I Hope You're Listening by Tom Ryan

Author:Tom Ryan [Ryan, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

26.

Greta’s school is only a few blocks away, a stately stone building on a tree-lined street. A high iron fence surrounds the campus, a reminder to passersby that these students are being kept apart from the world. A simple, classically lettered sign bolted to the fence near the opened gate reads Sisters of the Supreme Sacrifice Girls Academy, a reminder to passersby who is really in charge here.

While I’m waiting to spot Greta, I pull out my phone. It’s the perfect way to disappear into a crowd. If you have your phone out, staring intently, occasionally moving your thumb toward the screen so that it looks like you’re engaging with it, people ignore you. I’ve perfected the angle of eyesight required to give the illusion of distraction while watching the scene around me unfold. I’m not a voyeur, because I don’t usually care what other people are doing or talking about, but experience—if that’s what you want to call it—has taught me that I should be as aware as possible of my surroundings.

As the girls stream out of the wide, arched gate, I lean back against the fence, pretending to watch my phone, and let them pass me like a wave. Only a few of them give me curious looks, since most are engrossed in their own little dramas, but I feel like a sore thumb nonetheless. Even more so than I did in the Carmichaels’ apartment. There, at least, I felt like it was a fair matchup. Here, all these prim girls with their plaid skirts and expensive winter jackets look like an army marching to prove how out of place I am.

The majority of girls pass, and although they’re moving quickly, trying to get away from the school, I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten a good look at most of them, and Greta is nowhere to be seen.

Then the door to the school opens, and two girls in the middle of a serious discussion come out. One of them looks up, and it’s her. She and her friend stop at the top of the steps and hover over a binder that one of them is holding out. There is an exchange of papers, notes, or homework assignments shoved into backpacks, and then they continue down the steps and toward the gate.

“Greta,” I say, stepping forward. The girls start, and Greta takes an instinctive step backward.

“Yeah?” she asks. “Can I help you?”

I can tell by the way she talks that she is a serious person. Wary, which doesn’t surprise me at all, but not flighty. Cautious in a way Sibby never was. I wonder how much of this is a result of what happened to her sister and how much is just the way she is, the way she would have been either way.

“I was wondering if we could talk for a minute,” I say.

She hesitates, and although she doesn’t step closer, her head moves forward just a little bit, her eyes narrowed, taking me in. “Do I know you?” she asks warily.

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