The Different Girl

either.”
    “She’s just a child.”
    “I know it. Look, I’m going to drink my tea, and then I’m going to the classroom and make sure of the windows. You should double-check upstairs.”
    “I will. And then what?”
    “I don’t know, Irene. Except this one should say good night.”
    “This one” meant me. “Can I wait until you’ve finished your tea?”
    “Of course,” said Irene.
    I kept my face to the window. I tried to imagine the black sea and a girl struggling in its heaving waves, her body shuddering with cold.
    Irene picked up her tea. I heard her blow across the cup to cool it.
    • • •
    We woke up together. The storm had passed and the sky was back to blue, so bright and rich it bled straight into the sea at the horizon, a giant blue bowl.
    The four of us stood with Irene on the beach path, looking out. Robbert was in the classroom, testing if everything still worked. They had been up for hours, if they had slept at all, checking for damage.
    When we were putting on our smocks I asked if they had seen May in the night, or any time that morning. Irene said they hadn’t, but that she had walked to the cliff and called for May and left more food where she could find it.
    “Are you sure she’s all right?” I asked.
    “I don’t know, Veronika. It was a very powerful storm. But the birds survive, and she’s hiding where they do, so I hope we’ll see her soon. She can’t be comfortable.”
    I told the others everything while we got dressed and went outside. We wanted to walk to the cliff, but Irene said we weren’t skipping class. We knew perfectly well that class after a storm was always studying what had changed.
    Three large palm leaves had blown into the courtyard, and we helped Irene put them in a pile. The day was very hot, without much wind, as if the storm had used it up. I knew there was no barrel of wind that could run out, but thinking like that was a way to imitate Irene, who sometimes described things differently from what they actually were, like saying the sky had fingers. When we were younger we would always ask why—if she said “that took forever” or “hot enough to fry an egg”—because we knew how long it had really taken and that there were nests in the trees where no eggs were being fried. But we sometimes made exaggerated points of our own, to be like her, even though she told us not to try.
    Irene wiped the sweat off her neck with a kerchief, folded it over, and then stuck it into the pocket of her dress. She wasn’t wearing her white coat, only an old dress without sleeves that came to her knees. Whenever I saw Irene’s bare arms I thought of how strong they were and how far she could reach. Her skin was a different color than May’s, more reddish from being burnt by the sun, though the parts under her arms weren’t burnt. They were almost as pale as Robbert, who almost always wore his white coat, no matter how hot it was. The paleness under Irene’s arms made me think of the bottom of May’s feet and the palms of her hands, which were lighter, too. I didn’t know if that was because of the sun—I didn’t think anyone got much sun on the bottoms of their feet, but May’s hands were in the sunlight all the time. The four of us didn’t change color at all, even if we went outside without our smocks.
    Irene shaded her eyes with both hands and studied the water. We were looking at the beach. Fresh footprints went off from where we stood in either direction.
    “Have you already been here?”
    She looked down at me. “We had a quick look.”
    “Maybe we’ll find something you didn’t,” said Caroline.
    “Because you’re good at finding?” asked Irene.
    “That’s our job,” said Eleanor.
    We walked together, all five in one direction—toward where I’d found May—keeping on past where Irene’s footprints stopped, until we reached the rocks. These were the same black rocks that made the cliffs, only here they were low, rising from the sand to break up the beach, like they stuck out of the water and broke up the waves. The ground on the island rose here, so while it wasn’t yet the cliffs, it was where they began. I tried to see May’s cave, but the island kept curving as the ground rose. The actual cliffs were too far away, beyond a spur of rock.
    What we did see, however, was what the storm had thrown onto the rocks.
    “More planks.” I pointed to a tangle of broken white boards, like the one Robbert had buried only longer. Since