Free The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani Page A

misses you. Do the mountains make you feel small, Thea?
     
    I glanced around the room and saw that Mary Abbott was staring at me. I stared back. Her eyes unnerved me, pale, almost colorless. Mary Abbott relented, shrugged her small shoulders, and mouthed
Sorry
across the room, though of course she wasn’t.
    I lay back on my thin pillow (my pillows at home were plump and perfect, I wished I’d brought one with me) and ran my fingertips along the smooth wooden planks of our floor, marked by an infinite number of scratches. Girls wearing riding boots inside, Docey pulling the beds out to make them, dropped books. At home, no one was allowed to wear shoes in the house, only visitors, and if anything fell and my mother heard there would be a price to pay.
    Sissy spun around the room, humming a waltz. When she was next to our bunk, Eva climbed down and bowed, held out her hand. Sissy accepted it, and they began to dance, Eva playing the boy’s part. They both wore white skirts. Eva was taller, and more solid; her hair alone seemed to outweigh Sissy. They looked like mother and daughter dancing. Even I knew that waltzing was old news, but there was no jazz at Yonahlossee. Because it was hypnotizing, Mary Abbott had explained.
    Both Sissy and Eva came from families that entertained regularly. Eva from a North Carolina cotton empire and Sissy from Monroeville, which she referred to as the center of the earth, where her father did something vague in her father’s family business, and was also the mayor. All her jewelry was from her mother’s side; I assumed most of the money was from her, too.
    Only Mary Abbott and I were unexcited about this evening, when boys from a boarding school in Asheville would arrive at eight o’clock, and we would all be expected to dance the evening away. I pretended to be excited, at least; Mary Abbott didn’t know how to pretend.
    “Another one,” Mary Abbott said when Eva had bowed and Sissy had curtsied, the waltz over. We were all startled by Mary Abbott’s voice. We respected rules at Yonahlossee, and though it was likely no house mistress would pass by during rest hour, we knew they could.
    Mary Abbott rose and clapped her hands like a child who wanted her way. Her squinty eyes were bright. Eva told me Mary Abbott’s father was a Methodist preacher, that her mother had died when she was an infant.
    “Shh,” Victoria whispered, a finger on her lips.
    Eva put a hand on her hip and studied Mary Abbott, amused.
    “You’ll see plenty of dancing tonight,” Sissy whispered. “I wouldn’t worry.”
    Mary Abbott lay back on her bed and folded her arms. I wondered what she thought she was missing now that Eva and Sissy had stopped dancing. When I saw my friends twirling around the room, I saw two innocents.
    —
    M other’s favorite story—more beloved than the story of how she and Father met—was the story of our births, transformed into a kind of fairy tale by her, the mother who carried twins and did not know it. My brother and I were born during an early winter storm: it snowed, birds dropped from the sky, dead from the unexpected freeze, all the plants in my mother’s garden shriveled and turned from green to deep russet. My parents were expecting a large boy, because my mother carried so low. So I was the surprise, not Sam. I was the child no one expected.
    There was no history of twins in our family. When we were born, our family was cautious, especially of me. I had either sapped Sam’s strength and was the stronger twin, or Sam had enfeebled me. I was either a selfish or useless girl. My father tried to dispel these notions, said there was no evidence. But even he was worried, a boy and a girl born together, contrary to the order of things.
    We were cranky babies, both colicky. My mother lay in bed for weeks, my father tended to her and then to his other patients, who were always my father’s responsibility, always, the only doctor in Emathla. A woman from town took care of the