Wild Girl by Patricia Reilly Giff Page A

something then that sounded almost like my own language. I repeated it in my head, trying to figure it out.
    She said it again.
“Eu quero …”
    Yes. Her accent was strong, but still I understood her. “I want…,” she said.
    She leaned forward, her hands out, looking at me.
    Next to me, Liz was frowning.
    “What?” Ian asked.
    Mrs. Bogart winked at me.
“Eu quero”
—she looked up at the ceiling—
“cachorro quente.”
    Hot dog?
Was that what she meant? I began to laugh. “É
mesmo!”
I said back without thinking.
Really
.
    Everyone looked at me as Mrs. Bogart gave out the books, which I saw were Portuguese-English dictionaries. There weren’t enough to go around, so we had to share.
    Mrs. Bogart pointed at me.
“Tu queres …”
    What did I want? Ice cream, maybe.
“Sorvete.”
    Around me, everyone was paging through the books, leaning over each other’s shoulders. Everyone wanted to be the first to find what we’d said.
    Then Ian had it. “Ice cream,” he said.
    I tried to fit my tongue around those sounds. I
want ice cream
.
    Gradually everyone caught on. Liz wanted earrings, Ian wanted a drum, someone else wanted summer, all of them trying it in dreadful Portuguese that made me laugh, and they laughed, too.
    I began to separate their faces in my mind: Ashley with the dark hair, Will with all the freckles, Kathy who sat on the other side of me.
    In spite of everything, I was glad to be in that classroom with the straggly geranium on the windowsill and the puffy jackets hanging on the hooks at the side of the room. My jacket was exactly in the middle, and I thought it might be happy to be there, too, in this noisy classroom.
    Mrs. Bogart made circular motions with her hands as she looked at her watch. We rushed to roll up the rug and put the little books in a pile on her desk. And then, on my way to my seat, I looked up at her. I felt tears come into my eyes and brushed them away. Crying again!
    Mrs. Bogart nodded at me as if she knew I was thanking her. And then she passed out pieces of yellow paper with lines.
“Eu quero …,”
she said.
    I looked around to see everyone bent over the papers,beginning to write. An essay. We’d done those a thousand times in Jales. Mrs. Bogart came down to my desk and touched the paper with her finger. “Write in Portuguese.”
    I sat there thinking about it. Whatever I’d write would be secret; no one would know what it said without a dictionary. It was almost a magic language, and I was the only one here who knew it.
    I could say anything. I could even say the truth.
    I picked up my pen. I wrote that I wanted everything to be the way I thought it was, all those years in Jales when I sat on the front porch thinking about America. Never mind Rafael telling me sometimes things weren’t as we expected.
    I wanted Rafael to be happy; I wanted to be happy.
    I grinned to myself as I thought I wanted a decent meal and a house that was noisy.
    I wanted Wild Girl to love the barn and the training track.
    And Pai.
    I dug into the paper with my pen. I wanted this Pai to disappear and the old Pai who laughed with Mamãe to come back. I wanted a Pai who remembered the lemon.
    How could he have forgotten?
    Ian came around to collect the papers, and I looked at my terrible essay: the pen had followed all the angry thoughts in my head.
    Ian glanced over my shoulder. “Wow,” he said, and for one quick moment, I was afraid he could read it.
    But then I realized it was the Portuguese filling line after line that impressed him.
    I shook my head when he reached for it, but did it in a friendly way. Instead, I folded it into quarters and put it carefully in my math book.

27
THE TRAINING TRACK
    Another dinner, and again we hardly spoke; there was only the clink of knives and forks against the plates. Rafael did try, talking about a new horse Mrs. Januário had bought, and an exercise boy who would begin work next week.
    I barely listened. I was thinking of arguments I’d had