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"They are my friends," I insisted.

"We'll see," she said. She started out and stopped to look back at me. "We'll see."

She closed the door and left me choking on a piece of toast in my tightened throat. I drank some juice and pushed the plates away. I won't eat, I thought. That's what I'll do. I'll fast until she lets me talk to the girls.

An hour later she came in and saw that I had barely touched my supper.

"What's this waste of food?" she demanded. "You had to be hungry. You didn't eat all day."

"And I won't eat," I said, "not another morsel until you let me talk to Misty or Jade or Star when one of them calls me."

She stared at me a moment, almost with a look of amusement in her eyes.

"Is that so?" she said. She picked up the tray and started out.

At the door she turned. "You're just like her," she said again, "selfish and stubborn. She got what she deserved and you'll get what you deserve. It won't be my fault. I have told you the right things. If you choose not to listen, you choose not to listen.

"I'll not bring up another meal. If you want to eat, go down and get it yourself. If you don't..." She shrugged. "You don't."

She closed the door again and it was quiet except for the heavy sound of her footsteps as she descended.

I hugged my pillow. The pain had returned. It thumped up my leg and added to my thick pool of misery.

I should have brought those letters down from the crawl space with me, I thought. Now it would be some time before I could go back up there and finally learn the differences between all the lies and the truth. That is if Geraldine didn't destroy them first.

I lay back and recalled the first letter. I had committed practically the whole document to memory. I replayed it in my mind. She sounded so regretful, so sorry, and so eager to have me love her. Why couldn't she have raised me? The world might have been so different for me. I wouldn't have had my father doing the things he had done to me. I wouldn't have Geraldine tormenting me with her anger and hate. The shadows would disappear.

What had I done to deserve this except be born? Right now, I thought, if I had been given the chance to decide, I would have said, no thanks. Leave me where I am. Keep your world, your earth, your air and water, trees and flowers. Let me stay here, behind some cloud waiting for another chance, the chance to really be someone's daughter instead of someone's mistake.

My first cry of life would have brought smiles instead of tears and worry.

Most of all, I would have known who I was right from the beginning instead of having to spend most of my life tracing the clues backward, through the darkness, behind the locked doors, into the vault that held my name under lock and key.

4 The Prisoner

Geraldine didn't stop by in the morning to see how I was. I heard her pass by my door on her way downstairs without even hesitating to see if I was up. I was very hungry, but very determined not to be treated like a child and a prisoner in my own home, shut off from friends. I rose and drank some water. Then I lay there waiting. Soon, I thought, soon she'll realize I'm serious about not eating unless she lets me have my friends and she'll come upstairs.

Instead of her footsteps on the stairway and in the hall, however, I heard her vacuuming below. I knew it could go on for hours and hours. Every day she went over the house from top to bottom. It was her whole life and I realized if I did what she wanted, lived the way she wanted me to live, it wouldn't be long before it would be my life, too.

Pouting, I folded my arms and hunkered down, glaring at the door. There was a continuous dull ache traveling up my leg. That, combined with the gurgling in my stomach, made me feel very uncomfortable. How did people like Ghandi do this? I wondered. How do you stop your body from screaming for food? Try as I would, I couldn't prevent myself from thinking about cereal and fruit, eggs, toast and jam, juice, cookies, all sorts of sandwiches. All of it paraded before my eyes. Things in my room even started to resemble foods. A ribbon on the dresser turned into a banana. Beside it, a sheet of paper became a slice of turkey.

Reluctantly, I got up and went to my door, opening it slightly. The vacuum cleaner was off. I heard a window being opened. She was airing out a room now. Soon, she could be washing the kitchen floor and it would be off limits for an hour or so until she was convinced it was dry. Then, I heard the phone ringing. I hobbled to the top of the stairway to listen.

"Hello," she said. She was quiet and then she said, "No, she can't talk on the phone," and cradled the receiver hard. It had to have been one of the girls, I thought.

"Mother?"

There was silence.

"Mother?"

The silence was louder. Then I heard the

garbage can in the kitchen being moved. It was funny how I could identify every sound in this house. I had grown up with them as my listening vocabulary. I could be blind and I'd know exactly what she was doing her every waking moment.

I returned to my room, put on my robe, got the crutches, and made my way downstairs. She had just started to dip the mop into a pail with water and floor detergent when I appeared in the hallway.

She turned and straightened up when she saw me.