The Different Girl

realized the pallet cart hadn’t been under the classroom porch. Robbert must have taken it to the dock, so they could carry back everything the boat delivered.
    I didn’t understand what made Caroline dream, but Irene and Robbert always considered it important. If she thought we needed Robbert’s notebook, it was because some inside part of her had been given a question—or realized the question should be asked—and this was the answer she had found.
    Because of the boxes and the piles, I didn’t see the notebook right away—or, I didn’t not see it, because it took me longer than normal to see it wasn’t anywhere. I searched the desk and looked underneath piles, all the time knowing I had to move fast. The notebook usually lived on the desk or in Robbert’s satchel. I didn’t see his satchel anywhere in the classroom. Did he have it with him?
    The back room was full of machines stacked in metal shelves, with whirring fans to keep them cool. I saw the window where I had peeked in. The notebook wasn’t there, either.
    The kitchen had an upper floor where Irene slept, reached by a set of narrow stairs. Because the top of the classroom was filled with batteries connected to the roof panels, there wasn’t enough room for a proper bed—which was why Robbert slept downstairs. But there was an open ledge that Robbert used to store things, and when they put May in his bed he’d stacked those boxes and laid out a place to sleep. Instead of a staircase like Irene, he had a wooden ladder nailed to the wall. I had never climbed a ladder, but this was the last place the notebook could be, so I hurried to it and put my foot where I’d seen Robbert put his. The rungs were gritty with sand.
    I pulled myself up, doing my best to grip the wide rungs, nearer to the whirring fans and less able to hear anything else. When my head came over the edge, I didn’t see the notebook anywhere. But right in front of me, as if it had been hastily shoved there from the ladder, was a round shape, like a ball, covered with one of Robbert’s white coats.
    I climbed another step, enough to reach for the coat sleeve. I pulled. The ball underneath turned as the coat came free. From the sand I knew this was what Robbert and Irene had found on the beach that morning, and taken away before any of us could see.
    It was someone’s head.
    I’d never seen a head quite like it, but I knew enough to recognize the shape, and the eyes and the mouth and what was left of the hair. The head stared right at me, even though something sharp had been shoved into both sockets and rattled around, like a knife getting the last bits from a can, leaving the socket edges broken and scratched. The mouth was dented with round welts, like from a hammer, and smeared with bright red paint, as if there were lips. There wasn’t a nose, but I don’t think it ever had one. The hair was mostly torn out. Only a few lank strands remained, revealing tiny holes where the rest had been woven through, now stubbled with uncoated wire. A tangle of cable trailed from of the neck, bedraggled with sand and kelp, like the tail of a jellyfish left by the tide.
    There was more red paint on the forehead, symbols I didn’t know, the lines just wide enough to be made with a finger.
    • • •
    I could only hear the fans. I didn’t see the notebook. I had to go. There was nothing to do about the head except think, and I could think as I went. I wanted to know what her name had been, where she had lived, everything she’d known, but I knew I’d never get a single answer. Before this, the only thing we were certain never to know was our parents. Was that what death meant—no answers, a finally locked door? As my foot touched the floor I decided that was wrong, because death always left a why, and a how, and a what next. Questions weren’t the same as answers—they didn’t tell me this dead girl’s name—but for her sake I wasn’t going to let them go.
    I rushed down the steps to the courtyard, holding the rail. The rattling crack ripped through the air again, this time much closer, and a cloud of birds burst from the palms, frightened by the noise.
    • • •
    Halfway up the hill, I heard them call. I had almost fallen twice, trying to go too fast and slipping on the slick red dirt. I hadn’t seen them, crouched in the rocks.
    “ Where have you been ?” whispered May.
    “Do you have the notebook?” asked Eleanor.
    “Did you see Caroline?” asked Isobel.
    Caroline