Page 58 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

Aaron had always liked her stories. So did Rosemary,
but as her best friend she had to. And the Brodie twins,
whom she'd only started to babysit, could usually be
kept quiet with a tale. But she'd never had such a large,
appreciative audience before.
Walking through the woods behind the wagons, the
girls kept jostling one another for the place of honor
by Hannah's side. Hannah wondered about that most
of all. In New Rochelle, except for Rosemary and two
other friends, who had all been together since first grade,
she was not very popular. There was even one clique
of girls—Rosemary called them "the Snubs"—who never
spoke to her, though three were in her Hebrew class
and one was actually Rosemary's cousin. She remem-
bered vividly standing with Rosemary at the school's
water fountain, giggling and splashing each other. The
Snubs came over and called them babies just when Jor-
dan Mandel went by. He'd laughed at them and Hannah
had thought she'd die on the spot. Yet here, wherever
here was, she was suddenly the most popular girl on
the block. Except there wasn't any block. She realized
that she couldn't have made up that powerful memory.
She was Hannah. But these girls, who were hanging on
her every word, believed she was Chaya. And it was
great to be so popular. She wasn't going to spoil it by
trying to convince them she really was someone else.
"So let me tell you about The Wizard of Oz," she
said. She couldn't remember which was the movie and
which was the book. Shrugging her shoulders, she began
a strange mixture of the two, speeding along until the
line "Gosh, Toto, this sure doesn't look like Kansas."

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