Free The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti

blinked, growing thoughtful. “What kind of secret? The embarrassing secret that you don’t want anybody to know about, or the sort that’s just too good to share?”
    “The embarrassing kind that would get me into trouble.”
    “Oh,” he said, looking a bit put out. “Well, all right then.”
    The bell blared over our heads.
    “Bye,” I said, and, because that seemed to be it, I turned to leave.
    I was a few steps away when he caught at my shirtsleeve. I turned. Abruptly, he said, “Could I come again tonight?”
    “What?”
    “Could I come again tonight?” he repeated.
    I couldn’t help smiling. “You have to ask?” I said.
    “Oh,” Sangris said, momentarily taken aback, before a pleased smile came to his face. He let go of my shirt. That’s when I realized what I’d just said, and how it had sounded. Ye gods, I thought. I sounded cheap. Like those girls on TV my father always sneers at. I turned and hurried inside before I could say anything worse.
    The halls were packed from wall to wall with the struggling, uniform-clad bodies of students. I slipped through the crowd, a fish through water, agile after years of practice, down the hall and up the stairs, my head seeming to float far above my body. At the familiar green door of my locker I paused to scoop up my bag. I was still thinking of heather and running and exhilaration. And tonight there would be more. Maybe this could be a regular thing. A new rhythm to my life, like the songs of the mosques.
    “Frenenqer,” someone said behind me. Anju slid into her accustomed place at my side. “Mr. Abass went around telling everyone that he forgot to give us homework,” she said. “We have to do all the odd-numbered exercises on page ninety-one.” She looked at me sideways with heavy-lidded, long-lashed black eyes, weary as a babysitter. “What did you do to the cat?”
    Not
Where is the cat
, but
What did you do to it
. Anju always expected the worst.
    “I didn’t do anything. It turned into a feathered dragon and we flew off.”
    “Oh, okay,” she said. We started back down the stairs. “How are your preparations for Heritage?”
    “Done. I finished them yesterday. I’m not sure why everyone else takes weeks to prepare.” I shifted the bag from one shoulder to another. It felt as if it were packed full of bricks. I peeped inside. Ah, that was right, I had ten novels stuffed in there. I’d forgotten that I had picked them up at the library. It was strange that the world hadn’t changed while I was away.
    “Everyone takes as long as possible because they want more time out of class,” she observed.
    “Sensible of them,” I said, conceding the point. It was difficult to argue while my head was still full of the sound of rushing wings. I tried to focus. “I heard the South Africans are going to bring a grill and have a barbecue outside.”
    “So what? The Emiratis are bringing a camel.”
    “Camels are easy. Everyone has a friend of a friend who owns a camel . . .”
    “But it looks impressive,” she said.
    “In our school, anything would look impressive.”
    “True.”
    As if OESS could buy our approval with
camels,
of all things. That’s what my school is called: Oasis English Spoken School. OESS for short. The grammar may be worrying, but the “English Spoken” part is supposed to indicate that all students must have a fluent grasp of the English language. The sign in front of the gates, however, is misspelled, and proudly reads: “Oasis English Spaken School.” Now you can guess the quality of the education I received.
    But it was the only school on this side of the desert, so we had no choice, and we knew it. If anything, we were supposed to be grateful. “You can’t expect to be pampered,” my father had said when he’d enrolled me five years ago. “We’re expats.” I’d stared at the sign in front of the school and just nodded.
    And Heritage always set my teeth on edge. Why should it be obligatory to proudly