Nowhere Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

everything, I know I will miss her rough, grudging care.
    And I don’t even know what she has left me with. I file away my new knowledge to ponder at a later time and I smile at Isra, who reaches for me through the bars.
    â€œI will miss you, little light,” Isra says. I’ve been teaching her English, and she likes to practice with me. She’s quite good, though she never believes me when I tell her. “We all will miss you. But you will do well in the world outside. Keep your head up and be strong.”
    I nod and try to smile because she wants me to, but I know my mouth looks like an old crumpled sock.
    She’s holding a black nylon duffel. “You forgot your things. I brought them to you. Your clothes and books and everything.”
    She slides open the zipper and there are my belongings, the ones I left under the bunk. I feel my breath catch in my throat. It was a split-second decision to leave it all behind, but from this side of the rusted iron gate I can hardly recognize those things. I can never belong to them again.
    She starts to squeeze the bag through the bars and I find my voice.
    â€œ Mai ao na kha ,” I say, shaking my head and choking on my words because I want so badly for her to understand. “I don’t want any of that stuff. It’s not me anymore. I don’t need it.”
    She doesn’t understand, but how can I tell her that I am a worm born in a cave, that I need to grow my own wings in order to fly? How can I say that the girl who lived in cell block 413 and scrawled spelling words on the walls, who could conjugate verbs in three languages but who couldn’t look up to follow a hawk’s path across the sky, how can I make her see that girl is no longer me? These clothes belonged to that other person, but they have no part in my new journey. For this voyage I have other belongings, other clothing: the blanket of fear, the scarf of loneliness, the dark cloak of secrets. I have no room for anything else.
    I’m saved from finding words by the roar of the engine behind me. Kiet’s repairs have worked at last. Isra sighs in defeat and shoves a handful of baht at me. “Take this money at least,” she says, and I can see she really means it, so after a second’s pause, I do. My dollars will be of no use for getting around Bangkok, and I am grateful for her kindness.
    I look hard into Isra’s eyes, and the world stops. I see her younger, smiling, dancing with a tiny straw-haired girl, crooning luk thung ballads in my little ear. I see her drawing a Tang Te outline on the cement floor in chalk, showing me how to hop skillfully from one square to another, picking up the stone without ever putting my foot down. I see her head bent over my fifth-grade reader as she sounds out the words and tries to keep up with my translation in her halting English.
    She has been a part of everything I’ve ever known. But now she is a part of my past.
    My eyes smile and my hand that is still holding hers, with the money squashed inside, grasps on tightly. Then I let go, and I turn, and I don’t say anything because since the day my mama left without saying it, good-bye is a word that no longer exists for me.

7
    Kiet opens the door for me, and I slide inside the car.
    â€œ Pai nai? ” he asks with a smile.
    The familiar phrase—literally asking where I am going, but more of a welcome than a question—is our own special greeting that I thought he’d have forgotten after all these years. I look at him more closely. Inside that grown-up face, the eyes of my childhood friend twinkle with mischief. He’s not so different after all.
    â€œ Phuen ,” I whisper. Friend.
    And he is.
    Loosed from my fear, I’m free to examine everything around me. And what a wonder it is! From the inside, this beast is altogether different than it first seemed.
    The seat is soft and crinkly, softer even than the five-centimeter-thick mattress on