Read Emerald City for Free Online Page A

the familiar, dull surroundings of my classroom, I was afraid.
    Later that day, I saw Amanda resting outside on a bench. With my heart knocking in my chest, I forced myself to sit beside her. I glanced at her arm, but her sweater sleeves reached the tops of her wrists.
    “Are your parents on vacation?” I asked.
    “They’re getting a divorce.”
    Uttered by Amanda, the word sounded splendid to me, a chain of bright railway cars sliding over well-oiled tracks. Divorce.
    “My parents are divorced,” I told her, but it hissed when I said it, like something being stepped on.
    Amanda looked at me directly for the first time since that day in the girls’ room, weeks before. Her irises were broken glass. “They are?” she asked.
    “My father lives in California.”
    I longed to recount my entire life to Amanda, beginning withthe Devil’s Paint Pots I had visited with my father at Disneyland when I was six. These were craters filled with thick, bubbling liquids, each a different color. They gave off steam. My father and I had ridden past them on the backs of donkeys. I hadn’t seen him since.
    “I have a brother,” Amanda said.
    The Devil’s Paint Pots bubbled lavishly in my mind, but I said nothing about them. Amanda crossed her legs and rapidly moved one foot. She fiddled with her bracelets.
    “Why do you watch me all the time?” she asked.
    A hot blush flooded my face and neck. “I don’t know.”
    Our silence filled with the shouts of younger children swinging on the rings and bars. I thought of the days when I, too, used to hang upside down from those bars, their cold metal stinging the backs of my knees. I hadn’t cared if my dress flopped past my head and flaunted my underwear. But it was ninth grade now, and nothing was the same.
    “If you could have one wish,” Amanda said, looking at me sideways with her broken eyes, “what would it be?”
    I thought about it. There were plenty of things I wanted: to poke freely through the cupboards of our altar, to eat communion wafers by the fistful and take a gulp of the sacred wine. But I told Amanda, “I’d wish to be you.”
    I had never seen her really smile before. Her teeth were slightly discolored, and her gums seemed redder than most people’s. “You’re crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re really nuts.”
    She hunched over and made a high, thin sound like a damp cloth wiping a mirror. I thought at first that her nose was bleeding again, but when I leaned over to look at her face, I saw she was only laughing.

    Each morning, as the arc of frost on my windowpane grew taller, I worried about the coat. It hung in my closet like an eager pet I knew I would have to feed eventually. When I touched the soft fur, it swung a little. I had an urge sometimes to stroke it.
    While I was dressing for school one day, my mother came into my room. Her face was puffy with sleep, her lips very pale. It still amazed me to think that she and Julius shared the big bed where she had slept alone so many years, where I had slept, too, when I had nightmares. I imagined an extra room where Julius slept, an inner door outside which he and my mother kissed good night and then did not meet again until morning.
    “It’s cold outside,” my mother said.
    I nodded, scanning my closet for a sweater. I could feel her watching the coat. She was quiet while I pulled on my kneesocks.
    “You know,” she said, “Julius really likes you. He thinks you’re terrific.” Her voice was filled with pleasure, as if just saying his name felt good.
    “I know it,” I said. And I did—he fixed me pancakes in the morning and had offered many times to take me to his warehouse, where I pictured row after row of soft, beckoning furs. “Pretty soon,” I would mutter vaguely.
    “Sarah,” my mother said, and waited for me to look at her. “Please won’t you wear it?”
    She had flat hair and an open, pleading face. When she was dressed up and wearing her makeup, my mother could