Jewel of the East by Ann Hood Page A

objects. We both were with them.” He thought hard. “Time of day maybe?”
    “No,” Maisie said, disappointed. “Clara was in the afternoon, and Alexander was superearly in the morning. Remember, I followed him out there at dawn when he used to go and study?” The memory made her feel sad. Maisie missed listening to Alexander, and she knew that Felix missed Clara, too.
    Felix sighed. “So Clara was talking about her aunt, and Alexander was talking about his parents…”
    They looked at each other hopelessly.
    “Maybe it’s out of our control?” Felix offered.“Maybe we go back when we’re done.”
    “Done with what?” Maisie said, frustrated.
    “I don’t know. Maybe we help them somehow? In some other way?”
    Now Maisie sighed. “That’s not it. If anything, they help us. They take us in and feed us. They give us clothes.”
    “And tortoise rides,” Felix said, smiling.
    But Maisie didn’t smile back at him. “Joke all you want, but we’ll never get home if we don’t figure this out.” Her face changed, and then she added softly, “I want to count down the twelve days, too.”
    As soon as she said the words out loud, Maisie got hit with the strongest feeling of missing her father that she had ever felt. All these months since the divorce, she had thought about him and missed him like crazy. She’d spent so much time homesick for their old life in New York that she hadn’t even made one friend in Newport. But ever since Felix had explained why he thought they should go back, Maisie had started to realize that her father was becoming a fuzzy memory. Sometimes she couldn’t remember what his voice sounded like. Sometimes it took her several minutes before his face changed from blurry to sharp in her mind. Every time these thingshappened, she panicked. Her heart beat too fast, and she couldn’t catch her breath until she could bring him back to her.
    Seeing the look on his sister’s face, Felix said, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”
    She looked at him doubtfully.
    “We figured out how to time travel in the first place, right?” he reminded her. “I’m sure we can figure out how to get back.”

    Sometimes it felt like all there was to do in Shanghai was take cold baths to cool off, go to the parks and public gardens, and window-shop. As the days passed, even Wang Amah’s relenting to unbandage her feet and show them to Pearl, Maisie, and Felix had lost some of its thrill. It was hot. Blistering, relentlessly hot. And the heat made everyone cranky. Pearl began most of her sentences with “In
real
China…” To Pearl, Shanghai was not China at all.
    One day, as they walked through one of the parks, Pearl stopped suddenly.
    “What’s wrong?” Felix asked her.
    Angrily, she marched over to a sign posted on the grass.
    “No dogs or Chinamen,” Pearl read. “No dogs or Chinamen,” she repeated loudly. “Like theChinese people are no better than dogs? Like the British aren’t here because the Chinese said they could be here?”
    Her voice grew louder and louder, and her face grew red.
    “I hate it here!” Pearl shouted. “I hate Shanghai, and I want to go home!”
    Before Felix could put his arm around her shoulders and calm her down, Maisie cried, “Me too! I want to go home.”
    In an instant, the two girls fell into each other’s arms, sobbing.
    “Oh no,” Felix said helplessly.
    For some reason, that made them cry even harder.
    He glanced around as if he might find help somewhere. But the businessmen walking briskly through the park didn’t even seem to notice them. A round nanny in a white uniform pushing a fancy carriage frowned at them but didn’t pause.
    Then something in the distance caught Pearl’s eye.
    “Look!” she said, sniffling and pulling away from Maisie.
    “What?” Maisie asked.
    Pearl pointed to a statue at the end of the path.
    “It’s Kwan Yin,” she explained. “She’s the Goddess of Mercy.”
    Maisie did not look impressed.
    “She