CHAPTER 1
THE WEIGHT OF WHISPERS
The playground of Oak Creek Elementary smelled like red clay and rubber and the particular sourness of children who had been running since the bell rang. It was the smell of recess — of freedom, technically, though freedom was not a word Dorinda Matlaboom had ever been able to attach to the twenty minutes between the classroom and the return to it.
She was seven years old, and she had already learned to count.
One crack. Two cracks. Three.
. . .
