W hen Mrs. Schwartz comes in the girls all look at Aliza. Rivky hasn’t been privy to the latest plan but she assumes there will be a signal and then total chaos. She doesn’t know how much time she has to do something. She’s not even yet sure she wants to do something.
Rivky folds and unfolds the pleats of her navy skirt her palms sweaty her body tense. She thinks about sitting alone at lunch for the foreseeable future about the girls possibly targeting her if Aliza instructs them to do so. They’re all scared of Aliza she reminds herself. Isn’t that sad? But they’re scared of her for a reason another voice whispers. And you should be too.
Rivky looks around the room and then at Penina sitting stiffly next to her. Maybe I should just stay quiet Rivky thinks like all the other girls. She doesn’t need to be Aliza’s friend but she definitely doesn’t want to be her enemy.
She imagines life resuming a kind of normalcy Aliza forgiving her the other girls treating her well enough so long as that’s what Aliza wants them to do. But then she thinks about her mother’s words the other night the way Rivky hated to imagine her mother seeing the article she was writing. The way she’d hate to have her mother see her sitting in this room right now knowing the right thing to do but too afraid to do it.
