Day 2079

I wake up late in the morning, stretch, yawn, roll over, and drift into a catnap, kicking free of the covers.

I love Saturdays. No waking up at seven to make Dad breakfast, no two-mile walk to school, no stupid classes and stupid teachers and stupid a******s bothering me, no homework, and best of all, no Dad: even if he stays home on Saturday, which he usually doesn’t, he doesn’t give a damn where I go or what I do, because on Saturday I have to go to the store, and if he tries to stop me he’ll have to go himself. And I don’t even have to clean the house. The whole day is almost totally free.

After a few minutes, though, I hear a weird series of taps on my window that persist even when I groan and cover my head with a pillow. “Whaaat?” I grumble, even though I know she can’t hear me.

As if in reply, another shower of tiny rocks or acorns or something clatters against my window. D****t…. I roll out of bed, falling onto my feet rather than placing them on the carpet, and stand up, stifling a huge yawn and blinking around my room. After a moment, I remember two things at the same time: first, that someone’s outside my window, and second, that I need a shirt.

Oh. I’m wearing one. But it’s short-sleeved. Not gonna work. I dig around in my dresser for a new one, shivering for a moment as the cool air washes over my bare chest.

When I’m decent, I cross over to the window, pulling the curtain back seconds after another volley of tiny objects. I blink at the backyard and Kylie comes into focus, straightening from bending to pick up more acorns or whatever and waving at me. I wave back at her, returning her smile, and fumble with the window latch until I can open it.

It’s warmer outside than it is inside; the sun is strong enough for me to feel right away on my hands. “Kylie,” I call down to her as she bounces closer to the side of the house, “I thought I told you to stop doing that?”

“Well, you were gonna sleep forever and ever,” she complains. “I had to wake you up somehow!”

“At least you didn’t break in,” I mutter, half to myself. It’s the kind of thing she’d do�"if I hadn’t convinced her that it was very rude a long time ago. “I’m coming down,” I add, a little louder. “But you could’ve just let me sleep.”

“You can still sleep,” she offers, beaming up at me. “I just wanna let you know I’m here first!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, and close the window. Better this than barging in�"she’d come straight into my bedroom, and you know something’s messed up when you have to wear proper pajamas so that your friend won’t see you in your boxers when she invites herself against your will into your bedroom (when your dad’s not home). So disturbing…on so many levels.

I find some pants and pull them on, running my fingers through my hair so it will sort of behave. Now that I’m a bit more awake, I notice that this shirt is a tiny bit too small, and when I move my arms, the sleeves pull up and show half my wrists; that won’t work, not around Kylie, so I find one that’s too big instead (there’s no middle ground with my clothes) and head downstairs.

Kylie, in typical Kylie fashion, is already raiding my fridge. “Morning,” she says, turning for a moment to grin at me. She starts taking things out of the fridge: eggs, butter, tomatoes, leftovers.

“Morning,” I mutter back, still rubbing sticky stuff out of the corners of my eyes. “What’re you doing?”

“Making breakfast.”

“That’s great,” I yawn. “You enjoy that.”

“No, silly, it’s for both of us! Sit,” she says bossily, pointing to the counter. I sit, resting my chin on my arms and watching her bustle around.

“I keep telling you I don’t eat breakfast,” I remind her.

“Well, you should. I’ll make something tasty.”

“Scrambled eggs and dinner?” I ask, pointing to the stuff from the fridge as she starts rummaging through the pantry and the cabinets.

“Nope. Omelet.”

“Broccoli-mashed-potato omelet?”

“No. A good omelet. Silly Evan, mashed potatoes would never make a good omelet, they’re too squishy. Where’re the�"”

“Hey, get out of there,” I snap at her as she opens one of the lower cabinets. “Don’t open that.”

“Uh…okay,” she says, looking startled by my sudden change in mood. She carefully closes the door, but not before frowning at the contents. “What’s that?” she asks me.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say firmly.

But she stands her ground, giving me a look that I recognize. See, sometimes Kylie will let stuff drop, and sometimes you have to talk her down from it like she’s about to jump off a ledge, or use distractions of varying effectiveness. When we were younger, she would barely ever let something go if you asked her, but now, for certain subjects, she knows enough to give up right away.

But not this time. “Fine,” I sigh. “It’s called whiskey. It’s something Dad likes to drink.”

“Why’s it not in the fridge?”

“Well, there’s some in the freezer,” I point out. “Kylie, can’t you just�"?”

“But why’s it frozen? Does it taste better that way?”

“No, it doesn’t freeze. Would you please�"?”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s got alcohol in it, and alcohol doesn’t freeze,” I say impatiently.

The understanding look on her face makes me nervous. Half afraid that she’ll start connecting the dots, and half afraid that she’ll start asking me why I didn’t want to answer in the first place, I decide to change the subject. “What’s with the tomato?”

“Don’t you like tomato?”

“Yeah.” Tomatoes are my favorite, as she knows very well�"except for ketchup. That s**t’s just weird. “But not for breakfast.”

“It’s going in the omelet.”

“Yeah, that’s…that doesn’t sound tasty.”

