Chapter 20: Every Dollar

I sat down on the curb beside Elora and left a foot of cold gravel between us.

She didn't look up.

Her bare feet were gray with dirt, and she had a scrape on one heel from the stage.

"Go ahead," she said. "I'm ready."

"For what?"

"For whatever you came out to say. You're good at it. You were always the one who got to say it."

"I'm not here to yell."

"Then why?"

"Because it's two in the morning, and you're sitting on a curb without shoes on."

"They're in my lap."

"Put them on."

She almost laughed.

She put them on, one at a time, and I watched her do it on legs that had worked for two years.

"Did you ever feel bad?" I asked.

"Every morning."

"At breakfast."

"At breakfast, when you said sorry." Her voice was dull. "Every time you did, I wanted to tell you."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because Mother was in the room." She pulled the blanket tight. "And because it was the one time all day somebody looked at me and meant it."

I said nothing for a while.

An early truck went by on the main road, and its lights slid across her face.

"I was ten," she said. "You were twelve, and they had you in the good room. Mother said you'd been chosen, and I'd been kept."

"She told me I was the lucky one."

"Then she told each of us whatever kept us working." Elora shrugged. "She's efficient."

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