Read The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place for Free Online

have a little chat.” She placed the plate of cookies between us. “Help yourself,” she said.
    I took a cookie and said thank you. The little chat went downhill from there.
    Mrs. Kaplan seemed to take issue with everything I said until I said the one thing that made her so mad that she put an abrupt end to the little chat, and her smile dropped so fast, it almost made a sound. Her nostrils dilated, and she seemed to vacuum in half the air in the room. Huffing out the syllables of my name, she said, “Margaret Kane.” She took a deep breath, this time sucking the air back in through her clenched teeth. “Margaret Kane, we want you to think about the cruel thing you have just said. We want you to think about that very hard.
Very
hard. And then we want you to think about what you can do to apologize.”
    She sprang up from the bed as if from a trampoline.The paper plate fell, and the remaining cookie broke into a hundred pieces.
    I sat on Heather’s bunk, bouncing ever so slightly from the recoil of the mattress. Mrs. Kaplan looked down upon me and the scattered cookie with equal contempt. She said, “You may sweep that up.” She paused just a second and added, “Now!” She watched as I got the broom and started sweeping. “When you’ve finished here, we would like you to report to the infirmary and see Ms. Starr. And we don’t want to hear that you prefer not to.”
    Ms. Starr was Nurse Louise. I did not like her at all. Except for the fact that she dyed her hair and wore a lab coat, she was just like Mrs. Kaplan. I truly would have preferred not to go there again.
    As soon as Mrs. Kaplan left, I began to sing:
    â€œGod save our gracious Queen

Long live our noble Queen

God save the Queen!”
    I sang as I swept and by the time I had finished the fifth verse and had sung the second verse (my favorite) twice, I had swept the entire cabin from wall to wall, paying special attention to the four corners. When I was finished, I decided that “sweep that up” did notalso mean “pick it up,” so I left the mound of crumbs, dust bunnies, and sand in a neat pile at the entrance, propped the broom in a corner by the door, and left for the infirmary.

five
    W e were now on a part of the highway that is officially scenic. We were passing markers that explained—in paragraphs that were too long and lettering that was too small—what we should be appreciating. A person would have to be an extremely rapid reader or be in an extremely slow vehicle to be able to make out what they said. I didn’t even try.
    Tartufo sat on the floor, resting his head on the seat between Uncle and me. I stared out the window, thinking that everyone at Talequa had a name for me but none of them knew me. Even if I would never get a prize for being Miss Congeniality, I didn’t deserve
incorrigible.
    â€œNurse called me incorrigible, Uncle,” I said.
    Uncle lifted my hand and kissed my fingertips. It was an Old World thing he did when he approved of me—which was often. “I know,” he said. “I read the report.”
    â€œI didn’t know she wrote it, too.”
    By the time I got back to the cabin after seeing Nurse Louise, all the Meadowlarks had returned from tubing.The first thing I noticed was that the mound of crumbs and dust balls at the threshold was gone, scattered back over the floor of the cabin. The second thing I noticed was that Ashley and Alicia looked incandescent. Then I saw that everyone had a neon glow. Even Blair Patayani, whose skin was a shade of coffee ice cream and who had bragged that she never burned, did. I made my way into the room. Everyone was oddly quiet. When I got to my bunk, I saw why.
    One foot of my bunk ladder was sitting in an ugly pool of vomit. Heather Featherstone, who had the bunk beneath me, was lying on her side with her back to the room. Her back was a luminous shade of raspberry. She was clutching