Chapter One

KAMI — THEN — AGE SEVEN

My mother made me wear the itchy dress.

Not the itchy dress. The itchy dress was navy blue with a white collar that stood up funny in the back no matter how many times my mother licked her thumb and pressed it down, and it had been sitting in the top of my closet since Easter because I told her I would rather die than wear it again. She hadn't asked if I wanted to wear it today. She'd just laid it out on my bed that morning next to my church shoes, which were also a problem, because my feet had grown and nobody had noticed.

"They're not going to fit," I said.

"They'll fit."

"They didn't fit at Easter."

"Kami." That was the whole sentence. Just my name, in the voice that meant we were done talking about the shoes.

Simone got to wear her regular sandals. Simone was five and didn't have to interview for anything, so Simone got to sit in the back seat swinging her feet and singing part of a song she didn't know all the words to, just la la la-ing over the parts she'd forgotten, which was most of the song.

"Can you stop," I said.

"No."

"Mom, can you make her stop."

"Both of you," my mother said, which was not the same as making Simone stop, and I knew it, and Simone knew it too, because she smiled at me in this small smug way and kept right on la-la-ing.

My dad was driving. He didn't usually drive us places because his knee did something to the pedals that made my mother nervous, but today he was wearing his good shirt too, the blue one, and he kept turning the radio up and then down again, like he couldn't decide if he wanted noise or not.

"You nervous?" I asked him, because that seemed like something you'd ask a person turning a radio dial four times in one song.

"Me? No." He glanced at me in the mirror. "Why, are you?"

"I don't even have the job."

"No, but you're coming with your mother, aren't you. That's a job in itself. Sitting there being polite for however long grown-ups take to decide things."

I didn't say anything to that because it was true and I didn't like that it was true.

We turned in through a gate that had actual people standing at it, not just a gate that opened by itself, and one of the people bent down to look in the car and said something to my dad that I didn't hear, and then the gate did open by itself after all, and we kept driving for so long past grass and trees and a pond with actual ducks on it that I started to wonder if we were still going the right way or if my dad had gotten lost and was too embarrassed to say so.

"Is this still their driveway?" I said.

"Yep."

"The whole thing?"

"Yep."

I looked out the window. It didn't look like anybody's driveway. It looked like a park. I thought about our old driveway, which was long enough for one car and had a crack in it shaped like Florida, and I didn't say anything else for the rest of the ride.

•

The house wasn't the kind of house I had a picture in my head for, because I'd never seen one like it except maybe on TV, and even then I would have thought the TV people built something fake just to look impressive, the way they build fake mountains for cartoons. This one had actual stone steps going up to the door, wide enough for probably ten people to walk up side by side, and my mother stopped at the bottom of them and smoothed her skirt down twice even though it wasn't wrinkled, and I understood, in the way you understand things without anyone telling you, that we were all supposed to be on our best behavior, and that this included me not asking any more questions about the driveway.

A woman answered the door before we even knocked. She wasn't the one my mother was interviewing with — I found that out later — she was somebody who worked there already, and she had a folder under her arm and told us the family was expecting us in the east sitting room, like that was a normal thing to say, like everybody's house had directions.

The east sitting room had a fireplace that wasn't lit even though it wasn't cold, and more people in it than I'd expected — six, not counting my mother and me and Simone, and it felt like all six of them had already been standing there a while and we were the ones walking into the middle of something.

Two of them were old, a man and a woman, sitting in chairs that faced each other, and they both stood up when we came in, which surprised me, because I didn't think old rich people stood up for anybody.

The other four were younger. I didn't know yet that two of them were Banks's parents and two of them were Prescott's, visiting, though nobody explained any of that to me right then — I only worked it out later, from who Banks stood near and who Prescott stood near. None of the four of them stood up. One of the men was looking at something on his phone and didn't stop looking at it until the woman beside him said his name, quietly, the way you'd remind somebody of a thing they already knew. The other woman gave my mother a smile that moved her mouth and not much else and said, "Thank you for coming all this way," in a voice that made it sound like my mother had done something slightly inconvenient by showing up at all.

"You must be Denise," the old woman said, and it was her who came forward first, not any of the younger four, and shook my mother's hand like she meant it. Then — I did not expect this part — she crouched down a little to look at me and Simone, not the fake crouching-down some grown-ups do where they're really still talking to your mother over your head, but actually looking at us. "And you two."

"I'm Kami," I said, because somebody had to.

"I'm Simone," said Simone, and then did a thing with her foot, a kind of curtsy she must have seen somewhere, and the old woman laughed, a real laugh, not a polite one, and said, "Aren't you clever," and I felt my face get hot because nobody had laughed like that at anything I'd said.

The old man's name was Edmund and the old woman's name was Vivienne, and they told us to call them that, which my mother did not let us do, obviously, so for the whole visit Simone and I called them nothing at all and just said "um" a lot.