“You should try it first,” she scolds me. “An; I was trying to ask you earlier where a pan is,” she added, frowning at me.

“A skillet? Look to your left�"no, your left, Kylie. Your other left. And down. They should be at the bottom.”

“Ohhh. I see it. Ooh, I like this one.”

“No, no, no, not the cast-iron one, it’s too thick. Do another one.”

“Aww, but I liked that one.”

“Yeah, but trust me, that one right there is better. Okay?”

“Fiiine. Just for you. Can I still use butter?”

“Sure. How come you didn’t know where they were?”

“’Cause it’s not my house.”

“But you know my kitchen better than I do.”

“Nuh-uh, you put stuff up, an’ clean stuff, an’ anyway I get it mixed up with my kitchen, even if yours’s bigger.”

“Oh. That’s true. Want some help?”

“Sure,” she says cheerfully. “If you don’t wanna go back to sleep.”

“I’ll help first.” I slide off the chair and come around to her side of the counter. “What should I do?”

“Cut the tomatoes!” she orders, pointing dramatically at them. 

“Okay.” I laugh at her theatrics, reaching for the proper knife in the knife-holder-thing. “D’you want them sliced, diced, or julienned?”

“Julienned!” She giggles. Kylie loves crazy cooking terms like “sauteed” and “simmered” and “caramelized”.

“Do we have onions?” Kylie asks me absently as she swirls the melting butter around the skillet.

I smile at the way she thinks she owns the kitchen. The funny part’s how accurate it is. “Yeah. I’ll get one. D’you want it chopped, caramelized, or liquidized?”

“Caramelized,” she says with another high-pitched giggle. This time I think she actually means “caramelized”. You kind of have to guess if she’s telling the truth or just picking the word that sounds more fun.

“Gotcha. Caramelized onions and julienned tomatoes.” I start chopping, careful not to cut my fingers, which are already screwed up enough as it is. My last two fingers on my left hand bend inward at a weird angle (it makes me really depressed sometimes that I can never play the piano or the guitar) and my left pinky doesn’t bend at all. “And all this is going in an omelet?”

“Yup. A really super delicious omelet.”

“Don’t they all taste the same?”

“Nooo! Silly.” She shoves me lightly on the temple; I reel back a little for dramatic effect. “I’ll show you. I was thinking one would be an egg white omelet, and the other would have two yolks.”

“That’s pretty intense. Aren’t egg whites really boring?”

“No, just kind of mild. That’ll be perfect for this one though. I want it really light and sweet and fluffy, with mushrooms. Do you have mushrooms?”

“We do, actually. How many do you want?”

“Mmm…two.”

“Okay.” I get them and start to slice, frowning at the mushrooms still in the fridge. We’re running low on them. Mushrooms are really valuable to me; Dad doesn’t like them, so I always get in trouble if I buy any. “Does your garden have any mushrooms?”

“Umm, not the eatable kind.”

“Shoot. What’s it got this year?”

“Lots of stuff! Ummm, I don’t know the English for some of it, but lots of corn�"but not corn, you know, the kind with the orange�"”

“Maize?”

“Yeah! M-…may-iz.” Her tongue stumbles over the word. I guess Cherokees didn’t invent it. “And peas, and potatoes, and lettuce, and beans, and grapes, and squash, and more corn.”

Guess what? Kylie and her mom like to garden. Totally unexpected, since they’re Native American and all. But it never seems to bother them that they’re pretty stereotypical. Maybe ‘cause they don’t know what that means.

“That’s impressive. What kind of beans?”

“Umm…well, I don’t know. The delicious kind?”

“What color will they be?”

“Brown. Or something.”

Not very helpful. “What about the lettuce? What color will it be?”

“Dark green.”

“Oh. It must be romaine lettuce.”

“Nooo, silly, that stuff’s spinach. This is lettuce.”

“No it’s not, it’s lettuce�"it’s better for you than normal lettuce though, and it’s shaped different.”

“You mean cabbage?”

“No. Way different.”

“I don’t get it. You show me sometime,” she says dismissively, waving her hand at me.

“Sure thing, Your Majesty,” I snicker.

“Heeey,” she protests. “Quit it.”

“Your wish is my command, Princess Rebecca.”

“Stop that!” she howls, poking me hard.

“I’ll do anything you want, Your Grace, as long as you don’t abandon the New World! Please?”

“Quiiiit!” she shrieks, and then we’re both laughing too hard to say any more. It’s an inside joke. You wouldn’t understand, unless maybe you looked up Pocahontas’s bio (the one that was real).  But don’t tell Kylie that John Rolfe and John Smith aren’t the same person, she hasn’t seen the sequel to Pocahontas and I told her that Smith comes back to marry her and such. We’re Disney nerds�"probably because those are the only movies I own. (We don’t even have a DVD player).

It turns out that egg-white-onion-and-tomato omelets are delicious. And so are double-yolk-chili-cheese omelets. I split them with Kylie, sharing it between us at the kitchen table, going back and forth with her about what we should do today. By the time the omelets are done, we decide to go to Kylie’s house. Really, though, the only real decision is if we’ll go to her house earlier or later, ‘cause we always go on Saturday. I love Kylie’s mom.

