guessed it right.
    “I am cursed,” she moaned. “This isn’t getting better. She’s going to do something worse. I know she will.”
    “What do you think she might do?” I asked, rubbing her arms to warm her up.
    “I don’t know.” Callie’s teeth clacked together. “Just something bad. I don’t know.”
    —
    Callie was born lucky, that’s what Joyce said. Even though Callie’s father was already married and asked Joyce not to have her. Joyce was nineteen when she got pregnant, studying pre-law at college, but when she learned she was expecting she decided to drop out.
    When I first met Callie all I could see was her vulnerability. The flaking skin on her scalp, her delicate curling feet. She seemed so defenseless, but as I visited from week to week, I could see there was strength in her steady gaze, in the speed that she grew. She laughed and smiled. One week she couldn’t roll over and the next week she could. One week she couldn’t grasp a rattle, and the next week it was tight in her fist. She unfolded herself for us a little more every day.
    Joyce moved home with her parents to raise Callie, and I saw them on the weekends. But despite her claims of good luck, Joyce had started to seem depressed.
    “If she says ‘antiseptic’ one more time,” Joyce muttered as her