Beggars in Spain

“I want you to come with me tonight,” Leisha said, for the tenth or twelfth time. “We both leave for college in just two days; this is the last chance. I really want you to meet Richard.”

Alice lay on her stomach across her bed. Her hair, brown and lusterless, fell around her face. She wore an expensive yellow jumpsuit, silk by A

“Why? What do you care if I meet Richard or not?”

“Because you’re my sister,” Leisha said. She knew better than to say “my twin.” Nothing got Alice angry faster.

“I don’t want to.” The next moment Alice’s face changed. “Oh, I’m sorry, Leisha — I didn’t mean to sound so snotty. But… but I don’t want to.”

“It won’t be all of them. Just Richard. And just for an hour or so. Then you can come back here and pack for Northwestern.”

“I’m not going to Northwestern.”

Leisha stared at her.

Alice said, “I’m pregnant.”

Leisha sat on the bed. Alice rolled onto her back, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and laughed. Leisha’s ears closed against the sound. “Look at you,” Alice said. “You’d think it was you who was pregnant. But you never would be, would you, Leisha? Not until it was the proper time. Not you.”

“How?” Leisha said. “We both had our caps put in…”

“I had the cap removed,” Alice said.

“You wanted to get pregnant?”

“Damn flash I did. And there’s not a thing Daddy can do about it. Except, of course, cut off all credit completely, but I don’t think he’ll do that, do you?” She laughed again. “Even to me?”

“But Alice… why? Not just to anger Daddy!”

“No,” Alice said. “Although you would think of that, wouldn’t you? Because I want something to love. Something of my own. Something that has nothing to do with this house.”

Leisha thought of herself and Alice ru

“Leisha, you’re stupid. I don’t know how anyone so smart can be so stupid. Get out of my room! Get out!”

“But Alice— a baby—”

“Get out!” Alice shrieked. “Go to Harvard! Go be successful! Just get out!”

Leisha jerked off the bed. “Gladly! You’re irrational, Alice. You don’t think ahead, you don’t plan, a baby—” But she could never sustain anger. It dribbled away, leaving her mind empty. She looked at Alice, who suddenly put out her arms. Leisha went into them.

“You’re the baby,” Alice said wonderingly. “You are. You’re so… I don’t know what. You’re a baby.”

Leisha said nothing. Alice’s arms felt warm, felt whole, felt like two children ru

Alice abruptly pushed her away. “I don’t need your help.”

Alice stood. Leisha rubbed her empty arms, fingertips scraping across opposite elbows. Alice kicked the empty, open trunk in which she was supposed to pack for Northwestern, and then abruptly smiled a smile that made Leisha look away. She braced herself for more abuse. But what Alice said, very softly, was, “Have a good time at Harvard.”

FIVE

SHE LOVED IT.

From the first sight of Massachusetts Hall, older than the United States by a half century, Leisha felt something that had been missing in Chicago: Age. Roots. Tradition. She touched the bricks of Widener Library, the glass cases in the Peabody Museum, as if they were the grail. She had never been particularly sensitive to myth or drama; the anguish of Juliet seemed to her artificial, that of Willy Loman merely wasteful. Only King Arthur, struggling to create a better social order, had interested her. But now, walking under the huge autumn trees, she suddenly caught a glimpse of a force that could span generations, fortunes left to endow learning and achievement the benefactors would never see, individual effort spa

Within a month, she had forgotten all such mega-musings.

The work load was incredible, even for her. The Sauley School had encouraged individual exploration at her own pace; Harvard knew what it wanted from her, at its pace. In the past twenty years, under the academic leadership of a man who in his youth had watched Japanese economic domination with dismay, Harvard had become the controversial leader of a return to hard-edged learning of facts, theories, applications, problem-solving, and intellectual efficiency. The school accepted one of every two hundred applicants from around the world. The daughter of England’s prime minister had flunked out her first year and been sent home.

Leisha had a single room in a new dormitory, the dorm because she had spent so many years isolated in Chicago and was hungry for people, the single so she would not disturb anyone else when she worked all night. Her second day a boy from down the hall sauntered in and perched on the edge of her desk.

“So you’re Leisha Camden.”

“Yes.”

“Sixteen years old.”

“Almost seventeen.”

“Going to outperform us all, I understand, without even trying.”

Leisha’s smile faded. The boy stared at her from under lowered downy brows. He was smiling, his eyes sharp. From Richard and Tony and the others Leisha had learned to recognize the anger that presents itself as contempt.

“Yes,” Leisha said coolly, “I am.”

“Are you sure? With your pretty little-girl hair and your mutant little-girl brain?”

“Oh, leave her alone, Ha

“Do you?” Ha

“The reason I’m going to do better than you,” she said evenly, “is because I have certain advantages you don’t. Including sleeplessness. And then after I outperform you, I’ll be glad to help you study for your tests so that you can pass, too.”

The blond, drying his ears, laughed. But Ha

“Nice going, Camden,” the blond said. “He deserved that.”

“But I meant it,” Leisha said. “I will help him study.”

The blond lowered his towel and stared. “You did, didn’t you? You meant it.”

“Yes! Why does everybody keep questioning that?”

“Well,” the boy said, “I don’t. You can help me if I get into trouble.” Suddenly he smiled. “But I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m just as good at anything as you are, Leisha Camden.”

She studied him. “You’re not one of us. Not Sleepless.”

“Don’t have to be. I know what I can do. Do, be, create, trade.”

She said, delighted, “You’re a Yagaiist!”

“Of course.” He held out his hand. “Stewart Sutter. How about a fish burger in the Yard?”

“Great,” Leisha said. They walked out together, talking excitedly. When people stared at her, she tried not to notice. She was here. At Harvard. With space ahead of her, time, to learn, and with people like Stewart Sutter who accepted and challenged her.

All the hours he was awake.

She became totally absorbed in her class work. Roger Camden drove up once, walking the campus with her, listening, smiling. He was more at home than Leisha would have expected: he knew Stewart Sutter’s father and Kate Addams’s grandfather. They talked about Harvard, business, Harvard, the Yagai Economics Institute, Harvard. “How’s Alice?” Leisha asked once, but Camden said he didn’t know; she had moved out and did not want to see him. He made her an allowance through his attorney. While he said this, his face remained serene.