I tell Kylie to wait in my room while I take a shower. I only let her in my room ‘cause she’ll come in anyway, and at least this gives me a chance to hide my dirty clothes and make my bed (because you know the second I leave her alone she’s going to make herself a nest, and it’s really weird, those are my sheets). The shower is a fast shower, and I come out as soon as my hair is dry enough not to drip on my shirt.

When I come out, Kylie is, of course, curled up on my bed, buried in my pillows and snoozing. I arch my eyebrows, and she smiles at me and pats the bed beside her. “Come sit with me,” she says.

“No way,” I protest. “Get off my bed. It’s weird.”

She does so, but reluctantly. “But you’re allowed on my bed.”

“That’s even weirder. C’mon, let’s go to your house. You can show me your bats.”

“Really?” She bounces out of bed at once. “Neat! Let’s go!”

She drags me out of the house, barely allowing enough time for me to put on my shoes (she thinks shoes are silly, and I think they’re necessary; we have yet to come to an agreement). We start walking up the road toward her house. It’s a pretty nice day, actually�"I tried to bet Kylie that her mom would be outside, but she wouldn’t take it. Of course her mom is outside. I mean, come on.

There’s a lull in the conversation as we turn onto Kylie’s street; but it’s a comfortable once, so I don’t mind it. Soon, though, Kylie breaks it with a smirk and a matter-of-fact statement.

“Just so you know, I remembered,” she says proudly.

“Remembered what?” I ask her, puzzled.

“Your birthday, duh!” Like it’s so obvious.

I laugh at her awkward slang, and then at the immensely self-satisfied look on her face. “I knew you wouldn’t forget,” I assure her.

“So…what day’s it this year?”

If it’s not painfully clear by now, Kylie has no idea how to use the Roman calendar. (I don’t think she even knows how to read the numbers.) Nor can I decipher her calendar, which I think is the Cherokee one, and usually depends on moons and harvests. I’ve tried to chart her birthday on my version of the calendar (it’s right at the end of March, somewhere), but it changes by a couple of days every year�"and there’s a similar problem with my birthday. So when it gets close, we ask.

“It’s, um,” I tell her, quickly doing some math in my head, “in twenty-seven days.”

“Cool,” she tells me, beaming as she takes my hand. I return the gesture without hesitation; she doesn’t mean anything by it, she just does it because I’m usually not in the mood for hugs. “Hey, look, it’s Mama,” she adds with mock surprise, pointing at her yard�"where, of course, her mother is hanging out, tending to their garden.

“Osiyo, etsi!” Kylie calls, and her mom looks up at us and waves. Kylie runs up to her, still dragging me along by the hand, and we meet her mother at the edge of the yard, where she hugs us both, kissing both our foreheads. She doesn’t seem to care that we’re holding hands; she never does. Nor does she mind that I never know what to do with myself when she decides to kiss me. I mean. It’s just awkward. What am I supposed to do?

“Witsatologi nihi, uwetsi,” she says to me. Don’t ask me what that means; apparently it’s a traditional greeting. Then she turns to Kylie and asks a long, convoluted question that I don’t catch.

Kylie purposely answers in English: “We came to look at the garden and the bats. What’s for lunch?”

“Pasta,” her mom informs us, looking puzzled. “Garden and what?”

“Tlameha,” Kylie clarifies, and her mom nods, her expression clearing.

“Come in, come in,” she urges us, gesturing for us to follow her into the house. Kylie leads me up a flight of stairs to her wraparound porch (her house is on stilts, with a garage beneath, because it’s so close to the lake) and then through her front door. The inside of the house is small, but spacey and bright; it used to be really crappy, but Kylie and her mom (and me, whenever I could help) painted all the walls white and yellow and covered the hardwood floor with rugs (and a few of what I think are pelts, though I don’t really want to ask). And since they’re both really artistic, they painted designs on the walls too. Some look kind of like cave drawings, some are really pretty but unfathomable to me, but some are universal, especially the pictures of flowers and animals and other naturey things.

Kylie’s mom (whose name is Amayagada I think, but I can’t pronounce that, so I just call her Ms. Aya) who sits us at the table and starts bustling around, serving us lunch, is almost exactly like Kylie. The only difference is that her mom’s Cherokee accent is really strong and her English is rustier than Kylie’s; she’s also a lot more chill about stuff, matching Kylie’s hyperactivity with a quiet, gentle, but persistent energy. And she’s a lot taller and curvier than Kylie, though they both look like acrobats, and disturbingly attractive for someone who treats me like her kid. The crazy thing is that she looks like a teenager: she’s, like, twenty-nine, and she has four or five piercings in each ear, and a jewel stuck through her belly button (Kylie wants one of these, but you have to be eighteen), which you can always see because she wears weird Cherokee clothing that doesn’t leave much to the imagination above the waist.

