Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 ALMOST FOUR MONTHS EARLIER FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1918 AROUND 3:30 P.M. THE NORTH END, BOSTON Carmen and her pal Tony were heading back from school, making their way through the noisy streets of their neighborhood, Boston's North End. Horse wagons clattered and squeaked, and motorcars

honked. A young newsboy shouted out the frontpage headline. "DEADLY FLU HITS BOSTON!" Usually Carmen and Tony would be talking and joking as they zigzagged their way through the packs of people that jammed the street. They would maybe stop at Ortelli's Bakery and see if they could sweet-talk Mrs. Ortelli into giving them a free creamy cannoli or crunchy biscotti. They always left empty-handed. But they kept trying, because anything was possible, right? But today Tony was in a rotten mood. He walked glumly, skinny shoulders slumped. Carmen had been trying to cheer him up, but nothing was helping. "He hates me," Tony moaned. "He" was their teacher, Mr. Lawrence. "No, he doesn't," Carmen said, for the hundredth time. Mr. Lawrence was the nicest teacher they'd ever had. Over the summer, he'd come back from

fighting in the Great War. He'd been badly hurt in a bomb attack, and couldn't go back into battle. So he came home and took a job as a teacher. He had a bad limp, but he acted like it didn't bother him. "I'm stupid," Tony continued. "No, you're not," Carmen said, rolling her eyes. How many times had she told him he just had to study harder—or maybe open a book for once? That was why Tony flunked the first big math test of the year. Carmen knew it wasn't the F that upset him; he'd had plenty of those over the years. It was Mr. Lawrence's new idea to keep Tony in at recess so they could play some math games together. Carmen knew Mr. Lawrence was trying to help Tony. Tony thought Mr. Lawrence was trying to torture him. "That test was impossible!" Tony grumbled now, as they wove around a big pile of horse manure in the street. "Well…" Carmen said.

She'd gotten 100, but she hadn't told Tony that. She'd carefully folded the test and slipped it into the pages of the book Mr. Lawrence had lent to her, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The book was about a girl named Dorothy who gets sucked into a tornado and dropped down in a strange land called Oz. Carmen couldn't wait to show the test to Papa. He'd pin her perfect test up on the wall with all the others. Then he'd pat her cheek. "This is why we came here to America," he'd say. They'd come here four years ago, from a little village in Italy. The village was a beautiful place, where Mama's and Papa's families had lived for hundreds of years. But in 1908, when Carmen was two, a powerful earthquake struck the south of Italy. Entire cities turned to dust in the quake. Minutes later, gigantic tidal waves roared across the land. More than 100,000 people were killed.

Including Mama, who was swept away when the sea rose up. Carmen had only one memory of that terrible day—dim and hazy like a dream. She was clinging to Papa's back as the sea churned all around them. "Hold on!" Papa had cried. "Hold on!" Papa's voice had risen above the roaring waves, above the screams of the people all around them. Carmen gripped The Wonderful Wizard of Oz harder as Tony kicked a rotten apple core into the gutter. Papa never talked about the earthquake. But growing up in Italy, Carmen had heard the stories from her grandmother, Nonna. And reminders of the disaster were everywhere in their village—the crumbling church, the ruined school, the graveyard where Mama was buried. Papa had wanted to stay in the village. But as the years crawled by, he realized there was no future there, especially for Carmen. The school

never reopened, and most girls didn't go to school anyway. It was harder and harder for Papa to earn money as a farmer. And that's why, when Carmen turned eight, she and Papa got onto a big ship and came here to America. They'd begged Nonna to come with them. But she'd refused. "Someone needs to stay and watch over this place, tesoro," she'd told Carmen. That's what she called Carmen. Her treasure. Carmen hated leaving Nonna. But she'd always been curious about that magical land across the Atlantic Ocean: l'America. Carmen had imagined golden streets, skyscrapers topped with rubies, wide-open spaces where she and Papa would build their new life. Life would be much easier in l'America, she was sure. Carmen smiled to herself now, remembering how shocked she was when she and Papa first arrived here, in the North End. She glanced