Salvage (35 page)

Suddenly a huge beast thunders out of the barn and swings toward me. Its eyes glisten black in its long face. Its metal-ringed hooves kick up a spray of dirt as it bears down on me, a girl clinging to its back.
A horse
, I have time to think as I trip back from the fence.
I told Rushil . . .
I hit the ground and scramble backward on my elbows as the beast charges past me in a rush of wind.

A line of girls and an older woman in a pea-green sari come running from the barn to my side. Some of them help pull me up, while others brush the dirt from my back and arms.

“Are you okay?”

“Is she hurt?”

“Advani-madam, come quick!”

“What was she doing next to the fence like that?”

“I'm fine, I'm fine.” I rub my elbow, face burning. Horses. Of course. It had to be horses.

The girl atop the horse guides the animal back to the fence at a slower pace, her pale face flushed. “I'm sorry, I didn't see her there. I thought everyone was inside.”

The older woman claps her hands. “Enough excitement, everyone. Back to the stables. Miss Labhsha, I believe you're next to ride.” She looks at me. “Parastrata, is it?”

“So.” I clench my teeth. If I had known Soraya was going to have them put down my name as Parastrata, I would have begged her to let me use her name instead. The last thing I need is to leave a trail for my father and brother.

“Dr. Lata said you were coming. I'm Shushri Advani, the equestrian instructor.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Soraya made sure I knew that phrase before she let me out of the house this morning.

“You've never handled a horse before?” Shushri Advani asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “I've milked goats.” I realize how stupid I sound as soon as the words are out.

“I don't believe the horses will require that particular skill.” She cranes her neck to look past me. “Chennapragada?”

Two matching skinny girls with black hair cut straight at their shoulders break from the crowd by the fence. Twins, maybe? We never had twins on the
Parastrata
, but the Makkaram crewe was supposed to be full of them.

“Prita, Pia, show Miss Parastrata the ropes, if you please,” the instructor says.

“All right, Advani-madam,” one of the girls says.

Her sister nods to the barn. “This way. Come on.”

I follow after them, flicking dust out of my skirt and trying to ignore the stares latched on to the back of my head. I'm going to have some nasty bruise on my tailbone tomorrow.

One of the girls turns and walks backward. “I'm Prita.” She nods at the girl beside her. “That's Pia.”

“Hi.” Pia throws me a smile over her shoulder.

“Are you twins?” I ask.

“No,” Prita says, dead serious.

“What gave you that idea?” Pia asks.

“Truly?” I frown.

The two girls turn their heads to look at each other as one, then burst out laughing.

I scowl at the dirt.

“Sorry.” Prita giggles. “Everyone asks us that.”

“Oh.” I can't think what else to say. “Sorry.”

“So what's your name?” Pia asks. “Or should we call you . . . Parastrata?” She draws my family name out in an imitation of Shushri Advani.

“Ava,” I say. “Just Ava.”

“So you really never rode a horse before?” Prita asks.

“No.”

Pia spins around so she's walking backward with her sister as we pass through the close brick walls of the stables. “Not even your family's?”

The horses stare at me from their shadowy alcoves. Their glassy black eyes make my skin prickle.

“We, um . . . we didn't . . . we had goats,” I say lamely.

Prita scrunches up her face. “Goats?”

Pia rolls her eyes. “God, Prita. Advani-madam said she's not from here, remember? They probably tied them all to a cart or something.” She looks at me. “Is that what you did? Tied them to a cart?”

“I, uh . . .”

Pia doesn't wait for me to answer. “Want us to show you how to brush one down? Or would you rather start with the stalls?”

“Stalls,” I say quickly. Maybe I can talk Soraya or Dr. Lata into letting me study something else. After all, I'm never going to be rich enough to ride one of these monsters around the city anyway. Not even Soraya has one, and she gets around fine.

Prita looks disappointed but leads the way to an empty stall in dire need of mucking. Pia passes around pitchforks and brooms, and the two of them groan and giggle and make faces at each other as we start scraping the floor clean. I try to breathe through my mouth until my nose adjusts to the horse smell and my heart stops racketing around in my chest. At least this part is something I can do.