Other than size, she and Kylie look exactly the same. They wear the same clothes (not just the same kind of clothes, but the exact same dresses and skirts, which I was amazed to find out her mom makes by hand out of God knows what) and jewelry, and have almost exactly the same face, and they even have the same hair: very, very dark brown (darker than my hair, even, which looks black), perfectly straight but with a slight curl at the tips, as thick and coarse as horsehair, and hanging down to their waists. They also have the same hobbies, talents, and interests, and they talk to each other like best friends. I’m extremely jealous, of course, and sometimes a bit uncomfortable, but if anything, their similarity is comforting; if this is how Kylie’s going to be when she’s older, I have no complaints.

Ms. Aya sets our plates in front of us, along with a basket of coarse brown bread and two glasses of milk, tapping my head (affectionately, not harshly, though I still wish she wouldn’t) and telling me, “Eat.” I do as she says without objection; she’s made ravioli of some kind (Mushroom? I never know with her. Sometimes she even tries to feed me deer) and her cooking is just as delicious as Kylie’s. She smiles at us as we devour her food, returning to the counter (which is made of grubby Formica; the kitchen could only be improved by so much) and starting to make little balls of dough from a bowl from the fridge, placing them on a pan.

“Cookies!” Kylie says happily, noticing this too. “What kind?”

“Ah�"chocolate?” Ms. Aya replies, turning a dial on the oven. I hide a smile at the dubious expression on her face, as if she expects the oven to crap out on her before the cookies are ready; it took me about a year to teach her how to use it properly, which was made more difficult by the fact that she, like Kylie, refuses to learn what numbers look like in English. She ended up covering the temperature dial with a piece of tape shaded with colored pencils from blue to red, and ignoring the timer completely.

They’re not chocolate cookies, actually�"that’s why it was phrased like a question. They’re chocolate chip, which she knows are my favorite. I let slip to Kylie a long time ago that my mom used to make cookies for me all the time; since she knew I couldn’t cook, and since I usually won’t let her make cookies at our house (long story), she gets her mom to make some every time I come over. I think she and her mom are trying to make me gain massive amounts of weight�"that would also explain the pile of food on my plate that I will have to finish, or Kylie and her mom will get upset and fret about how skinny I am. And that’s just embarrassing.

Kylie and her mom chatter in Cherokee for a bit; it’s really annoying, especially because from the little I catch during these conversations, they’re about me a lot of the time, but obviously they don’t want me to hear. I frown at my food, nervous at how serious they sound, but Kylie usually tries really hard not to make me feel left out, so I let it go.

After a minute or two, she switches back to English. “I wanna show Evan the bats,” she tells her mom. “Are they still there?”

“I think so,” she replies with an expressive shrug. “Go on, the cookies will be ready soon.”

“’Kay.” Kylie hops up and drags me out of my seat; I try to get our plates and put them away, but she won’t let me. She never does. “C’mon, we’ll get it later, you gotta see ‘em! There’s so cute! Mama, where’s the thing?”

“Ah….” Ms. Aya thinks about it for a minute, then rummages through a drawer until she finds a tiny penlight. I think I gave it to Kylie weeks and weeks ago. It’s weird how she loves little things like that, but she’ll refuse to wear jeans until it’s too cold for dresses and leggings.

Kylie drags me outside and halfway around the wraparound porch, stopping in front of Kylie’s bedroom window, which is wide open. She pulls me close to the wall, pointing at the shutters, which are bolted down and can’t move.

“In there,” she whispers.

“Oh,” I whisper back. I’ve heard about this happening before. “Is it okay to have your window open?”

“Yeah, it’s daytime, they won’t fly in. One got in last night though. I forgot to close it.”

“Can we see them from here?”

“Yeah, look.” She turns on the penlight, shining it at an angle between the shutters and pressing her face to the rough wooden wall. As she slides the light up and down, I hear a screech from the bats, so high-pitched that it sounds quiet, though it feels like a stab to my eardrums.

“Ow.”

“Yeah. Come see. Put your face right here, you can see ‘em.”

I wince as the bats screech again, hearing them flutter behind the shutter. “They won’t bite me, will they?” I whisper, hesitating.

“’Course not. They eat fruit and bugs. And they’re too sleepy.”

Not altogether reassured by this�"you can still get rabies from fruit bats�"I do as she says, closing one eye so I can see better. Kylie shines the light, and to my surprise, I see not one, not two, not even ten, but several dozen tiny little bats, hanging upside-down all in a row between the shutters. They rustle their wings slightly, protesting the light, and I realize that they’re not babies, like I thought�"their wings are four or five times longer than their tiny little bodies, which could fit in the palm of my hand, if I were so inclined. I’ve seen these bats. They look black when they fly out at dusk, but now I can see that they’re mouse-brown.

“Do you see ‘em?” Kylie whispers.

“Yeah. They’re so little!”

“’Course. You should see ‘em try to eat fruit. It’s funny.”

“Why are their wings so big then?”

“To hold ‘em up. They’re heavier than birds, so the wings gotta work different.”

One of the bats closer to me shifts and rustles its wings, opening one dark eye. I can see it glitter in the light and automatically flinch back.

