Lucy by Kathryn Lasky

Author:Kathryn Lasky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

THERE WERE SECRETS and there were secrets, and this one almost hurt, Ettie thought as she crouched behind the trunk of a dark spruce tree that grew at the edge of the cove. It was a very high tide this evening, so the lavender rock from which Hannah always dove was completely awash. When Hannah dove, Ettie always felt this deep surge within herself, as if part of her own essence were rushing from her. And then with the first flash of the glittering tail that broke the water like a comet soaring from the very depths of the ocean, there came a crushing bitterness. Was it the secret that bothered her or, most likely, the envy and the fear that Hannah would leave one night forever?

There was another secret, of course, that was actually a lie. It was the secret of Lila, the oldest of the three Hawley daughters, who was in an asylum for the mentally ill in western Massachusetts. The lie was that she was said to be abroad studying art in a small village outside of Florence. It was not as if Ettie longed to blab this matter to the world at large. She only wanted to tell one person — Hannah Albury, who had been a servant in the Hawley household for almost two years.

Henrietta Hawley, or Ettie as she was called, at ten, almost eleven, was the youngest daughter of Horace and Edwina Hawley of Boston. Her best friend in the world was Hannah Albury. But the truth was that Ettie understood Hannah more than Hannah did her. Ettie knew Hannah’s secret. But what Hannah did not comprehend was that just as Hannah longed to escape the land world, Ettie, despite her privilege, her Brahmin pedigree by virtue of belonging to one of Boston’s oldest and most revered families, yearned to escape as well. Ettie found the world she was consigned to by her species and social rank stultifying, even smothering to the point of — yes — suffocation. And it would only get worse as she grew up.

Just that morning, she had been severely reprimanded by Miss Ardmore, her governess, for entering the drawing room barefoot. “No bare feet in the house!” Miss Ardmore had hissed.

“Why ever not?” Ettie had replied.

“It’s unsanitary.”

“Oh, hell’s bells,” Ettie blurted. Miss Ardmore had blanched.

“Ettie, you swore!”

“You call that swearing? I can do much worse than that. I know the word for the private parts of a bull and I can say —”

Miss Ardmore came up to her and clapped her hand over Ettie’s mouth.

Yes, thought Ettie, “suffocating” was what it meant to grow up into a proper young lady.

And every day it was worse, and Ettie seemed to be gasping for more air. She felt like a fish out of water. Though she hesitated to use this expression, for Hannah was no mere fish; she was a sea creature. Ettie was very disinclined to use the word mermaid. She detested the word maid. In her own mind, it meant either a servant or a rather witless young female.

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