Maguire, Gregory - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Maguire Gregory

Author:Maguire, Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub

"You stand at the window and look up and down the street, but you can't bring yourself to step a foot away from the door," says Iris. She's taunting Clara, but she doesn't care this time. "You're a coward."

"I am not a coward."

"Then come do it right now."

UT 1 "

1 won t.

Iris doesn't want to be mean, but she hates the sameness of everything. "I know what we can do," she says suddenly. "Ruth and I can put you in the wheelbarrow. We can wheel you out the back gate. We won't go into the marketplace, but away toward the banks of the canal. You can keep your eyes closed and not worry about a thing, and then you can open them up and you'll have been carried by magic across the prison walls of your world. It won't be jour walking out. You won't even see. We'll be the ones who walk you out."

"It sounds foolish," says Clara.

THE IMP-RIDDLED HOUSE

"Let's try it. Why not?" says Iris.

"You won't dump me in the canal?"

"I promise," says Iris. "That is, I promise to try not to."

Clara gapes. But she has come to know how Iris teases, and suddenly she says, "All right. I'd like to see the canal. I can hardly even remember it."

The wheelbarrow is in a corner of the kitchen yard. At the bottom are some old brown sacks. Clara and Iris snap the clots of soil and the bug carcasses off them. Iris looks up, somewhat guiltily, to see if their venturing out will be observed. There is no dark clot at the top window —just the sky rushing over the steeply pitched roof, a giddy early winter blue with stripes of innocent thin cloud. Nothing untoward.

Clara sits in the barrow like a princess in a palanquin. "No," says Iris, "lie down, like you're dead."

"I don't want to be dead," says Clara.

"You won't really be," says Iris. "Pretend."

Clara begins to be reluctant, but she does as Iris tells her.

"I'm going to cover you with these sacks," says Iris. "Then even if your mother or anything should be looking out the window, she won't see you."

Clara sits up again. "Anything? What do you mean by that?"

But she allows herself to be urged back down. "It's all right," says Iris. "This'll be fun."

"Fun?" says Clara. Her voice is muffled.

"You know it will," says Iris bossily.

"Don't bump me," says Clara. "Don't put me in a place."

"We won't put you anywhere." Iris shows Ruth how to pick up one handle of the wheelbarrow. Ruth is strong and picks up both. Iris then goes around and says, "I might as well ride on top of you. Am I squashing you?"

"You're squashing me!"

"Forgive me, but I can't hear you," says Iris, "all those bags over your face—"

"You're squashing me!"

"Let's go, Ruth—"

They don't even get the wheelbarrow through the gate when Clara is sitting up, face red and purple.

"Don't squash me! I'm not going!" She pushes Iris with a strength born of an outsized anger. Ruth stands and gapes, her arms dropped

at her side.

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