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one wanted to know.
    “Don’t tell, don’t tell!” Helena whispered. She pushed at me.
    I shook my head. We continued down the sidewalk in a fit, bouncing off each other as we went.
    By the time we reached Seneca Street, we’d recovered enough to speak almost normally again. “Addie, I hope Robert is wrong. I hope you make the Stage Orchestra,” said Helena. “We need another good flute in the woodwinds.”
    I smiled at Helena and decided on the spot that making the Stage Orchestra was one of my new goals.

chapter 8
    gates and bridges
    " H ey, Soula?”
    “Yes, Cookie?”“
    “What do you know about Onion College?”
    “Onion College? You mean Union College?”
    I closed my eyes and pictured the letters on the sign at the entrance. “Oh yeah. It is Union.” I laughed and knocked myself in the head with the heel of my hand. “I should have known that!”
    Soula laughed. “We all got our gaps. Fine place, so I hear,” she said. “Pretty campus, too. I go special to see the Jackson’s Garden when the roses bloom in June.”
    “It looks like there’s a different world inside those gates.”
    “Hmm. Gates’ll do that. Just like bridges,” Soula said. She bent to pull up the glued flap on a cardboard box. “Wanna help me stack the ’ronis?”
    “Sure.” I picked up a few boxes of macaroni and began placing them on the shelf.
    “Just do them nice so Elliot won’t have a chicken when he gets in,” Soula warned. I smiled back. Elliot was like that; things had to be neat.
    Soula passed me a few more boxes. Her hands were shaking. She stopped still and wiped her brow.
    “I’ll get these. You sit down,” I said.
    Soula sighed, reached behind her, and let herself down into the lawn chair. I’d seen her scoot that chair all over the shop, sometimes just walking her big legs into it to move it. It would have been funny if not for the fact that she really needed to sit often. I kept thinking about how she’d said, “Four more to go.” Soula was sick with something. Mommers had told me that it wasn’t nice to ask about people’s health problems. “If they want you to know, they’ll tell ya,” she’d said. So I waited to be told.
    “That’s better.” Soula pushed a grin at me as she settled into her chair. “Thank you, Cookie.”
    I patted her hand real quick. She fanned her face and blew a puff of her breath through her bright pink lips.
    “What do you mean about gates and bridges?” I asked.
    “Hmm …just that whole passageway feeling. Like there’s gotta be something better on the other side.”
    “Oh,” I said. I squared a row of boxes with my hands and went on stacking. “Do you think that’s true?”
    Soula shrugged. “Probably just a myth. But the human race likes to have things to believe in. Including me. I’ve always wanted to move over to the other side of Freeman’s Bridge. Get out of the city. I’ve got it in my head that I could get a better life. A safer life,” she added.
    “Really?”
    “Uh-huh. Seems to me that any place where there’s more grass and more trees is safer. The city has dangers, you know. Even our little corner here, I’m afraid.” Soula stared at the floor ahead of her and was quiet for a moment.
    I waited, then asked, “Like the brown fields?”
    “Yes, Cookie. And the exhaust and the refuse, the use and misuse and then no use at all. I mean, look out back here.” She pointed a thumb toward the Empty Acre and shook her head. “What can you do with a cement field full of holes? Waste, waste, waste. And here I am, selling junk food outta the micro-nuker, cigarettes, gasoline by the tankful! Talk about waste! I’m part of it too.”
    “Hmm. But you know, Soula, I’ve got a grandpa and he lives across the bridge and up on a farm.
    He’s got an orchard and a vegetable garden and I guess he’s healthy.” I thought for a second. “But he’s kind of a grump. Like he isn’t any happier for living there.”
    “No?” she said. A little