Two months. Two months had I been at the temporary home. Oh, those months... Those months of being the storyteller, top marks in Arithmetic and spelling, broken quils and looking out of the window with a sigh at big, tall buildings and still hoping that tomorrow I'd wake up on my bed, with Father, at home. But only for two months. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth!" I heard Mary shouting my name. She was only six. Her parents were in France for business for a few weeks and she'd love to receive mail from them, so she always got up early to look at the post. "It's for you, Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" I ran out of the room almost before I was out of bed, so I tripped, but soon got back up. "Father! He must be back!" I breathed. "Oh, Father..." Mary handed me the note and soon many people were gathered around me. "What's the address?" asked Susan. "There isn't one. If he's home, we don't really have an address." "Read it, then," Isabelle insisted. "Read it!" "My dearest Beth," I began. "Morning, Mary! I'm sorry I'm... Not yet back, but I promise I'm still with you, in a metaphorical sense. I heard you can read and write now, and I'm ever so proud. I...can't tell you where I am. I do bring good news, however..." "What is it?" asked Mary. "Go on and why does he know my name?" "Um... It says I've been accepted to some Grammar School...and he just says Morning Mary, no idea why." "Thompson's?" William said. "But... How'd you get into there? Only rich people get in there." "We're not rich..." Impossible. It was impossible. However, despite the impossibility, I found myself dressed in a smart black dress with a smart black suitcase in a smart black carriage, on the way to this Thompson's Grammar School For Girls. The building was huge, lots of shiny glass windows and stuff. Looked like a castle, almost. It had a door like a church's, a wooden, arch-like door. It was much more like the stories this time. Everyone stared. Muttered. Turned out everyone knew I shouldn't have been there. I found myself shy. Too anxious to talk to these posh millionaires. They didn't care about missing Fathers, more about rich ones. Money. Jewelry. You name it. I found myself going from most popular, to least. Still just as famous throughout the school, though... People would ignore me. I wasn't exactly bullied, but nobody really wanted to go near me, or if they did, it was to whisper "Fraud", "Cheater" or something else perfectly horrible (oh, look! I even spoke like them just then!) or to nudge me. I hid my talents for Arithmetic and Spelling, and drawing, and made sure to stay average level in class to avoid accusations, names such as "show-off" or claims that I was "not clever enough to be here". Everything was so different. I still had no idea where Father was, what he was doing, in fact, if anything, things were even more impossibile.
