Moonpenny Island Read Online Free Page A

to accept this. She’s positive she can stop it. She will save Sylvie. “You don’t get in trouble! You’re realizing your potential just fine right here.”
    â€œIf you don’t count almost failing math. And being slow in reading. And . . .”
    â€œYou’re not slow! You’re careful.”
    â€œMrs. Halifax didn’t want to make Daddy mad. That’s the only reason she passed me.”
    â€œThat’s not true!” Well, maybe it is. But that’s not the point here. Flor rushes on. “The past is not the point. This year we’re moving on. You can start fresh. But that’s not even the point either!”
    It’s disturbingly un-Sylvie to sit so still.
    â€œWe’ll change your parents’ minds, don’t worry.” Flor is getting angrier by the second. “They’re just confused. Perry wrecking the car threw them for a loop. Parents get deluded very easily.”
    â€œMy father says the way I like to build stuff, I could be an architect. But you have to know math.” Sylvie palms pebbles, starts to make a tiny tower. “He says at Ridgewood Academy, they teach to the individual. Whatever that means. He says I’ll blossom and bloom.”
    â€œDelusion! You’re already the blossoming-est, blooming-est girl in the world! Besides, do you even want to be an architect?”
    â€œMaybe.” Sylvie carefully chooses another pebble. “I don’t know. I hate when people ask what I want to be.”
    â€œI know! Grown-ups always want an answer, even when there isn’t one! Like remember when you hadthat doll with the yellow yarn hair, and you carried it around everywhere, you loved it so much, and people would always ask you, ‘What’s your dolly’s name?’”
    Sylvie balances a splinter of driftwood atop her dainty tower.
    â€œAnd you wouldn’t answer,” Flor goes on, “because you didn’t even care about a name for her. Her name was not the point.”
    â€œBut one day,” says Sylvie, “one day you told Mrs. Magruder, ‘Her name is Bernadette.’”
    â€œWhat? I don’t remember that.”
    â€œIn a really loud voice, you said it.” A pause. “I remember thinking, ‘But she’s my doll. And Bernadette is an ugly name.’”
    â€œI must’ve been trying to stand up for you. Were you mad at me?”
    â€œOh, Flor. That was back in the mists of time.”
    Bonk . Sylvie knocks over the tower. Pebbles fly. Flor is shocked. Not only does Sylvie remember something she can’t, but Sylvie’s still upset about it, Flor can tell. Suddenly they can’t look at each other. They get busy watching a cormorant, a waterbird so big and heavy only its scrawny neck and head showabove the surface. Submarine birds, Thomas calls them. They’re so greedy, such expert fishers, the human fishermen call them way worse names.
    This is weird. Flor wonders if Sylvie sees the same bird she does. All at once, she can’t be 100 percent sure what her best friend is seeing through those purple-rimmed glasses.
    But that doesn’t change the truth. Which is: Sylvie is terrible at standing up for herself. She does need Flor to do it for her.
    Zoop . Lightning fast, the cormorant dives and disappears. Automatically, Sylvie and Flor start counting out loud. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .” They get all the way to thirty-five before the bird comes back up. Not a record, but pretty good.
    All of a sudden, something thunks Flor in the center of her chest. An invisible fist, on the end of a long invisible arm.
    â€œSylvie.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHow come you didn’t tell me before?” All of a sudden, Flor knows: this is the point. “I mean, you applied weeks ago, right?”
    â€œBut it was way past the deadline and I have terrible grades and who knew if they’d let me in.” She tugs