Free The Lily Pond by Annika Thor

breath and tries to concentrate on the large poster hanging in front of the blackboard. It illustrates different species of trees and their leaves; the girls are supposed to be copying the leaves into their notebooks.
    May takes her aside between classes. “What’s up with you today?” she asks in a much less concerned tone thanHedvig Björk’s. “You’re acting so weird. What kind of secrets are you sharing with Harriet and Lilian?”
    “None at all,” Stephie says.
    “Don’t you think I have eyes?” May asks her coldly. “Or do you think I’m some kind of idiot? I see very well that you’re always whispering together, and how you stop the minute I come along. I thought you and I were friends. Aren’t we?”
    Stephie is ashamed. May is like an open book. She never hides anything.
    “Of course we’re friends,” Stephie assures her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

    Stephie’s doing well at school. She still makes spelling mistakes sometimes and puts words in the wrong order. But she reads in Swedish just fine now, and she has a very good memory.
    Math is her best subject. Alice is the only girl in the class who can give her a run for her money there. When she or Alice goes up to the blackboard to solve an equation, Hedvig Björk always smiles.
    “Look, girls, that’s how it ought to be done,” she says. “It’s not really all that difficult.”
    When it’s May’s turn at the blackboard, Hedvig Björk always nods encouragingly to start with, but the more Maymixes up her x’s and y’s, erases, and starts over, the more impatient Miss Björk grows.
    “Oh, May,” she finally says. “Can’t you see what you’re doing wrong? I can’t understand how an intelligent girl like you can have so much trouble with algebra.”
    Stephie can’t understand it, either. What makes this so difficult for May? As long as they’re working just with numbers, she’s fine. Square roots, compound interest, and other hard concepts aren’t beyond her. But the minute there are both numbers and letters in the problems, May loses her grip.
    Stephie offers to give May some extra help with her algebra. She thought they could sit in the school library, but May has a different idea.
    “Let’s go to my place,” she says. “It’s about time you came over.”
    Stephie remembers May telling her that her family lives in crowded conditions and that she has a whole brood of noisy little sisters and brothers. But she doesn’t want to be rude and risk hurting May’s feelings again. She’s afraid May might think Stephie thinks her place isn’t good enough.
    “Sure,” Stephie says. “It’ll be fun to see where you live.”
    After school they take the green tram. It rattles slowly along, crossing the whole city center and then running beside a tree-lined canal. Stephie has never been in this part of town.
    “There’s the fish market,” May says, pointing it out. “And the square with the workers’ community center. Seethose buildings up on the hillside? That’s Masthugget. We’re getting close now.”
    The tram makes its way heavily up a long, steep hill, then down a gentler slope. May pulls the cord, and the tram comes to a stop.
    Stephie looks around. There are no tall stone apartment buildings here, like in the neighborhood where she lives. All the buildings are three stories—the bottom one of stone, the next two of wood. The paint is flaking on the facades. The entryways open onto courtyards paved with cobblestones.
    They turn into a cross street. The sign says CAPTAINS’ ROAD, KAPTENSGATAN . After half a block, May turns in at an entryway, crossing the courtyard, where at least thirty children of different ages are playing. May points out her younger brothers and sisters.
    “There’s Britten. She’s closest to me in age,” she tells Stephie. “Kurre and Olle, the twins.”
    Kurre and Olle are two runny-nosed kids of about nine, as alike as two peas in a pod.
    May lifts a chubby toddler and gives her a