“I don’t want them to bite me,” I say doubtfully.

“They won’t. Don’t worry. They’re pretty sweet usually.”

“Are they? How was that one that got in your room?”

“Confused,” says Kylie firmly. “But still nice.”

She thinks animals are exactly the same as people�"only smarter, she says, because they don’t care about silly things, they just follow their instincts. I try not to argue with her about it.

“Poor bats,” she says sympathetically, peering at them through the shutters. “Poor, poor bats. We’re sorry, we didn’t mean to wake you up. C’mon, Evan.”

She grabs my hand and tugs; before I can object, or even ask her how the bats can possibly understand her, she climbs through her window, pulling me along with her. I land clumsily on her bed, but I roll off right away, knocking off a couple of stuffed animals, and sit at her desk instead.

Kylie’s room is very bright and happy and…girly. It’s painted pale yellow, but she likes to paint on her wall when she’s bored, so the end result is a beautifully detailed landscape in bright colors, mountains and rivers and trees and even a beach, with all sorts of animals and flowers and random words (incomprehensible to me) added in over time. My favorite is a life-sized fox by her door, with silky orange-and-white fur, that sits half-hidden in the grass and licks its paw. She’s really, really good at drawing and painting�"probably because she loves it so much. You can tell just by looking at her work.

The walls make the room look pretty expansive, but really it’s very small, about the size of my bathroom. I’m not sure what the original furniture was, but somehow, over time, Kylie and her mom managed to cram a mismatched bed, desk, chair, and nightstand in here; every available surface is always cluttered with drawings or jewelry or her rocks-and-feathers collection or her assortment of about two dozen stuffed animals, which live on her purple bedspread, and each have a name and distinct personality. Her walls are cluttered too; all her clothes hang from three big nails by her door (even her jeans, by the beltloop, and her shorts, by the buttonhole), and she likes to use tacks or tape to hang up other stuff, like her favorite drawings and a Harry Potter poster that I gave her and some fancy Cherokee thing that looks sort of like a beaded belt.

Her room is overwhelming, way too messy and pink for my comfort, but I kind of like it, all the same. It’s like she’s managed to cram her entire life in here. This must be what the inside of her head looks like, too.

Kylie flops onto her bed, lies back, and reaches for a stuffed animal, a floppy-eared dog that I gave her a long time ago. “The ceiling’s boring,” she points out, frowning up at it.

I look too. Plain white. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I just said. It’s boring.”

“Well, you wouldn’t want it any other color,” I reason with her. “White ceilings make the room look brighter.”

“Do they?” she asks in surprise, lifting the dog above her head and making its ears twitch. “What do you think, Kalisetsi?” she adds, kissing the dog on the nose. (Kalisetsi means “sugar”, if you were wondering.)

“Yeah, it does,” I tell her, unable to suppress a smile as I watch her play with the dog. She’s such a kid, but it’s kind of sweet. “My room doesn’t have a white ceiling, if you’ve noticed. It’s light blue. So that’s why you think it’s so gloomy.”

“I never said that,” she murmurs, making the dog dance from side to side. “Did I, Setsi? Hmm?”

“Yes you did,” I argue, but more amused than anything. “You said that, like, last week.”

“Hmmm…maybe.” She sits upright so suddenly that it makes me flinch, smiling at me and patting the bed beside her. “Come sit by me.”

I do, though with reluctance. It doesn’t seem right, being on a girl’s bed with her, with the door closed too, but Kylie’s never cared. As soon as I sit down, she loops her arms around my shoulders and lays back, pulling me with her. I let it go, shifting so that we lay side by side and kicking off my shoes.

“I’m gonna get your bed dirty,” I warn her.

“No you won’t. You’ve just had a bath.”

“I’ll get your pillow wet.”

“I don’t care. Shut up.” She stretches like a cat, folding her arms beneath her pillow, still staring up at the ceiling. “What should we paint on it?” she asks me.

“Um…whatever you want.”

“What would you paint?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea how to paint ceilings.”

“You�"you can do it, right?”

“’Course you can,” I reassure her. “Michelangelo painted a whole fresco on a church ceiling once. He lay on his back on a ladder, just like we are, only like this close to the ceiling, and painted all the tiny details just like that. He got paint all over him, and plaster, and it took like a hundred years, but it ended up being really cool.”

“That sounds fun. We should try it.”

“Go for it. I’ll just watch, though.”

“Aww. You don’t wanna help?”

“You know I can’t paint. Especially not as well as you.”

She just shrugs at this, like it’s nothing new. “but what if I drew outlines and you filled it in?”

“I could do that, I guess.”

“Would it be fun?”

“Sure.”

“We should do it. We just gotta decide what, though.”

“Well, what would you want on your ceiling? You’d have to look at it every time you were going to bed.”

“It’s gotta be something really good, then.” She thinks this over for a moment, frowning. Then she says, “Hey Evan, wanna play a game?”

Oh boy. “What kind of game?”

“Twenty questions game.”

Wonderful. She calls it that because she used to ask me about a hundred questions in a row, and once I cut her off and asked her, “What’s the deal? Are we playing 20 Questions?” Then, of course, I had to explain. Story of my life. “Fine. Do I have to think of questions too?”

