Page Two Hundred and Twelve
Ages 12-15
Ayelet's bookmark is between pages 212 and 213. The last page of the novel is 240.
She checks the bookmark before putting the book in her schoolbag. It is a strip of green card with a bite-shaped tear at the top, where her little cousin once tried to punch a hole with the wrong end of the punch.
On page 212, the girl with the borrowed coat has reached the station. Her ticket is gone. Someone has taken the small brown case from beneath the bench.
Ayelet reads that page again at breakfast. She wants the next one, but Mommy is putting the bowls in the sink and it is time to leave for school.
At lunch, Rochi has the same novel beside her sandwich.
"Finished," she says, patting its cover.
"Already?"
"Last night. My sister kept asking me to turn the light off."
Ayelet takes her own book out. She has brought it so they can look at the drawing of the station together. There is a little face in an upstairs window that nobody noticed until Rochi pointed it out yesterday.
Yaffa sits down opposite them.
"Did you get to the coat part?"
Rochi starts laughing.
"When she finally opens the pocket and finds -"
"Wait," Ayelet says. "I haven't finished. Don't tell me the end."
Rochi stops with her hand over her sandwich.
"You still haven't?"
Ayelet turns the book sideways. The green strip sticks out beside her thumb.
"I'm at the station."
Yaffa looks at Rochi.
Ayelet puts the book in her bag. She rolls the top of her lunch bag down around the apple that is still inside.
The next table is in the same room, two places open.
Ayelet picks up her bags.
"I'll sit over there while you talk."
She sets them beside one of the empty places. Her sandwich has come apart. A piece of lettuce lies across the paper, and she folds it back beneath the bread.
Rochi's laugh comes across the room. Yaffa says something Ayelet cannot hear. Rochi laughs again.
Ayelet takes the book out and lays it beside her lunch. A crumb has caught in the tear at the top of the green strip. She brushes it onto the lunch paper.
She eats the last bite of her sandwich. The bookmark stays between pages 212 and 213.