Nobody told me the younger four's names right then. Vivienne was the one who finally did it, nodding toward the boys the way you'd point out a piece of furniture you were fond of. "That's Banks. And that's Prescott." Banks's father didn't look up from refastening his cufflink. Prescott's mother said, "Prescott, say hello," without turning all the way around, and Prescott said hello to a spot somewhere near my shoulder and then looked back down at his shoes.

"The boys can show the girls the grounds while we talk," Vivienne said, already moving toward the door like it had been decided. None of the parents had suggested anything for the children to do. It was Vivienne who thought of it, the same way it had been Vivienne who noticed Simone's curtsy and Vivienne who came forward first to shake my mother's hand, while the four younger ones stood there being handsome and expensive and somewhere else in their heads entirely.

I did not want to be shown the grounds. I wanted to sit in the room and hear whatever grown-up things were about to be said about my mother, because I had a feeling, the kind of feeling you get in your stomach before you can put words to it, that whatever they decided in this room was going to change something, and I didn't like not knowing what.

Nobody asked me what I wanted.

•

So we went. Prescott led the way like he'd done this exact walk a hundred times, down a hallway that smelled like lemon polish and out a side door into air that was too hot for the dress, and Banks came after us without saying whether he wanted to or not, and Simone trailed behind humming the same three notes of her song, and that's how the four of us ended up on a set of back steps looking out at a fountain, not talking, which I could already tell was not a comfortable kind of not talking, at least between the two boys.

Banks found a flat stone near his shoe and skipped it into the fountain, which clearly wasn't built for stones to be skipped into it, and it hit the water with a plop.

"You'll chip it," Prescott said.

"I won't."

"You will. It's marble."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine, it's marble, marble chips."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that."

"Hi," Simone said, to no one in particular. "I'm five."

"I'm seven and a half," Prescott said, like it was a competition and he'd just won it.

"I'm seven," Banks said, not looking up from the fountain.

Nobody asked how old I was, so I didn't say.

Simone wandered off toward a hedge shaped like a ball, which was, apparently, a normal enough thing to have in your yard here, and Prescott went after her, I think mostly because she was easier to talk to than me, and I didn't blame him even though it stung a little, the particular sting of watching somebody choose your little sister over you without even seeming to notice they were choosing.

That left me and Banks and the fountain.

"Are you actually seven," I said, "or did you say that to sound older."

"I'm actually seven. Why would I lie about that."

"I don't know. Boys lie about weird things."

"That's not a weird thing to lie about."

"I didn't say it was the weirdest thing. I said it was one of the things."

He almost smiled at that. Almost. Then he picked another stone up off the step, looked at it, and put it back down without throwing it, which I understood, without him saying so, was because I was watching and he didn't want to get caught doing the thing Prescott had told him not to do.

"Is your dress itchy," he said, after a while.

"Yes."

"Why do you wear it, then."

"I didn't pick it."

"Oh." He said it like it hadn't occurred to him that a person could be wearing clothes they hadn't picked. Then, "My mother picks all my clothes too. They're just not itchy. They're just boring," which was, I think, meant as some kind of solidarity, but it came out sounding like he was still better off than me, and I didn't love it.

"Can we go inside," I said. "It's hot."

"We're not allowed inside while they're talking."

"Says who."

"Says everyone. That's how it always is."

"That's dumb."

"I know," he said, which surprised me, because I'd expected him to argue.

We didn't talk much after that. I sat on the step below the one he was sitting on and picked at the collar of my dress, and inside the house, faintly, through a window that must have been open somewhere, I could hear my mother's voice, and Edmund's, and Vivienne's, going up and down in the particular rhythm of people being polite about something serious. I didn't hear the other voices much, the young ones. I noticed that even though I didn't have a word yet for why it seemed to matter.

•

THREE WEEKS LATER

We got the job. Or my mother got the job, but everyone talked about it like it was something that had happened to all of us at once, which I guess it had. There was a cottage on the property, past the hedges and down a little hill, with a kitchen smaller than our old one and a bathroom bigger than our old one, and my dad said the trade was fair and my mother said nothing was fair or unfair about it, it just was what it was, and I didn't understand the difference between those two things until I was much older.

The first big thing that happened after we moved in was school starting.

There was only one school out here for kids like us, my mother said, like there was only one, which turned out to be almost true — a low brick building past a different gate, with a name carved over the door in letters too fancy to read at a glance and a uniform that came with its own itchy collar, a paler cousin of the dress, gray instead of navy, and I remember thinking that was unfair, that I had traded one uncomfortable thing for another and nobody had asked me about this one either.

At recess the first week, I stood near the fence, because that's what you do when you don't know anybody yet, and a girl with a ribbon in her hair walked past me twice, slow both times, looking at me the way you look at a piece of playground equipment nobody bothered to explain.

"You're new," she said, the second time.

"Yeah."

"Where do you live?"

"On the Devereaux place. My mom's the nanny."

I don't know why I said it like that, so flatly, except that I'd already figured out, in three weeks, that if I said it first, in my own voice, it landed different than if somebody else said it at me.

It didn't work.

"Oh," the girl said, and something about her face changed, and she said something to another kid standing near her, a boy I didn't know, and the boy looked over at me and laughed, not a big laugh, just enough of one to let me know I was the reason for it.

