The Different Girl Read Online Free PDF

their eyes from picture to picture, like birds hovering over something they hadn’t decided how to eat. They were forming questions and putting things together, but again I knew something more. I knew how hurt she had been and how far she had crawled. It was a difference I could only compare to spending ninety minutes on the beach instead of forty-five. I still didn’t know how that could happen, I just knew that it had.
    The others were still staring at the pictures when we heard Robbert on the porch. We all turned to see him step inside, looking at Irene.
    “She’s awake,” he said.

3.
    Irene asked Robbert if he wanted to eat the rest of her soup. He glanced at us—we were all looking at him—and took her place at the table. We heard Irene’s feet go down the stairs and her steps on the path and then, because we were listening, the hinges of Robbert’s screen door wheeze open and clack shut. Robbert poked his chin at what I’d found, spread out on the table.
    “What’s this?”
    It took a long time to tell, though now the others could tell it, too, and so they helped. Robbert had questions, just like Irene, but his questions were different, like between a sandwich with mustard and without, or a wet stone and a dry one, or the sounds of night compared to day. Partly this was because Irene had seen all the girl’s things for herself, out in the grass. But even so, Robbert’s questions weren’t about his own thinking—though we could all see that he was thinking—but about the words we used to describe each object, and most especially the pictures.
    When he finished his soup he set the bowl down with enough of a noise that Caroline, who was comparing the boxes in the picture of the dock to the boxes from our supply boat, stopped talking. Robbert wiped his lips on the back of one hand and took off his glasses. He blew on them, held them to the light, and frowned. Whenever he did this, we stared at his face, as if his eyes were naked. I had never seen Robbert naked, or Irene, but I knew what we looked like without our smocks, and whenever I saw Robbert’s unprotected eyes it felt like I was looking at the same uncovering—but even more so, like a crab flipped on its back, showing the seams in the shell where the birds stick their beaks in.
    He put his glasses back and coughed. “The first picture.” He picked it up, so we all faced him in order to see. “Describe it in one word. No repeats. Start with Isobel.”
    The first picture showed the two men on the dock piled with boxes.
    “Dock,” said Isobel.
    “Supplies,” said Caroline.
    “Friends,” said Eleanor.
    I was last, thinking of what hadn’t been said. “Girl.”
    Robbert sniffed high up in his nose and coughed again. “Good. Each of you chose a word for just part of the picture, one that hadn’t been named. Except for Veronika, who described the picture being taken.”
    “Is that allowed to be part of the picture?” asked Eleanor.
    “What do you think?”
    Unlike Irene, Robbert’s questions almost always had a wrong answer. Instead of saying anything, we had learned to wait a moment and then nod.
    “All right,” said Robbert. “Let’s try again, with the next picture. . . .”
    The second photograph showed the line of green across the water, taken from a moving boat.
    “Island,” said Isobel.
    “Ocean,” said Caroline.
    “Wind,” said Eleanor.
    “Boat,” I said.
    “Good,” said Robbert. “Eleanor, why wind?”
    “Because of the moving boat,” said Eleanor. “Because of how cold it looks and since you said only one word.”
    Robbert nodded. He picked up the hard plastic square with the dead screen. He turned it over and, then with both hands, snapped open the back of the square. He blew on the thin piece that had come free and tipped the rest of the square, smiling at the little stream of water that dribbled into his bowl. He set both pieces down.
    “We’ll let it dry. All right. Next picture.” This was the big