“Only if you wanna.”

“Difficulty level?”

She thinks it over. “Ummm…easy, but then maybe hard,” she admits, sounding guilty.

Easy questions are usually about American culture or English. Hard questions can be about anything from how cars work or why the moon changes shape to really personal stuff that I hate answering�"but it’s what she thinks is hard, not me.

“I guess,” I mutter, my stomach tensing. “What’re the easy ones?”

“Well, it’s just one.” In her version of the game, you don’t really need twenty questions�"there can be fifty, or there can be just one. She never really grasped the “twenty” part of it. “I was wondering what�"it’s like a picture I saw. But it’s not�"it’s like a design maybe. And I don’t know what it is. It looks like this.” She draws something in the air, several times.

It takes me a minute to get it. “Oh�"like this?” I make a heart with my hands.

“Yeah! That. What’s it mean?”

“It’s a heart,” I explain, bemused that she doesn’t know already. “Not like a real heart, but kind of�"it means love.”

“It means�"wait. It’s a heart? Is that what hearts look like?”

“Well, no. Real hearts are like this big, like if you make a fist, and they look gross. This is just a symbol. ‘Cause people think you feel with your heart like you think with your brain.”

“Oh. Why do they think that?”

“Because…I don’t know. I think when you’re sad about something, your chest hurts sometimes, so that’s why they’d think that. But you don’t feel with your heart. You use chemicals in your brain.”

“Oh. Ew.”

“Kind of. But it’s just like everything else up there, really. What did you think it was?”

“Well. Um. Cherokees think that when you love someone, your spirit touches theirs.”

I look over at her, surprised, and notice that she’s blushing. It’s hard to tell�"her cheeks go from brown to browner, that’s all. “Really?” I ask, wondering what’s making her so embarrassed.

“Yeah. Like your spirit’s reaching out, and so’s theirs, and they touch. But it’s like…like if you really love them. Like your mama, or if you get married….”

“Oh.” No wonder she looks so awkward. “Like a soul mate?”

“What’s that?”

“Oh�"it’s like the same thing. Like there’s one person in the world perfect for you, and you’ll usually find them, and it’s supposed to be like that. Like you connect. But it might not be true.”

“No�"no, I think it’s true,” she says quietly, gazing up at her ceiling. “But…I wonder how they find each other. I mean. Maybe Unequa helps…yeah, I bet she does….”

“Unequa” is the Cherokee word for God, or something similar. It translates to English as “The Great Spirit”.

“Probably,” I try to console her�"she seems to need it, for some reason. I hope I didn’t upset her�"but she doesn’t seem sad, just contemplative. Is she thinking about her parents or something? To change the subject, I add, “Hey, um…where’s your dad? Still in New York?”

“Yeah. He sent us a letter yesterday. You can see it if you want.”

“Nah. I won’t be able to read it.” Unlike Kylie and Ms. Aya, Kylie’s dad (who I think really is married to her mom, legally I mean, not just in the Cherokee way, which Kylie tells me is very different, but a lot simpler. I don’t know much about it.) “What’d it say?”

“He…he sent one of those…you know. The papers.” She means a money order. The first time Kylie got one of his letters after moving to Skyland, she showed it to me when I came over; her mom was stressing about money, and both of them were confused, because her dad said in the letter that he’d enclose money, but all they got was the piece of paper. When I told them what it was, Kylie’s mom started hugging and kissing me, then pulled out an entire box of them and asked me how they worked…. I think that’s what made her start treating me like her kid. “And a card with a picture on it. I’ll show it to you, Mama put it on the wall in the big room. He’s got a really good job now, so he can’t come visit, because if he skips days he’ll get fired. So he’s gotta stay. But he’ll be back soon, an’ then you can meet him.”

Kylie’s dad has only come to visit them twice since they moved here�"once to help them pack, and once when she was ten and I was eleven, but it was only for about twelve hours, so I didn’t get to meet him. Kylie really wants me to, though�"I think so he can adopt me like her mom has. I’m not sure about this; I certainly don’t need two fathers, but I’d want to be around when he visits, to look out for Kylie.

“I think I want a heart,” she continues, her eyes half-closing, unfocused. “I like ‘em. They mean love?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it like, me and mama, or you and your daddy? Or�"”

“Kind of,” I say quickly, frowning. Where she got the idea that me and Dad love each other, I’ll never know�"maybe she just assumed. “It can mean that. Or like, for a friend�"that’s how lots of girls use it. But usually it’s for someone you…that you like.”

“Like? But I thought it was for love, not for stuff you like.”

“No, I mean…not like that. I mean liking someone as…more than a friend. It’s like the step before loving someone.” Now I’m blushing. She’d better not make me explain sex to her too. What a nightmare.

“Wait…you mean…you’re friends? And then you fall in love?”

“I think so. I don’t really know how it works.” It’s not like I have anyone to ask about it. Mom is kind of dead, and even if she weren’t, I wouldn’t really trust her advice on romance. Not after seeing who she chose to marry.

