Chapter 6

Meg narrates a dragging day in the orphanage office, where she arranges desk supplies, counts down to seeing Ava, and recalls Dorella’s abuse at the wash pump. She outlines Miss Garnett’s fear of the inspector and the system that labels the girls as below average, noting how menstruation often stops there and how adoptions favor babies.

Sorting mail, Meg hopes for a hidden note from Ava but finds only adoption inquiries, including a grimly comic request for an older girl to cook. She prepares View Day cards for August 7, then, starved for reading, spies the coat closet ajar and steals a Life magazine and a letter addressed to Dorella.

When toddlers bolt into the hall, Miss Frances and Miss Pripp confront Meg near the closet. Meg deflects blame by claiming she was corralling the children and hides the contraband. Alone, she devours the magazine’s worlds—Tarzan, the World’s Fair, California—briefly recovering a sense of possibility.

Miss Garnett catches Meg and takes her to the belt closet, administering a prolonged whipping while hissing insults, aiming to break Meg’s hope. Meg clings to the images of California and the woman holding a little girl’s hand to endure the punishment.

That night, Meg, still in pain, returns Dorella’s stolen letter on the condition it be read aloud. Dorella reads her mother’s apology and promises, a meager comfort that exposes the girls’ hunger for connection and the orphanage’s relentless cruelty as View Day nears.