More kids drifted over after that, the way kids do, pulled by nothing except the sense that something was happening. I don't remember exactly who said what first. I remember somebody said, "She's the nanny's daughter," like that explained something, and somebody else said, "Is she even supposed to be at this school," like I was a dog that had wandered in from the road, and I remember standing there at the edge of the blacktop with my hands jammed in my pockets so I'd have something to do with them.

Then somebody — I never found out his name, and I never wanted to — said, "Rolie Polie Olie," and did a thing with his arms where he made himself round, like a ball, and a couple of the other kids laughed, that fast, easy kind of laugh that costs a kid nothing at all.

"That's not my name," I said.

"It's what you look like."

"It's a stupid show anyway."

"It's a stupid show that you look like."

I don't remember deciding to say the next thing. It just came out. "At least I don't need my mom to pack me extra snacks because I'm scared of being hungry for one second," which didn't even make sense, wasn't even true, I don't think anyone had said anything about snacks yet, but it felt like the kind of thing you were supposed to say back, and a couple of them went "oooh" the way kids do when somebody claps back even a little, and for about four seconds I thought maybe I'd won something.

Then the ribbon girl said, "At least I'm not going to break my chair when I sit down," and everyone laughed again, bigger this time, and my eyes did the thing eyes do right before you cry, that hot stinging thing, and I hated it, I hated my eyes for doing it in front of these people, and I looked down at the blacktop like it was very interesting.

"Leave her alone."

I looked up. It was Banks. I hadn't even seen him come over — he and Prescott were in a different classroom than me, and I hadn't seen much of either of them since the day at the house, just glimpses across the yard at recess, kids being sorted into their separate corners the way kids are. He was standing a little apart from the group with his hands jammed in his pockets, and he didn't look like he wanted to be doing this, exactly, more like he was doing it the way you do a chore you've been putting off.

"Why," said the boy who'd started it. "She's just the nanny's daughter."

"So?" That was Prescott. He'd appeared from somewhere too, closer to me than Banks was, which surprised me, because up until that exact second I would have said Prescott liked Simone better and barely knew I existed.

"She's not supposed to be here," the boy said.

"Her family lives on the estate," Banks said.

"So do the servants."

Nobody said anything for a second after that. I remember it very specifically, the little gap where nobody said anything, because I watched something happen on both boys' faces at the same time, something shifting, and I didn't understand it then, not really, I was seven, I just knew that whatever had been true about the day a second before wasn't true anymore.

"Say that again," Banks said. Not loud. Almost quiet, actually, which somehow made it worse.

The boy didn't say it again. He looked between Banks and Prescott like he was doing math he didn't like the answer to, and then he mumbled something about it being a joke, and a teacher's whistle went off somewhere behind us for an unrelated reason, and the whole clump of kids sort of dissolved the way kid arguments do, not with an ending exactly, just a loss of interest, everybody drifting back toward the tetherball pole or the hopscotch grid or whatever was more interesting than me.

Which left the three of us standing there.

I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets because they were shaking a little and I didn't want them to see that.

"You okay?" Prescott said.

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I said I'm fine."

Banks was still looking at me in that flat, considering way, and then he said, "You were crying."

"I was NOT crying."

"You were. Your eyes were doing the thing."

"I don't even know what thing you're talking about, because I was NOT CRYING."

"Fine," he said, in the exact tone of someone who did not believe me even a little. "You weren't crying."

"Thank you."

"You were, though."

"Banks."

"What? I said fine."

"I didn't need you to save me," I said, to both of them, because it felt important that they both hear it. "Either of you. I could've handled it."

"Okay," Prescott said, in a voice that meant he did not think that was true, but had decided not to say so.

"I could have."

"Nobody said you couldn't."

"You didn't have to say anything. You did it with your face."

He looked genuinely confused by that, like he hadn't known his face was capable of doing things without his permission, and for some reason that struck me as funny, and I almost laughed, except I was too annoyed at both of them to let myself.

The bell rang before any of us could say much else, that flat mechanical sound that meant recess was over whether you were ready or not, and everyone around us groaned and started shuffling back toward the doors in their identical gray collars.

Banks didn't move right away. He looked at me like he was still deciding something.

"You can sit with us. At lunch," he said. Not really to me. Sort of to the space between the three of us.

"I don't need you to feel sorry for me."

"I didn't say I felt sorry for you. I said you can sit with us."

"Fine," I said, like it cost me something, even though it didn't, not really, not even a little.

"Fine," he said back.

Prescott didn't say anything, but he fell into step beside me on the walk in anyway, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, and I decided I would let that count for something too.

And that was it. That was the whole beginning of it, as far as I can tell, looking back — not a fountain, not a fireworks show, not anything a person would have thought to write down at the time. Just three kids walking back inside toward a lunchroom none of us were excited about, because the bell had rung and none of us had a choice, and none of us, not one of us, made a single thing about the fact that we walked in together.your opening installment here to see it in the Lantern reader.