Her older sister, Sophie, says, Stop, you just hate school, and that is true. Lily hates sixth grade. However, Lily hates other things, too, like parties and kissing games and boys keeping score. Guess what? Sophie says. There were parties in the old days, too.
Sophie is more pragmatic than Lily. Debra says so on the phone late at night. Lily is more anxious, Debra says. Then Lily thinks, Am I? She sits up in bed and strains to hear her mom’s voice downstairs.
“Yeah,” her mom says. “Yeah, I know. Well, she’s upset.”
She’s wrong, though. Lily is not upset. She just wants to live in a castle or a secret cottage in the woods. She is writing a novel about a girl named Ambrose who becomes a swan at night. The novel is in a journal her teacher gave her. It’s a black-and-white composition book for her feelings or whatever she wants to say.
East of the sun and west of the moon lived Princess Ambrose with her mother the Queen, her father the King, and her eleven sisters. She was a regular princess except for one thing. Every night at dusk she turned into a swan.
“How?” Sophie says, but Lily ’s teacher comments in green pen, “Lily, what a wonderful story! Tell me more about the swan.”
“Why is her name Ambrose?” Lily’s dad, Richard, asks when she’s at his house that weekend.
“It’s short for Amber Rose,” Lily explains.
He says, “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Ambrose keeps her wings under her bed and at night she slips them over her shoulders to fly across the sky and gather tiny stars. She pours the stars into the drawer of her nightstand where they sparkle secretly. She loves to look at them—but in the morning she must sit at her loom with her eleven sisters and weave nonstop. Her mother is always telling her, hurry up, work faster.
“Oh, wonderful,” Debra says. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“What are the sisters weaving?” Lily’s teacher asks in green.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 30, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 30, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
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Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
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Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.