Wild Girl Read Online Free Page A

was no way out. And near her, on the fence, the small one raised its claws and hissed
.
    The filly whinnied, her voice high with panic. She was able to take one last look at the mare, that huge chestnut body with its swishing tail, the great dark eyes. The mare was trying to get to her, too, running back and forth on the other side of the fence, making frightful sounds
.
    But the creature was back, pushing her until she was inside a space like a stall—not her stall. She kicked out at him, but he jumped away
.
    She felt movement under her. The sound of her own voice was as terrible as the rumble of noise as the tiny stall bumped across the field and away
.
    She didn’t stop her cries
.
    Not for a long time
.
    She was alone
.
    Then it was night again, and she slept
.

8
WOODHILL SCHOOL
    I awoke thinking I’d been here for more than a week. I angled my head to see the picture of Gallorette, the great tomboy mare, seventeen hands, bigger than many stallions. It was as if she were staring back at me with her dark eyes.
    Next to her was Native Dancer, the gray ghost, with his lovely silver face. The blur in the corner of the photo was the stray black cat Native Dancer loved, and that traveled with him wherever he went.
    I smiled at my pictures. Today was my first day of school.
    I grabbed my clothes from the dresser. I’d packed them carefully, thinking of this day: a yellow top and jeans with small flowers to match.
    I put the sandals back in the closet; what good would they be against the snow outside? It was a good thing theHorseman had bought boots for me yesterday. He’d wanted to buy pink ones with cat faces in front, but how could I have worn them in sixth grade?
    I’d pointed to striped boots and he’d frowned. I’d put out my chin, standing there silently, trying to look as if I didn’t care, until he’d told the woman to wrap up the striped ones.
    Today the early morning went by in a blur: I ate a quick breakfast of bread dipped in honey and coffee laced with milk as the Horseman and Rafael tried to stuff my head full of English.
    I held up my hand. “I know English, what do you think?” I would never let them know how worried I was.
    Rafael tilted his head. “I’ll make you a terrific sandwich for lunch.”
    I watched as he put some kind of strange meat on two slabs of bread and filled the whole thing up with lettuce leaves. He smushed it together and dumped it into a bag with an apple.
    “Nice, right?” he said in English. “A wonderful lunch.”
    Ah,
nice
, not
niece
.
    As the Horseman and I pulled out of the driveway, I whispered some of my words:
tree, forest
, and
watch out, the mosquito bites
, and added a few new ones:
horse, barn, snow
. At supper every night, I had repeated sentences with Pai and Rafael, but they had disappeared somewhere into the back of my head. I had to hope the English words would come to me when I needed them.
    We parked in front of a school built of faded red bricks. Next to the huge doors, an American flag blew in that coldwind. The metal clips that held it to the pole clanked, and withered leaves skittered across the snowy yard.
    I shivered. It was so unlike the school at home with the windows opened wide to catch the breeze. The colors here were almost dull, as if the world were washed in gray paint.
    I didn’t want to go inside; it was … too much. But then I remembered what Titia Luisa had told me once:
You, Lidie, will learn everything there is to know. You’ll do something wonderful with your life
.
    And Mrs. Figueiredo, my teacher for the last two years, had said:
You are as smart as any child I’ve ever taught, Lidie
.
    I held on to those two memories as the Horseman took me inside and kissed me goodbye. Then a teacher with a pencil in her pouf of hair walked me to a classroom. She talked the whole time, pointing at doors, at the long window at the end of the hall.
    I nodded. “Yes, nice.” Through that window I could see a tree, its branches gray against