Free No Ordinary Day by Deborah Ellis Page B

glance at him and frown. They wouldn’t want a crybaby in their gang.
    I bolted.
    Sealdah Railway Station has lots of ways in and out. I knew the boys could run fast. I had to make the most of my head start.
    I made it to the side exit. I jumped down the stairs two at a time and ran out into the parking lot.
    The boys kept chasing me so I kept running. I zipped into the market under the highway flyover.
    It was very dark in there. The sun was hours from rising. The few bare bulbs that were lit up created shadows that made it harder to see instead of easier.
    People were sleeping all over the place. On their carts, by their stalls, on the walkways. I came very close to stepping on a lot of them.
    The boy-pack kept coming. I could slip through the maze of narrow pathways and not bother anybody, but they were not so lucky. Plus, they were more interested in getting me than they were in not disturbing the sleepers.
    Of course they knocked things over. Of course they stepped on people.
    I heard the crashes and the shouts. I stopped running and looked back. There was enough light to let me see angry men hitting boys caught up among the poles and canvas of a banged-up fruit stall.
    They couldn’t see me. I was tucked into a shadow.
    But I could see them. I saw the anger on the men’s faces. I heard the cries of the boys. I stood and watched and listened.
    Fruit spilled all over the ground. A melon rolled over to me and bumped into my ankles. I picked it up, held it close to my chest and walked away.
    Kolkata was quiet. There were no traffic sounds to block the noise of the boys crying and screaming. It stayed in my ears for a long, long time.
    I kept walking with that melon all along Bow Bazaar Street to Bidhan Sarani, to the area where all the colleges were. I went to Bookstore Alley, sat on the curb and smashed the melon open on the edge of the sidewalk.
    The melon was unripe and bitter. I ate the whole thing anyway. The juice ran down my kurta, making it sticky.
    What did it matter? What did anything matter?
    I had been given a chance, and I threw it away.
    I chomped and swallowed, chomped and swallowed until my stomach was aching and full of bitter melon.
    Then I threw up in the gutter.
    I didn’t feel any better.

10
    Pizza
    I MOVED TO ANOTHER CURB away from where I threw up, and then I just sat.
    Generally, I liked being in Book Alley. There were dozens of bookstalls and thousands of books. There were old books in Sanskrit, new books in English, and textbooks in Hindi, German and French. All kinds of people came to buy and browse. I could wander from little group to little group, being invisible and listening to their talk. I couldn’t understand most of it but I liked it anyway. It made me feel important just to be around it.
    On this early morning, though, Book Alley just made me feel worse.
    The clean white bandages Dr. Indra had wound around my feet were now gray and filthy. They hung off my ankles. I smoothed the tape with my hand, trying to make it sticky again, but that made no difference.
    I wanted clean bandages again.
    But I wanted more than that.
    I wanted to be like Dr. Indra.
    I wanted to know things and to speak about things so that people would listen to me. I wanted to have a purse with rupees in it — enough rupees that I could pay extra for things if I wanted to, just to be nice. I wanted to be able to wave over a taxi or a tuk-tuk and tell the driver to take me someplace and know that I could pay them when we got there. And I wanted to have so many dupattas that I could cut one in half and give it away without even thinking about it.
    It was never going to happen. How could it? I was nothing. I wasn’t even a coal-picker anymore.
    I tried again to smooth the tape down on the bandage so it would stick. Then I got fed up. I tore at the cloth. I ripped away the dressings. I bunched it all up into a ball and threw it as far as I could.
    No sooner had the bandages hit the pavement than a young ragpicker