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Alice Michelle McCready squeezed herself in between the table and the couch, shrinking back as far as she could, her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs, pulling them in closer to make herself even smaller, hardly daring to breathe as she sat there.
Auntie was calling for her, all over the house, in a tone that grew more annoyed with every repetition of Alice's name. Her full name, with that emphasis on the Michelle that Auntie always gave as though her middle name was an aggravation all its own.
The voice was coming closer, and Alice dipped her head down, burying her face in the darkness between her knees and her chest. Please don't let her find me, please don't let her find me.
But she had played this game a few times too many, and Auntie knew all her good hiding spots—at least, so far. The table to her left moved, brushing against Alice's leg, and she looked up into Auntie's exasperated eyes.
"Why now?"
"Because I don't want to go."
"You have to go to school." Auntie said it as though it was established fact, like everybody knew it.
"Catherine doesn't."
"Catherine is home-schooled."
"I could be home-schooled. I'd work really hard. I promise!" Alice widened her eyes, looking pleadingly up at Auntie. Sometimes that worked, although less often on Auntie than on other adults. They often remarked on her blue eyes, like somehow they were different than other people's, and how hard it was to say no to them. Auntie knew how, though. She'd been practicing it for all of Alice's eight years.
The irritation faded from Auntie's face, and she held out a hand to help Alice up. "I know you would, darlin'. And I wish you could, I really do. But I have to go to work and you have to go to school, and that's the way that goes. Lots of people have to do things every day they don't want to do."
"Well, it's stupid," Alice said decidedly as she allowed Auntie to pull her up. "And when I'm a grown-up, I'm never going to do anything I don't want to do."
"I knew another little girl once who said that. She tried real hard, too."
Alice wondered if the little girl was her mother. She hoped it was, but she knew better than to ask for confirmation. Auntie would never say. "And did she ever have to?"
"Oh, yes. She had to do things she'd never imagined not wanting to do, honey. Our destiny gets us all in the end." Auntie looked away, her mouth pinching. "Now, you get a move on. You miss the bus and make me late because I had to drive you to school, and you and I are going to have trouble."
She meant it, too. Auntie was easy-going, but when you got her mad, look out. And if Alice wasn't going to be able to get out of going to school, at least she could get there on time and not draw attention to herself by walking in late. She spent too much time under the eyes of everyone there as it was.
When Alice was ready to go, Auntie stopped her at the door, her hands on Alice's shoulders. "All right, darlin', let me look at you." She checked the back of Alice's neck and behind her ears and made sure her fingernails were clean. Lifting Alice's braid, she sighed and shook her head. Despite Alice's best attempts, it was messy, the little pieces of hair sticking out like they always did. They could never agree on whether to cut it or not—when Alice thought it would be easier if it was short, Auntie thought a little girl should have long hair. When Auntie thought they'd fought with it long enough and they should cut it, Alice thought maybe, just maybe, the stubborn length of brown hair was a link to her mother and didn't want to give it up. She had a sense that if it wasn't her mother's hair, Auntie wouldn't find the fact that it would never behave so annoying. "You'll do," Auntie said at last. "Now get along, and come back when you've learned something."
Alice was glad Auntie didn't get specific about what she needed to learn, or who she needed to learn it from. In Alice's opinion—and though Auntie didn't say so, Alice was pretty sure she agreed—Alice's second grade teacher was dumb as a box of rocks. Nice, but dumb. Which was bad, because Mrs. O'Donnell was so nice that she never wanted to correct any of the other kids for their behavior, and so they acted so much worse than if she'd been a mean but smart teacher who didn't let them get away with anything.
The bus pulled up in front of the house, and Alice got on, hastily swinging into the front seat, trying to hide herself. No one said anything to her this morning, which she was glad of. She made it all the way off the bus and to her locker and into the classroom without having to speak to a single soul, which was just how she liked it. But that all ended when April Stephenson stepped up to Alice's desk and swiped her hand across it, knocking everything onto the floor.
