Thirty six years ago.

My name is Bonnie Reid, and I am ten years old.

I live with my Mom and Pa, and we're railroad folk. My Pa is an engineer, he works on trains, and signals and turn tables and most other things to do with the railroad. Sometimes I get to help; I know the name of all the small parts, and I can carry water, and I know where to find all the tools you'd need. I can saw wood and bang nails just as good as anyone else. And I love that. I want to be an engineer too, when I'm older, and I don't plan on bein' stopped by bein' a girl.

But to be an engineer, you got to go to school. And my Pa, he has to move around an awful lot, because we do most our work on new railroads. Most of the year we live in a railroad wagon, and when we have to move, the railroad let us couple it to trains. It saves havin' to move our stuff all the time.

I started goin' to school when I was seven. Since then, I moved school twenty four times.

It was easier when I was seven. Games are similar all over. There's only so many versions of Ring a Rosy. I used to make friends. And then after a month I would move, and I would cry, and I would be at a new school the next week and have to do it all over again.

I had a baby brother back then. He was always sick, just like my older brothers who went home to the Lord before I was born. The Lord took him too one day. I used to think of him a lot. I dropped out of the school I was at that time. I went to a new one, couple weeks later, but I didn't tell them.

As I got older, the kids got meaner. They already had their own friends. Sometimes they would take a dislike to me from the start, and call me Carrot or Wagon Girl, and make fun of my clothes because they weren't in the local fashion, or the way I talked. But sometimes I would still make a friend. One time, this girl called Mary left her old friend and became my friend, and the mean kids picked on her too, but she didn't care. Except then I had to leave.

Sometimes we double back, and I end up at a school I went to before. I went back to Mary's school a year and a half later. She still had no other friends. She didn't want to know me any more.

After Mary I stopped trying too hard to make friends.

The other thing that's hard about moving school all the time is that everyone is doing a different topic. I want to be an engineer, so I need to graduate from high school one day, so I cain't just skip school or not do the homework. But sometimes I would go to a new school and they would be doing exactly the same as my last school, except I already did it, so I wouldn't really bother with the homework. Or I'd come to a school and be real behind. I learned to carry a school bag so I could study in recess. It kept me from havin' to talk to people, and I could keep up.

I got to admit, I took books. If I finished readin' it before we moved, I would sneak it back again. If we moved, I would finish it when we coupled our Wagon House to the train, and then I would sneak it into the library at the next school. I didn't really think of it as stealin', just sort of redistributin'.

My folks didn't notice yet. Or if they did, they didn't ask. They don't notice a lot of things. My Mom is usually asleep when I get home, because she gets a bad headache often.

I read a lot of books. I know what people with friends do at school. I know the sort of things they say. It's easier to tell them things are fine.

That way, we get to stay on the railroad, and I get to be an engineer.


"Hey. Hey. Carrot."

Someone throws something at Bonnie's head as she keeps her nose in the book. She counts to ten in her head.

Everything at this school has been wrong, ever since she walked in. Those girls who laughed at her clothes, and called her Carrot (so original - not), and cut a chunk off her hair when they sat behind her, and shoved her over in the corridor, and pulled on her satchel... and she'd ignored them, right up until they stamped on her book.

That was when one of the girls had found herself stuck to her chair with industrial adhesive.

Bonnie had found herself in a strange other world, with children not from the school. She'd told them about the glue. One girl told her that made her a mean girl. She'd been thinking about this since, wondering if maybe she is a mean girl, and maybe that's why everyone hates her. And whether it's like Mom says about the man who goes to one town and says everyone is horrible and passes the other man who says the other town is nice and then they swap towns and have the exact same experience because really the first man is just a jerk and...

This time, it's a slate that flies at her shoulder. And it hurts.

She stands up suddenly, and turns around to face a boy quite a lot taller than her.

"The hell you think yer playin' at, huh?" she asks, loudly.

The boys laugh. Bonnie continues.

"You think it's funny? How 'bout I march yer ass down to the Principal's office?"

"You're gonna rat on me?" the boy asks.

"No. I'm gonna nail you to the door." Bonnie says. "And then I'm gonna unscrew every screw in yer desk and hide it. And then I'm gonna give you a clever nasty nickname and get everyone to call you it, and after I'm long gone, you'll still have that nickname. Because turns out, I'm a mean girl."

The boys aren't laughing any more. Bonnie lowers her voice.

"Joke." she says. "Quit throwin' things at me."