Free Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell

careful, hey?”
    But Will wasn’t any good at being careful, they bothknew that. She was good at other things—running, and singing—and she had a sick, aching feeling that those things would not help her now.
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    â€œAt last, Wilhelmina!” Mrs. Browne was waiting in the doorway, and she handed an envelope to Will, averting her eyes as though, Will thought, Will were something particularly nasty she would rather not look at.
    â€œThis came last week. You might as well see it now. It’s from Leewood School.” Will’s stare widened until her face seemed all eyes. “It’s a school. In England. The captain has decided to send you there as soon as possible.”
    Will took it. She didn’t want to speak to Mrs. Browne, couldn’t bear to show how much she cared, and she could feel that the hot storm of resentment in her chest was dangerously close to flashing out through her mouth, but she had to ask—
    â€œWhy wasn’t I given it before?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou said it came last week. You— Shouldn’t I have had it then?”
    Mrs. Browne sighed as if Will were being deliberately stupid.
    â€œNo, you shouldn’t, Will.”
    â€œWhy not?” Will’s stomach felt somewhere near her ankles. She would not cry.
    â€œYou forfeited the right to be treated as an adult, my dear, when you started throwing plates across the room. We knew you’d only stamp and scream when we told you. So we waited until it was all arranged.”
    We? Will’s head rang with the word. It meant that Captain Browne had joined in the plan to snatch Will’s heart out of her chest and hurl it halfway across the world. And Cynthia Browne was not capable of understanding a creature like Will. Will had never, and would never, “stamp and scream.” In anger she became rigid, and hushed, and lethal.
    Through her daze of misery, Will got the envelope open. The letter was short and formal. It stated that Wilhelmina Elizabeth Silver, ward of Charles Browne, of Two Tree Hill Farm, had been granted a place at Leewood School, a select independent boarding school for girls. As the term had already commenced, she would be expected at the nearest possible date. Enclosed with the letter was a prospectus. It was signed Angela Blake, Headmistress .
    Will looked at Mrs. Browne, at the letter, at Mrs. Browne. It was a long look: in it was everything that Will’s life had been, and everything that it might have been, and everything that it would now have to be. It was a full, swollenlook, a look that comprised barefoot races through torrential rain, and lemon curd eaten straight from the jar, and now airplanes and the coldness of English air. Cynthia Browne was unable, for some days, to sponge that look from her memory. It stuck to the walls of her head.
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    Will would not take the stiff, shiny prospectus into her tree house. She and Simon sat a few feet away from it, sheltered a little from the rain by a msasa tree, and pored over the paper together.
    They stared at it for a long time. It was Simon who broke the silence. He swore, softly, and when Will did not reply, he said, “ Sha , Will.”
    Will rolled onto her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. The paper looked no better from the new angle. “I know.”
    â€œIt’s . . .” Simon screwed up his face. Will grasped her ankles and pulled the soles of her feet to meet the back of her head. She rocked to and fro, trying to squeeze the nervousness out of her chest.
    The first page showed a dark-haired girl sitting on a sofa holding a book. There was something careful about the girl’s smile. On the second page the same girl and two others were shaking hands with a tall man with gray skin.They all, Will thought, had astonishingly neat hair.
    Under the photograph was a caption, Leewood girls meet the school