Free The Education of Ivy Blake by Ellen Airgood

mother, a grandmother Ivy didn’t remember. She’d died when Ivy was tiny. Ivy hadn’t seen her other grandma in so long she barely remembered her either. Because of what Ivy’s mother had done, she didn’t want anything to do with Ivy anymore.
    Ivy moved on to the store’s other window and saw something that made her heart skip a beat: a video camera with a price tag on it that said $350.
    Ivy had wanted a video camera for as long as she could remember. She had a regular camera, one that had been Aunt Connie’s, but it could only take about ten seconds of video, and then with only so-so resolution.
    She put two fingers against the glass and imagined pushing the Record button. Then she let her hand fall again. She only had seventeen dollars to her name, and even if she had hundreds, what was the point? She was never going to get anywhere really, no matter what Ms. Mackenzie said. Look at how her life always went. The minute any good thing started happening, her mom came along like a storm to wreck it.
    Ivy poked her lower lip out and started walking again.
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    Her face burned from what the boys in front of the bodega said to her, and her heart started to pound hard when two of them peeled off and followed her. She walked faster and so did they. The soles of her boots slapped the concrete; their feet echoed behind her. A bus shuddered up to the curb at the next corner, and Ivy raced to it.
    â€œYou got your pass?” the driver asked. She looked at him blankly.
    He made a face and motioned her on with a jerk of his head.
    The bus picked up speed after two more stops. Then the driver eased onto an entrance ramp and they were cruising south down Route 209. Ivy stared out the window at the fields and houses flashing by. Were they going to New York City? Someplace even farther away?
    In one way, the idea of leaving was thrilling. But she had a spelling test in the morning and had the words down perfectly (
vacuous, vicarious, vindictive, vivacious, vitriol
), which hadn’t been easy. Also she was hall monitor this week, a responsibility she didn’t want to mess up. Besides all that, her mom was going to be furious. The threat of her mom’s fury always hung in the air of their life, and thinking about it now made Ivy nervous.
    She fiddled with her phone. Her finger hovered over Speed Dial. But she didn’t want to have to explain things to the Everses: the police, her mom’s work schedule. She turned the phone off and stuck it back in her pocket.

The bus turned off the highway and trundled through a village and kept going until they entered a college campus. Ivy gasped and pressed her nose against the glass.
    She didn’t know another kid her age who was as obsessed with the idea of college as she was. Even Prairie thought she was crazy to spend so much time worrying about getting in and getting scholarships. “Don’t go nuts on me,” she’d say if Ivy went on about it too much. “We’re not even out of middle school yet.”
    That was easy for Prairie to say. It was fine if you wanted to be a goat farmer and knew it already, fine if you came from a family like hers, or just a family, period, one without a crater blasted in the middle of it.
    The passengers started moving and Ivy followed. It dawned on her now that they all looked like students: dreadlocks and a tie-dyed shirt on one, backpack with a laptop poking out of it on another, an enormous instrument case that had taken up a whole seat of its own with another. The boy with the instrument case grimaced at her. “Sorry to be so slow. Cello in motion. Hope I don’t make you late.”
    The driver tapped her arm as she waited for the boy to maneuver the case down the steps. “Don’t forget your pass next time. Rules are rules.”
    Ivy stared at him. He thought
she
was in college. That must be why he’d asked about her pass. It must be because of how