‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Whom did you kill?’
The question caught me absolutely off guard. ‘Miss Kew,’ I said. Then I started to cuss and swear. ‘I didn’t mean to tell you that.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said.’ What did you do it for?’
‘That’s what I came here to find out.’
‘You must have really hated her.’
I started to cry. Fifteen years old and crying like that!
He gave me time to get it all out. The first part of it came out in noises, grunts, and squeaks that hurt my throat. Much more than you’d think came out when my nose started to run. And finally—words.
‘Do you know where I came from? The earliest thing I can remember is a punch in the mouth. I can still see it coming, a fist as big as my head. Because I was crying. I been afraid to cry ever since. I was crying because I was hungry. Cold, maybe. Both. After that, big dormitories, and whoever could steal the most got the most. Get the hell kicked out of you if you’re bad, get a big reward if you’re good. Big reward: they let you alone. Try to live like that. Try to live so the biggest, most wonderful thing in the whole damn world is just to have ‘em let you alone!
‘So a spell with Lone and the kids. Something wonderful: you belong. It never happened before. Two yellow bulbs and a fireplace and they light up the world. It’s all there is and all there ever has to be.
‘Then the big change: clean clothes, cooked food, five hours a day school; Columbus and King Arthur and a 1925 book on Civics that explains about septic tanks. Over it all a great big square-cut lump of ice, and you watch it melting and the corners curve, and you know it’s because of you, Miss Kew… hell, she had too much control over herself ever to slobber over us, but it was there, that feeling. Lone took care of us because it was part of the way he lived. Miss Kew took care of us and none of it was the way she lived. It was something she wanted to do.