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  She picked up the chalk and wrote her name on the board, underneath that night's homework assignment. Then she erased it, so that you couldn't see the letters. Just a ghost that let you know something had been there.

  --

  Mama was mad, all right, but not at Ruth. "Social difficulties, my foot," she muttered under her breath, as they boarded the bus together. "More like they're the ones who are having trouble adjusting. Can't deal with the climate, what does that even mean?"

  Ruth was afraid to speak. If she did, then she would have to tell Mama about Maia and what she'd said, and she didn't want to do that. But the bus stopped at the spot where they should have gotten off to go to Ms. Mina's, and they stayed on. It wasn't following the uptown route to Harlem. Ruth had no idea where they were headed.

  Maybe Mama was so angry she had forgotten to get off the bus.

  "Mama," Ruth asked in a small voice. "Where we going?"

  In response, Mama pushed the cord for the next stop and took Ruth's hand. They got off the bus, belched into the frenetic hurry of Forty-second Street. Ruth huddled closer to Mama, avoiding tourists who were pointing at the lighted billboards and the girls in too little clothes and too much makeup who checked their reflections in the windows of fancy restaurants.

  "Here we go," Mama announced, walking into a small store that sold gloves and barrettes and scarves and any other accessory you could think of. Maybe Ms. Mina had been sending Mama on an errand when she got diverted to the school. Ruth trailed her fingers along a display of hanging earrings that were made of feathers and tiny woven dream catchers.

  "Ruth," Mama called, and she turned around. "Is this what you were talking about?"

  She was pointing to a case of glittering rhinestone headbands, each brighter than the next. On their blue velvet field, they looked like constellations.

  Sirius, Ruth thought.

  "Pick one," Mama said.

  Ruth blinked, shocked. Of all the outcomes she could have imagined, being rewarded for getting sent to the program director's office was not one of them. "Mama," she said, "I don't need it..."

  "Oh yes you do," she said. She pointed to one that looked like a string of daisies, made of crystals. "That's pretty."

  Ruth nodded.

  "You know how I wear a uniform? It's so Ms. Mina and Mr. Sam and everyone else in that building recognizes who I am. This is your uniform." Her mama picked up the daisy band and settled it gently on Ruth's head, like she was being crowned. "If this is what it takes to make them see you," she said, "then so be it."

  --

  Although Ruth knew she wasn't allowed out on the fire escape because Mama thought it was unsafe, she waited until everyone was asleep and then crawled outside. She lay on her back, careful not to get too close to the edge, and stared up at the stars. It was easy to find Sirius, as Ms. Thomas had said. It was by far the brightest, shining even through the smog and the clouds and the ambient light of the city.

  Ruth reached up and touched her rhinestone headband. She thought about the bright beam that had left Sirius eight and a half years ago. It was reaching her fire escape and Christina's home and Dalton all at once. No matter where you stood, you'd be underneath the same light.

  BY JODI PICOULT

  Small Great Things Leaving Time The Storyteller Lone Wolf

  Sing You Home House Rules

  Handle with Care Change of Heart Nineteen Minutes The Tenth Circle Vanishing Acts My Sister's Keeper Second Glance Perfect Match Salem Falls

  Plain Truth

  Keeping Faith The Pact

  Mercy

  Picture Perfect Harvesting the Heart Songs of the Humpback Whale

  Short Stories

  Where There's Smoke Larger Than Life Shine

  For Young Adults

  Off the Page Between the Lines

  And for the Stage

  Over the Moon: An Original Musical for Teens

  About the Author

  JODI PICOULT is the author of twenty-three novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Leaving Time, The Storyteller, Lone Wolf, Between the Lines, Sing You Home, House Rules, Handle with Care, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, and My Sister's Keeper. She lives with her husband and three children.

  JodiPicoult.com

  Facebook.com/ JodiPicoult

  Twitter: @jodipicoult

  Instagram: @jodipicoult

  If you enjoyed meeting Ruth in Shine...you won't want to miss her appearance in Jodi Picoult's new novel

  Small Great Things

  Coming in hardcover and ebook October 2016

  Ruth

  The miracle happened on West Seventy-fourth Street, in the home where Mama worked. It was a big brownstone encircled by a wrought-iron fence, and overlooking either side of the ornate door were gargoyles, their granite faces carved from my nightmares. They terrified me, so I didn't mind the fact that we always entered through the less-impressive side door, whose keys Mama kept on a ribbon in her purse.

  Mama had been working for Sam Hallowell and his family since before my sister and I were born. You may not have recognized his name, but you would have known him the minute he said hello. He had been the unmistakable voice in the mid-1960s who announced before every show: The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC! In 1976, when the miracle happened, he was the network's head of programming. The doorbell beneath those gargoyles was the famously pitched three-note chime everyone associates with NBC. Sometimes, when I came to work with my mother, I'd sneak outside and push the button and hum along.

  The reason we were with Mama that day was because it was a snow day. School was canceled, but we were too little to stay alone in our apartment while Mama went to work--which she did, through snow and sleet and probably also earthquakes and Armageddon. She muttered, stuffing us into our snowsuits and boots, that it didn't matter if she had to cross a blizzard to do it, but God forbid Ms. Mina had to spread the peanut butter on her own sandwich bread. In fact the only time I remember Mama taking time off work was twenty-five years later, when she had a double hip replacement, generously paid for by the Hallowells. She stayed home for a week, and even after that, when it didn't quite heal right and she insisted on returning to work, Mina found her tasks to do that kept her off her feet. But when I was little, during school vacations and bouts of fever and snow days like this one, Mama would take us with her on the B train downtown.

  Mr. Hallowell was away in California that week, which happened often, and which meant that Ms. Mina and Christina needed Mama even more. So did Rachel and I, but we were better at taking care of ourselves, I suppose, than Ms. Mina was.

  When we finally emerged at Seventy-second Street, the world was white. It was not just that Central Park was caught in a snow globe. The faces of the men and women shuddering through the storm to get to work looked nothing like mine, or like my cousins' or neighbors'.

  I had not been into any Manhattan homes except for the Hallowells', so I didn't know how extraordinary it was for one family to live, alone, in this huge building. But I remember thinking it made no sense that Rachel and I had to put our snowsuits and boots into the tiny, cramped closet in the kitchen, when there were plenty of empty hooks and open spaces in the main entry, where Christina's and Ms. Mina's coats were hanging. Mama tucked away her coat, too, and her lucky scarf--the soft one that smelled like her, and that Rachel and I fought to wear around our house because it felt like petting a guinea pig or a bunny under your fingers. I waited for Mama to move through the dark rooms like Tinker Bell, alighting on a switch or a handle or a knob so that the sleeping beast of a house was gradually brought to life.

  "You two be quiet," Mama told us, "and I'll make you some of Ms. Mina's hot chocolate."

  It was imported from Paris, and it tasted like heaven. So as Mama tied on her white apron, I took a piece of paper from a kitchen drawer and a packet of crayons I'd brought from home and silently started to sketch. I made a house as big as this one. I put a family inside: me, Mama,