“I gotta ask Mama about that,” Kylie murmurs to herself. “I wonder if she and Daddy were friends first?”

“Um…I don’t know.” According to Kylie, her mom and dad met when they were fifteen, were in love right away, and got married right after her mom turned sixteen. After Kylie was born, her dad (whose name is Tsalagi, I think�"or whichever word refers to the Cherokee people. Cool name) decided that he wanted to see the world; he brought Ms. Aya along with him, but then she got pregnant, so they agreed that she should stay on a reservation in Arizona (not even Kylie knows why there’s a reservation in the desert for Indians from the plains) until Kylie grew up. Then they’d both come with him.

It sounds fishy to me…but it’s none of my business. And even if it is, they’re better off without him anyway.

After a long silence, Kylie asks me, “So…I have another question….”

Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good. “Spill.”

“Um…well…what happened to your mama?”

I scowl up at the ceiling, looking away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But…you never wanna talk about it.”

“No. I don’t.” What doesn’t she get? It’s pretty goddamn simple.

“But why not?”

“Because I don’t.”

“Well, I just…wondered why, is all.”

“And I wonder why you want to know so much,” I shoot back.

Kylie hesitates, slowly sitting up and swinging her legs down to the floor, turning her back to me. She drums her heels against the floor for a minute, deep in thought. I know I’ve upset her, but really, what does she expect? She keeps asking, and I keep giving her the same answer.

“I just want to help,” she murmurs. “’Cause you’re still sad.”

“No, I’m not,” I snap.

“Yeah you are…’cause you get upset. If it didn’t bother you, you wouldn’t be upset.”

“Yeah?” I challenge. “I wouldn’t care that she’s dead?”

“No…not like you wouldn’t care…it just wouldn’t bother you so much, ‘cause you accept it.”

“Hah. Yeah. If I accept it, I’ll magically stop missing her. That’s totally realistic,” I mutter. Kylie flinches; she hates sarcasm. “That’s bullshit. I know she’s dead, it’s not like I think she’s coming back, I’m not some stupid little kid….”

“No, it’s…accepting it doesn’t mean you….” She falters, toying with a strand of her hair. “I’d miss my mama, too,” she says quietly. “But it’s…it’s been a year. Lots of years. So I thought, if you wanted to talk about it….”

“Well, I don’t,” I say firmly. “It doesn’t matter how long it’s been, okay? Or what the Cherokee thing is. I don’t care about calling her spirit back or whatever, that’s not gonna happen. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” she sighs. “I just thought I could help.”

I don’t answer. I didn’t mean to be rude to her, but if she’d just let it go….

She stands up and stretches, doing this creepy thing with her shoulder blades so that they nearly touch. She glances at me over her shoulder, giving me a small, unhappy smile. “Wanna see a trick?”

“Not while you’re wearing a skirt,” I say drily. I’ve seen her “tricks” before.

“Well, I think I could do it in shorts. Lemme see.” She hops over to her shorts and takes them down from their nail; I look away as she puts them on, since she obviously doesn’t care if she flashes me or not. Then she says, “Lemme stretch first,” and, now that it’s safe, I watch her loosen up, which is a trick in and of itself. She can actually touch her toes with her wrists. How cool is that?

“Okay, watch, watch, watch�"look�"”

And I watch, amazed, as she twists herself up like a pretzel, touching the side of her knee to her ear and grabbing her foot behind her back.

“Ew,” I say appreciatively.

“Isn’t it?” she says happily. “And I’ve been working on flips. I think I could do a twist. But I wanna try it on your trampoline.”

“Sure.” I watch her stretch a little bit more, bending in a bunch of trippy ways. She clears a space on her rug so she has plenty of room, glancing up at me occasionally, but other than that totally absorbed in what she’s doing. There’s something really amazing about watching her do stuff like this, or paint, or cook. Like listening to really good music. She makes it art, ‘cause she stretches just because she likes it, no other reason. It’s part of who she is.

I know she doesn’t mean any harm. And it’s not just curiosity either, though that’s a big part….

Oh, what the hell. “She got sick,” I mutter at the ceiling.

Kylie freezes on the floor, looking up at me from behind a curtain of hair. Like I’ll run away or clam up if she moves or says anything.

I close my eyes, sighing. I can still see it. One day I got up for school and I couldn’t find her…she was just laying in bed, and it took me forever to wake her up. She wanted me to stay with her, so I did, for a very long time. Days and days. And then, one day, she got up�"but not to get better. She put us both in Dad’s car, drove us to the hospital, and checked herself in. And she never came back home.

“I don’t know what it was. No one ever told me. She got sick one day, and had to go to the hospital. And she didn’t get better. I don’t know what happened.”

There’s a long, tense silence as Kylie slowly folds her legs and sits up straight, brushing her hair from her face. Then she says very quietly, “I’m sorry, Evan.”

I close my eyes�"I can’t look at her.

“It’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

Kylie comes to sit next to me on the bed. “What was she like?” she asks me.

