Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

Miyole returns, Dr. Lata following close behind her.

“Done?” Dr. Lata asks brightly.

I nod, feeling more sick than I did on first sitting down at the table.

“Excellent,” she says. “Go down and find your classes. Miyole, I think your group is in Civilizations on the first floor, and Ava, I believe you have Equestrian Studies out near the stables. I’ll call you back to my office once we’ve looked over the results.”

“Right so,” I say, but the nervous-sick feeling creeps up into my throat. I’ve never heard of anything like Equestrian Studies, so it must be some complicated. Though if that’s the case, why would they hold it in the stables? Maybe it’s some like animal husbandry, but more of why animals work the way they do. I want to ask, but something about Dr. Lata makes my voice shrivel back under my tongue.

I walk Miyole down to her classroom. She peers through the glass door at the other third-grade girls and chews her lip. They look like something out of the advertisements on the buildings—clean cheeks, neat braids, pressed shirts. I would bet all the rupayes I earned at Powell-Gupta none of them have ever gone hungry. Miyole looks up at me, eyebrows knitted.

My petty jealousy turns to vapor. “Don’t worry. You’re quicker than any of them, Mi.”

She smiles nervously at me.

“Go on.” I give her a quick sideways hug. “I’ll meet you in the courtyard when they let us out.”

“Okay.” She straightens her shoulders, adjusts the bag on her back, and pushes open the door.

My steps echo down the empty hall. I follow the signs for the stables to the back of the school, and then out a set of sliding doors. A flagstone path cuts around a glass greenhouse, its windows fogged even in the heat of the day, past a field where girls play some kind of game with flat bats, to a fenced ring of well-trodden dirt beside a brick building. The tang of manure in the air tells me I’ve reached the stables. I step up to the fence and breathe deep. The thick smell of the barnyard eases my nerves some, tells my body I’m home.

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.”