Soraya waves and smiles, a kind of no-worries gesture, and weaves her way between the racks of embroidered tunics and raw silk saris in flame blue and persimmon. The back room is stuffed end to end with identical shirts and pants and skirts in a streak of colors.
“Here, try these.” Soraya pulls out a pair of knee-length saffron skirts and scoop-necked black shirts that button up the back. A gold-picked crest with some kind of horned bird and a circle stands out above the breast. REVATI ACADEMY is stitched below the bird’s feet.
Miyole makes a face. The clothes look some stiff to me, too, but if this is what we have to wear to earn Soraya’s help, I’ll swallow it. I take the clothes and let Soraya herd me to the dressing room at the back of the shop. Miyole pulls her tongue back in her mouth and follows.
I put on the shirt in the humid dressing room, and instantly my skin goes cool. I rub the fabric between my fingers. How did they weave cool air into cloth? My crewe would trade all their copper for that secret, and I bet the Gyre folk would have done, too.
I step out of the dressing room, still staring at my new uniform.
“Do you like it?” Soraya asks.
I look up. “It’s cool.”
Soraya laughs. “Of course it is. Haven’t you worn smartfiber before?”
I shake my head.
“The wonders of civilization,” Soraya says. “Go on, get changed. We’ll buy some street clothes for you, too. You can’t go around sweating like a horse all day.”
As we stack our new clothes on the counter, Miyole circles a slowly spinning carousel of jewel-colored saris at the front of the store.
“Can I get one?” she asks Soraya shyly.
Soraya melts. “Of course.” She holds a lavender one dotted with silver-thread arrows next to Miyole’s face. “What do you think, Ava? Doesn’t this suit her?”
I freeze, mortified. “Oh, but missus, you don’t need to—”
Soraya sighs. “Really, Ava, I wish you wouldn’t call me that. There’s no need to be so formal.”
We head home with an armload of saris. Miyole even wears one on the train, sky blue with gold horses parading along the borders. The blue is lovely against her skin. She looks like a different girl. Younger, rich, the kind of girl who would never have cause to sleep in an alley or cut her hands climbing a ladder in the midst of a hurricane. Soraya bought a sari for me, too, in midnight blue rippling with undertones of honey rose. I tried to shake her off, but that started to make her cross. How can I ever ask her about Khajjiar if I’m already in debt to her over a stack of pretty clothes?
I should be down fixing the ship, I think as Mumbai skips by outside the train windows. I should be working, shoring up extra money against what’s to come. Not trying on clothes. I finger the pommel of my knife. I need to be ready, in case something goes wrong here, like it did aboard the ther, like it did in the Gyre. Nothing this good can last.
CHAPTER
.31
Revati Academy turns out to be an old stone building in south Mumbai, near the college where Soraya teaches. Miyole and I stand hand in hand before the sliding doors of its main entrance. I’m sweating despite the smartfabric. The knowledge that the satchel slung over my shoulder hides a glistening new crow Soraya insisted on buying makes me sick some. She bought us tablets of our own, too, but they were too nice. I couldn’t bring myself to carry mine with me and left it at the bottom of the chest of drawers in the guest room—your room, Soraya says.
A crush of other girls in matching uniforms pushes past us. They’re beautiful, all of them, the way I’m beginning to see being rich gives everyone a gloss of beauty—fine clothes, straight white teeth, shiny hair, subtle paints for lips and eyes, and soft, unblemished skin in browns and peaches and pearls. No one here is missing eyes or teeth or has hair bleached and brittled by malnutrition. I smooth my own blunt-cut hair and grip Miyole’s hand. I wish I had my knife. I tried to tuck it in my belt this morning, but Soraya caught me and made me leave it behind.
Miyole, though, she’s caught up in the swirl and luster of it. She tries to drag us both up the building’s front steps. I hold back. Despite Soraya’s talks on board-certified instructors and advanced classes and individual progress assessments, I only have the muddiest idea what waits for me inside. Will the girls teach each other, like Miyole taught me my letters and figuring, or are we left to sort things out on our own? Do they have books? Or tablets? Or both? What happens inside these walls that couldn’t happen in the solitude of Soraya’s house, where I could grind out my ignorance in private?
Finally I let Miyole drag me through the front doors. A woman in a pale blue suit with her black hair pulled back in a loose bun catches us as we step inside. “Miyole? Ava?”
“Yes.” My voice squeaks.
“We’ve been expecting you. I’m Dr. Lata, dean of new students at Revati Academy. If you’ll come this way, please?”
We follow her through the broad front hall, then alongside a small courtyard full of ferns and a trickling fountain. Girls sit in clusters on the fountain wall. One of them, tall and dark haired, with a gemstone stud in her sharp nose and gold bands crisscrossing her long hair, cuts her eyes sideways at us and leans close to her friends to whisper something. A stab passes through me. Soli. Llell. I used to have friends like that. Where are they now? Soli will have had her baby. And Llell, I hope she found the husband she wanted. Even if she wanted me dead along with the rest of my crewe, she was my friend, once.
Dr. Lata leads us to a lamp-lit, windowless room on the third floor, filled almost to its walls by a table. Two rows of bronze-framed tablets, thinner and more transparent even than the ones Soraya bought us, are anchored in the wood.
“Please, sit,” Dr. Lata says.
We take seats side by side at the wide table, across from her.
“Dr. Hertz has informed us of your . . . ah . . . unusual situation,” Dr. Lata says. “I assure you, one of the benefits at Revati is the individualized tutoring you’ll receive to bring you up to speed. The young ladies who graduate from our institution have a ninety-eight percent placement rate in the world’s top postsecondary learning establishments.”
I look at Miyole. She has her eyes on Dr. Lata, nodding as though she’s understood, so I nod along with her. A sinking feeling sucks at the center of my chest.
“But first we need to assess your learning needs.” Dr. Lata gestures to the pristine tablets before us. They blink on, already brimming with text blocks and equations. “If you’ll each complete the entrance exam, the headmistress and I will review the results and inform you of your class placement at the end of the day. In the meantime, Ava, we’ll put you with the junior class, and Miyole, you may join the fourth-grade girls.”
“But I want to stay with Ava,” Miyole says.
“You may see each other at lunch, and during free study,” Dr. Lata says.