"There you go, all clumsy. Are all orphans as clumsy as you?"
Alice knew she shouldn't pay attention—it only made them want to mess with her more. Of course, not paying attention made them worse, too. So if either choice was going to get her made fun of, on the whole, she'd rather defend herself. Without bothering to pick the things up, she got to her feet. "I'm not an orphan!"
"Oh, that's right. Your parents didn't want you. Hey, Gloria, don't you wish your parents didn't want you?" April said over her shoulder. Without waiting for Gloria to answer, she looked back at Alice. "Gloria's parents aren't from here. They can't even speak English."
"I don't think other people's families are any of your business," Alice said. She'd tried to make friends with Gloria, figuring that since they were April and the other kids' two favorite targets, they should stick together, but Gloria just stared at her with big dark scared eyes and hurried away. Alice wondered if maybe Gloria's English wasn't very good, either. If she got a chance, maybe she'd offer to teach her.
Before April could respond, Mrs. O'Donnell appeared behind her. "Oh, dear, look what's happened," she said with dismay, gesturing at the contents of Alice's desk, which were still on the floor. "April, you're helping Alice clean this up? How kind of you!"
Alice could see April weighing the options and deciding it was easier just to go along. The two of them picked everything up and dumped it back on Alice's desk. Once they were both safely back in their seats, Mrs. O'Donnell put a hand on Alice's shoulder as she went past, squeezing lightly, and Alice looked up, surprised to see the smile on her teacher's face. Had she done that on purpose, made it seem like April was being nice so she'd agree to put things back? Huh, Alice thought, taking a pencil and shoving the rest of her things inside the desk. Maybe Mrs. O'Donnell wasn't as dumb as she'd thought.
All morning, Alice did as she always did—put her head down, got her work done, listened to the teacher, and tried not to draw attention to herself. Mostly it worked, during regular class time. Art was okay when they had it, and media, but music was torture because the music teacher believed everyone wanted to be part of the group, and if you just forced together kids who didn't like each other, they would magically find something in common and learn to be friends. The music teacher was nice enough, but she never seemed to see how shoving kids together at random made things so much worse.
Recess passed quietly today. Alice made it to her hiding place before anyone else noticed her, so she was able to just watch, her eyes darting from one group of kids to the next. She liked to note down which ones were the dominant ones, which ones looked frightened, which ones wanted attention. The more she knew about them, the better equipped she was to handle them on the days when she didn't have a chance to hide.
School droned on through the afternoon as it usually did, the kids sleepy from lunch and the fresh air, without enough energy to bother anyone else. Aunt Gus worked on Tuesdays, so Alice didn't take the bus home, which made her happy. Instead she walked the several blocks to the library. The librarians knew her by now, particularly the children's librarian, who made it her business to find Alice books on orphans ever since Alice had blurted out a version of her circumstances one especially sad rainy day. Alice wasn't an orphan, but the stories were good, and some of them gave her hope, so she didn't argue too much.
She'd been through part of Harry Potter, and a book called The Secret Garden, and some of the Anne of Green Gables series, although mostly she just wanted Anne to stop talking and do something for a change. Now she was starting on Percy Jackson, the son of a god. Alice propped her chin on her hand and looked up and out the window at the blue sky, wondering. Could she be the daughter of a god? Was that why Aunt Gus would never tell her a single thing about her parents?
Shaking her head firmly, she opened the book again, telling herself not to be silly. There were no gods, no superheroes. There was no magic. There was just the ordinary, everyday world where she went to school and came home and tried to be normal and knew that she really wasn't. And there was Aunt Gus, who understood her sometimes and was impatient with her sometimes but deep down loved her all the time. And somewhere out there were her parents, and Alice used up every ounce of belief in her heart holding on to the idea that they loved her, too, and wherever they were, they were thinking about her. And that someday, somehow, they would come for her.