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The two French girls giggled.

I had to laugh with them. And then I looked after Randall.

A handsome but shy boy, I thought.

Maybe I will like it here, I thought. One thing I had felt already from the other students was the absence of any tension among us simply because of the differences in our skin color. Maybe it was because here we were all so unalike, some speaking an entirely different language and all having different backgrounds and cultures.

Perhaps in the theater you could be anyone you wanted to be and if you were good at what you did, people in the audience forgot everything else about you. Everyone shared the illusion.

Grandmother Hudson might have been a lot wiser than I had thought, I concluded. She might have known all this. She might have known I'd rather live in my imaginative world than the world of reality I had been given by Destiny.

She might have known this was the way I could frustrate Fate and find happiness.

Finally.

I would know soon enough.

4

The Forbidden Cottage

.

After a few more days of traveling through

London, I became more confident and actually began to enjoy riding on the tube. I even had the courage to leave the set route I took every day so that I could go shopping to buy myself a simple alarm clock. No matter how shrill the alarm, I thought, it would be a lot more soothing on my ears and heart than Ms. Boggs's fist pounding my door. As soon as possible, I bought the travel card Great-uncle Richard had advised me to buy. That was about the only question he asked me. He was very busy with important cases and missed dinner twice during my first week, but even when he was there, he asked me very little. He and Great-aunt Leonora either had guests to entertain or he was in deep thought about his work.

On Tuesday, I got up enough nerve to tell my Great-aunt Leonora about the bathroom not having any hot water. I had managed to take a shower at the school after dance class, but I couldn't stand not being able to bathe and wash my hair at home in the evening.

"Oh, I'm sorry, dear. Why didn't you tell me immediately? I never realized that bathroom was so inadequate," she said. "I'm so rarely in that part of the house."

She called Boggs and told him to get it repaired. He insisted there was enough hot water, but it couldn't be wasted by running it wantonly. It was the first time I had a real chance to stand up to him in front of Great-aunt Leonora.

"I don't think running enough hot water to take a bath is running it wantonly," I said.

"Of course it isn't," Great-aunt Leonora agreed.

"It's always been warm enough for me whenever I need it," he claimed.

"Maybe you don't wash as frequently as I do," I muttered.

"Women do have more needs in that regard," Great-aunt Leonora said.

He didn't turn red so much as his hairline rose with his ears, and then his mouth whitened in the corners, deepening the lines in his face until they looked like bloodless slashes.

"It's a forty-gallon 'ot water heater," he insisted. "It should do fine."

"I haven't felt a drop of that forty gallons yet," I threw back at him.

"Oh, dear, dear," Great-aunt Leonora chanted. "Dear, dear, dear. Richard won't like this. Not at all."

"I'll see about it, Mrs. Endfield," Boggs finally relented. He marched away, the back of his neck so stiff, I thought his head might snap off if he turned too quickly in one direction or another.

"Thank you," I told my great-aunt. "I don't mean to be any trouble to anyone?'

"Oh, I'm sure it's not very much trouble," she said.

"Not that I know much about the plumbing and such. I leave those things to Boggs and to Mr. Endfield. Don't trouble yourself about it," she concluded.