“So where'd you move from?” Prita asks, slopping a messy heap of straw into a wheelbarrow parked in the corner of the stall.

“I lived some lot of places,” I say.

“Like where?” Prita leans on her pitchfork.

“I was down in the Salt a while when we first got here.”

“The Salt!” Prita latches onto that. “
Chaila
, girl, you should have said earlier. We have to go down there together sometime. All the best clubs are in the Salt. Oh, and our brother's renovating an old warehouse on the hill. He's going to make it into apartments.”

“Oh, Pri-ta,” Pia sings. She staggers at her sister, pitchfork weighed down by dirty straw. “I've got a present for you.”

Prita shrieks and drops her own pitchfork with a clang. The horse in the stall next to us lays its ears flat against its head, snorts and stamps, and rolls its eye down at us. I cringe.

They're smallgirls
, I think.
The same height as me, the same age, but even Miyole's older than them inside
.

A chirp pulses from Prita's pocket.

“Did you bring your crow?” Pia asks.

Prita pulls out a slick blue crow and gives her sister a withering look. “Like I wouldn't.” She pauses, deep in reading the screen. “Lali's going to ride. She wants me to catch it for her page.”

“God, that girl's obsessed.”

Prita shoves her crow in her pocket and makes for the door. “Ava? You coming?”

The stall's only half done. I look from the twins to the muck-smeared floor. If Modrie Reller saw this, she'd take a wire to the back of my legs, or else make me clean the rest of it with my bare hands. “Won't we get in trouble?”

“Trouble?” Prita laughs. “Why?”

“We didn't finish. . . .”

“Oh, the machines'll get the rest of it.” Prita waves her hand. “All Advani-madam cares about is that we practice so we appreciate the historical aspects of equestrian care.”

“Come on, Ava.” Pia grabs my arm and links hers through mine. “Lali likes a crowd.”

I walk with them back out to the paddock. The girl I saw earlier, the one with the diamond in her nose, sits high in the horse's saddle, back straight. One of the other girls checks the horse's straps and stirrups while the instructor looks on, smiling.

Prita climbs up on the fence, pulls out her crow, and aims it at the girl on horseback. “Okay, Lali. I've got you!”

Lali kicks the horse into a run. Its hooves beat the soft ground as it circles the paddock and rounds past us again in a spray of dirt. Lali leans forward over the horse's neck, moving with it as it builds to a full gallop.

I sit on the fence beside Prita and Pia. All around me, the girls laugh and cheer Lali as she brings the horse to a high-stepping trot. I'm surrounded by girls who've had horses their whole lives, who've had nothing to do but perfect their riding, who don't fear leaving something half done.

I want to feel that
, I think as Pia throws back her head and wrinkles her nose in laughter at something one of the other girls says.
How does she do it? How does she let go?

I scowl at the fence. Maybe girls like me aren't made to be petal light and carefree. I'm the girl who cleans up after goats, who makes her own tea, who fixes machines these Revati girls will never touch. Or I was. Now I'm . . . what? Pretending to be one of them? Pretending the rest of my life never happened? For them, this whole world of horses and fine clothes and slick machines will never end. It's all they've ever known, ever will know. But for me, one wrong tug and everything could come unraveled in my hands.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

D
r. Lata sits me down in a plush chair facing her desk. She stands on the other side, fingers resting on its glass top. “I'm concerned, Ava.”

I keep quiet, waiting for her to continue.

She draws her hand across the touchpad on her desk, and the tablet screen beside her springs to life, full of what can only be my botched entry exam. She seats herself, stares at it, and sighs. “Your reading scores . . . well, I find them troubling for a girl of your age.”

I don't disagree.

“And your mathematics scores are erratic.” She looks up. “I understand you leaving the trigonometry questions blank, but how is it you've mastered intermediate algebra, yet you've never learned geometry?”

“I . . .” I swallow, feeling sick. “I didn't know. . . .”

