Wonder Show Read Online Free

expression on his pale face. He matched the house perfectly—his eyes were as black as the shaded windows behind him. He stood with his hands behind his back and waited.
    Sophia heaved herself out of the truck and approached the man. “You are the director?”
    The man nodded, drew one hand from behind him, and extended it to Sophia. “You must be Mrs. Stoller. Charmed, I’m sure.”
    He did not sound charmed at all. He sounded, in fact, like a man who had never been charmed by anything or anyone in his life.
    “You received my letter?”
    “I did,” he said.
    Sophia pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and ran it through her hands like a rosary. “Portia’s not a bad girl, you understand, it’s just that I can’t—”
    “Of course,” he said.
    Sophia sighed heavily and only then noticed that Portia was still sitting in the truck. “Come on now,” she said, her voice heavy with forced sweetness.
    Portia did not move.
    “Yes, come now, Portia,” the man purred. “Come out and meet your new friends.”
    At that, two girls in dark dresses emerged from the side of the house and approached the truck. They stared at her through the open window. One of them smiled. The other ducked her head so that her long yellow hair draped her face like water closing around a stone in a riverbed.
    “Portia,” Sophia hissed. “Now.”
    Slowly, Portia reached for the door handle, pulled it, swung the door open, and stepped into the strange new air. From one corner of the porch, a rusted, empty birdcage shuddered and creaked in the breeze.
    “The girls will show you to your quarters,” said the man.
    The smiling one reached into the back of the truck and retrieved Portia’s bag. “This way,” she said, and started down the path to the orchard and the bunkhouses. Portia glanced at Sophia, who waved her hand impatiently as she turned back to the dark man and began to speak low words that Portia could not hear.
    The yellow-haired girl looked at Portia for a long moment, and then she whispered, “It’s harder if you put up a fight. Just come.” She put out her hand, and Portia didn’t know what else to do but put her own hand in the girl’s palm and follow her. And their hands stayed together as they walked to the dingy bunkhouse that smelled like rotten apples, as they sat on a lumpy bed with scratchy blankets, as a swarm of sad-eyed girls surrounded them.
    And it wasn’t until Portia heard Sophia’s truck driving away that the girl said, “My name is Caroline.”

Family Traditions
    Family recipes must be kept in your head, Aunt Sophia told Portia once. They are not for writing down.
    But Portia liked to write things down. She was very fond of her own handwriting, and she liked the way everything looked when she wrote it out. When she went back to read what she’d written before, it was as if everything were her idea.
    So she spent part of her modest allowance (which she awarded to herself from Aunt Sophia’s purse) on notebooks and pencils. And she wrote down Aunt Sophia’s recipes and stories she imagined, and over and over again she wrote what she could remember.
    Her mother in a blue coat with a furry collar.
    The soap smell on Max’s neck.
    Knock-knock jokes.
    Aunts in red lipstick and rose perfume, uncles in suspenders and whiskey.
    It wasn’t much and also Portia wasn’t sure if she was really remembering these things or if she was simply writing what she had written before. Still. She kept writing, kept stealing dimes from Aunt Sophia for notebooks and pencils.
    The notebooks were the first thing Mister took away.

Night Voices
    The one inside Portia said:
     
“It’s cold here and everything smells like apples.”
It said, “I hope Aunt Sophia has one of her headaches right now.”
It said, “How will Papa find me?”
     
    The ones outside, in the wind and the rustling orchard, said:
     
“Now you belong to us.”
They said, “No one is coming for you.
And you know it.”

Bluebeard
    The Home was