A word about Hope House: there are places in the world where so many desperate people have lived and so many bad things have happened that the places themselves have become desperately bad. They’re damp and weird and smell like foot fungus. The windows are never clean and the lino curls up at the edges because it can’t stand the floor. Every corner is sprayed with cobwebs and quivering shadows. When you walk into these bad places, you can feel a headache brewing between your eyebrows, a churning in your gut, a cold prickle at the back of your neck. You feel sad and angry and helpless, all at the same time. These bad places seem to hate you, but they also seem to want to keep you there very, very much.
Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless was one of these places. But, as Gurl had learned in her history lessons, Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless had not always been called Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless. Back in the early 1800s, when it was first built, it was called The Asylum For The Poor, The Lazy and The Wretched, and its mission was “to teach idle, wild and disobedient children self-discipline of the body and soul”. After that the name was changed again, to The Home of the Friendless—“for unprotected children whose only crime is poverty”. And then for a while it was called The Institute of the Destitute, which offered orphans job training in such occupations as sheep shearing, basket weaving and flower arranging.
Despite the various name changes, the mission was generally the same: keep homeless kids out of trouble and try to teach them something useful. To that end, in literature class the orphans of Hope House were again composing business letters to rich people urging them to join the Hope House “Adopt-an-Orphan” programme, in which a donation of just $7.50 a day—only the price of a double latte!—would keep an orphan fed for a year. In art they made Hope House oven gloves and place mats, which were sold for $14.95 plus $5.99 shipping and handling on the orphanage website. In computer class they learned how to send emails to thousands of people at a time, with subject lines like “Don’t let hope die at Hope House!” or “The truest heart gives until it hurts!”
As always, Gurl finished her work quickly and then stared out of the window or watched the other students. Preoccupied by the fact that she might have disappeared like a phantom the night before, and by the cat that she hoped was still sleeping in a box underneath her bed, she didn’t notice the new boy until biology. Gurl was particularly bored in biology because they never learned about any animals except birds (with the occasional bat or flying squirrel thrown in). And while Gurl liked birds well enough, she hated it that everyone else worshipped them just because they could fly. Just once Gurl wanted to learn about a wolf or a salmon or a salamander or an ant. “An ant can lift ten times its own body weight,” Gurl had once timidly told her teacher, Miss Dimwiddie, hoping that maybe she might do a lesson on something else. Miss Dimwiddie had barked, “Birds eat ants for lunch.”
This morning Miss Dimwiddie began with the same question she always began with: “Who wants to tell me about the bumblebees?”
“Bumblebees!” echoed Fagin, Miss Dimwiddie’s parrot, who perched on Miss Dimwiddie’s shoulder.
Persnickety’s hand shot into the air. Since it was the only hand to shoot into the air, Miss Dimwiddie said, “Yes, Persnickety.”
“Bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly,” Persnickety said, knotting her hands on the top of her desk. “Their bodies are too big and their wings are too small.”
“Yes, Persnickety, that’s absolutely right.”
“Absolutely right,” croaked Fagin.
“Now, children, I want you all to remember that. Bumblebees look as if they’d be too heavy to fly and yet scientists have discovered that they beat their wings in circles to create lift. Now, none of you look like you can fly either, but you must all be like the bee. You children can use the bumblebee to inspire you to great heights. All right?”
She smiled, waiting for the students to agree, but the room was silent. Miss Dimwiddie cleared her throat. “Well then. Today we’re going to talk about the blue-footed booby.”
“Blue-footed booby,” parroted Fagin.
The class sniggered and Miss Dimwiddie put her hands on her ample hips. “Does someone want to tell me what’s so funny?” Ruckus, always the first to cause a ruckus, shouted, “You said ‘booby’.”
“You’re the booby,” said Fagin.
Ruckus’s tiny black braids, sticking up from his head like caterpillars reaching for a leaf, shook. “Shut up, you dumb bird.”
Fagin flapped his wings. “Booby head. Worm head.”
Miss Dimwiddie continued as if she hadn’t heard. “I want you all to turn to page eighty-nine in your textbooks. You will see a photograph of the blue-footed booby. Note its distinctive powder-blue feet.”
“Powder-blue feet,” Fagin crowed.
“The blue-footed booby lives on the Galapagos Islands,” said Miss Dimwiddie. “The blue feet play an important part in their mating rituals.” Again she had to ignore a lot of snickering. “The male booby initiates the mating dance by raising one foot and then the other. Like this…” Miss Dimwiddie raised one foot then the other, delicately pointing her toes as they touched the ground. On her shoulder, Fagin did the same.
“See?” said Miss Dimwiddie. “Blue foot, blue foot. Blue foot, blue foot.”
The class bit their knuckles to stifle their laughter. Except for one person, who laughed out loud. Gurl turned to look. In the back of the room was a new boy that Gurl hadn’t noticed before. This was unusual, the not noticing, and because of it Gurl watched him all the more closely. He was broad-cheeked and broad-shouldered, with large, wide-set blue eyes that made him look a bit like a praying mantis. He noticed Gurl noticing him and he raised his eyebrows. She looked away, feeling her face grow hot. (She hated to be noticed noticing.)
Miss Dimwiddie stopped blue-footing about. “That’s enough!” she said sternly. “These are birds we are talking about and they deserve your respect. Birds can fly. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but none of you can fly as well as a bird, can you?” She cast her icy eyes around the room. “Can any of you fly as well as a bird? And isn’t that why we learn about birds, to learn about flying?”
Fagin squawked. “No feathers. No wings. No crackers for you.”
“There there, Fagin,” said Miss Dimwiddie, patting the bird on the head. “I’ll have you know that the blue-footed booby is one of the most spectacular hunters in the bird kingdom. These birds actually stop in mid-flight and drop into a headlong dive into the ocean from heights of eighty feet.”
The praying mantis boy snorted. “Nathan Johnson has flown higher than that and he isn’t a bird.”
Miss Dimwiddie narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Nathan Johnson,” said the boy. “He’s the Wing who won the Flyfest three years running. He can fly ten storeys in the air, go into a free fall and stop two feet before he hits the ground.”
“Really?” said Miss Dimwiddie. “How informative.”
“Ugly boy,” Fagin crowed. “Stupid boy.”
Miss Dimwiddie smiled. “You’re new. Have you gotten your name yet?”
“No,” said the boy. “But I like to call myself—”
Miss Dimwiddie cut him off. “So you admire Nathan Johnson?”
“Yeah,” said the boy. “Doesn’t everyone?”
The students started whispering, much to Miss Dimwiddie’s annoyance. “I admire birds,” said Miss Dimwiddie. “They are the true Wings.”
Mantis Boy scowled. “I still think Nathan Johnson is the best Wing we’ve ever