Dr. Lata waves her hand in dismissal, mistaking my answer for sullen childishness. “Who was responsible for your education?”

“Miyole,” I say. “And me.”

“Miyole?” She glances over at my records on the screen. “Your aunt says you lived on a transport ship most of your life?”

I nod.

“Surely there was a certified instructor aboard?”

I shake my head.

“An instructor in training?”

I shake my head again.

“How did you learn even the basics, then? Addition? Multiplication? Someone must have taught you those.”

I open my mouth, then close it again, afraid if I begin to talk about my life on the
Parastrata
, I'll have to talk about what ended it, too.

“Ava?”

“I don't know,” I say. But I see the frustration building on her face and I hurry on. “I taught myself at first. And then Miyole showed me the symbols and gave me puzzles like the ones there.” I point to the screen.

“Ava, we want what's best for you. You know that, right?”

“Yes, so missus.”

“For that reason, we'll be keeping you with your social peers as much as possible, but assigning remedial academic coursework until you catch up.” Dr. Lata taps the touchpad, and my exam disappears.

Remedial
. I don't know what it means, but the way it drops from Dr. Lata's mouth tells me it's something bad. Trash. Burnoff. Me.

“Can't you put me in a class with Miyole?” I say. “I can catch up there.”

“Ah.” Dr. Lata wipes an invisible dust mote from her desktop. She won't look up at me. “Well, Miyole. That's another matter.”

“What matter?”

“Miyole is . . .” She looks past me, out the window into the streaming Mumbai sunshine and the ships passing calmly over the city. She smiles. “We don't have many students like Miyole.” Her smile drops. “I'm afraid it won't be possible to place you in the same class.”

“But why not? I'm her . . . her . . .” I falter. Her what? Sister? Family? “Friend,” I finish lamely.

“Exactly,” Dr. Lata says. “Miyole's education is a matter for her guardian—your aunt Soraya—and for me. You need to take some time to put yourself in order, Ava. Concentrate on your own education. Don't worry so much about Miyole. She'll be fine. More than fine.”

I leave Dr. Lata's office, storm into the nearest bathroom, and kick open the stall doors to make sure they're empty. I bury my face in my hands and scream.
She'll be fine
, they say, when they know nothing about her except her skill in reading and figuring, nothing about the girl who used to fly her kite above the Gyre, who survived a hurricane with bloodied hands, who had to hide from the Marathi Wailers.

Suddenly, my crow chirps. I gasp and near drop it. I've forgotten it was on me, hidden in a clever, slim pocket sewn into my skirt at the hip.

I finally wrestle it open. “What?”

“Ava?” It's Soraya. Her voice sounds wary, unsure. I can't help thinking how Perpétue never would have sounded so. She understood me. She never would have sent me here to be humiliated.

“I wanted to tell you not to worry about waiting after school for Miyole,” Soraya says. “Dr. Lata called. They want her to stay after to take advanced placement tests, so I'm coming to meet with her instructors. I'll take her home afterward.” Her voice glows with pleasure.

“Is that what Miyole wants?” My words come out near a growl.

“I'm sure it is. You can talk to her yourself if it makes you feel better.”

“Maybe I will.” I snap the crow shut before she can say anything more.

I stomp down to Miyole's classroom, where I pace outside the door until the session ends, and a pack of smallgirls comes streaming out into the hall. Miyole catches sight of me.

“Ava!” Excitement bubbles in her voice.

“Miyole.” My anger melts a little.

“I'm learning Mandarin,” Miyole announces. “And Ms. Sarangapani says we're going on a field trip to the bioelectronics labs at Bangalore later this year.”

“That's great.” I smile and fix one of her braids what's gone askew. “Soraya says they want to test you more after school. Is that what you want?”

“Oh, yes.” She's practically hopping. “Dr. Lata said if my scores were good, I could take biochemical engineering with the older girls.”

“That's wonderful. You want me to wait for you after?”

Miyole frowns, thinking. “Isn't Soraya coming to get me?”