I sigh. “She looked a lot like me, but, you know, a girl. She was always really happy, and singing and stuff, and she was a really good cook, and she liked to take pictures. She was like…like what your mom is to you, I guess.”

“She sounds really nice,” Kylie murmurs, reaching out to stroke my hair. I still don’t open my eyes, but I feel myself relaxing. Whatever she’s doing, it feels great.

“Yeah…she was.”

“Evan, are…are you mad at her?”

I open my eyes and stare up at her, frowning. “Mad at her?” I repeat blankly.

“Yeah…I thought, maybe you might be.”

Our eyes meet; I don’t look away from her, too absorbed in my thoughts, wondering how she knew….

“Yeah,” I finally admit. “Sometimes.”

She nods understandingly. “Yeah…I get mad at Daddy, too…it’s not the same, but….”

“No, I get it,” I console her. “That just makes it worse. ’Cause he could come back. Right?”

“Right. But he doesn’t.” She bites her lip and looks away, twisting a piece of hair around her finger. “I shouldn’t be mad, though.”

“Yeah, you should,” I assure her wholeheartedly. I’d be pissed. “It doesn’t make any sense. If he loves you and your mom, he shouldn’t ever want to leave.”

“Yeah,” she says in a tiny voice. “But getting mad makes bad energy, and all….”

I’m not sure if this is Cherokee, or something else�"she knows all about other religions, especially Asian ones, and sometimes she’ll steal something from them. That one sounded a bit like Taoism to me, but I can’t be sure.

“Who cares?” I tell her. “It’s a s****y thing to do. You have the right to be mad.”

“I guess it is kind of bad,” she mutters.

“Or really bad,” I inform her. But then I stop myself; I’m not really making her feel any better. Kylie hates being mad at people, or if they’re mad at her, and I’m only making it harder on her. I reach for her hand and squeeze it. But all I can think to say is, “I’d never do something like that. Not for anything.”

She smiles at me, and for a moment I feel my cheeks grow hot, and I wonder what she thought I meant. I meant if I ever have kids…or something like that….

“’Cause you’re nice,” she informs me, squeezing back.

I blush even harder at that. I don’t know what to say. And isn’t it a bad thing, sort of, to be sitting like this? On her bed…and her mom’s….

“I wonder what happened to the cookies?” I blurt out, for lack of anything else to say.

Kylie frowns, startled, as if she’d forgotten them. Wow�"it must have been some really intense conversation, to make her forget about sweets. What the hell. “Yeah, that’s weird,” she says vaguely, glancing at the door. Is it just me, or does she look…guilty? Maybe she’s worried about her mom walking in, too. Though her mom would probably not care at all. “They should be done by now.”

“Well, let’s go see.” I sit up and slide off her bed; Kylie lets go of my hand as she does the same, heading for the door. “Want to close your window? You’ll get cold.”

“Nah,” she says, leading me out into the hallway. Of course, what I meant was that we should leave through the window, but of course neither she nor her mom would ever think about that, or care. Jeez. “It’s not that cold yet.”

How is she not cold? I think it’s freezing. Weird.

The cookies have to be done�"they smell like they are. And they are�"when we walk into the kitchen, I see a whole plate of them sitting on the open windowsill, just like in old movies or something. Kylie’s mom is humming to herself as she chops vegetables, presumably for dinner, while checking on another batch in the oven.

“They’re ready if you would like some,” she tells us with a huge smile. Totally clueless. Does she know that we’re not doing anything bad? What if we were?

“Sweet,” says Kylie, making me snicker at her.

We grab the plate and two glasses of milk and sit at the table, demolishing her mom’s handiwork in about five minutes. Man, these cookies…I think Mom’s were better, but these still make other cookies taste like cardboard and old chewing gum. And they’re still warm. Heaven.

The other batch comes out just as we’re finishing the first, and we burn our tongues trying to eat them. And then, when we can’t force down another bite, Kylie drags me outside to look at her garden. Which is pretty impressive�"some of the stuff looks like it’s almost ready to eat, too. And no sign of bug damage or wilting or anything. Kylie and her mom take this stuff really seriously.

We come back for more cookies, then head off to the grocery store, which is more of a glorified 7-Eleven. Kylie loves to go to the grocery store; since she does all the cooking, I let her make a list, which is usually a bunch of tiny pictures of what she wants that I label in English (and in alphabetical order, sorted by section) for my own sanity. But despite the list, she’ll run around the store asking me if we can buy this or that, and of course I can’t without a really good reason, ‘cause I have to give Dad the receipt. Sometimes her mom will give her some money to blow, or I’ll break into my own stash and get us ice cream or something. But you know how you’re not supposed to go shopping when you’re hungry? Kylie acts like that, every single time, even when she’s stuffed full of cookies.

Since I go every week, there’s not a lot of stuff to carry, which is one reason why I do it so often. Me and Dad don’t eat much, so between me and Kylie it’s no problem at all to walk a mile and a half back to my house. Dad’s still not home, or maybe he just left again; either way, he’s not my problem until dinnertime, so me and Kylie head to the lake.

Lake Tahoe is…pretty, I guess. You can only see tiny pieces of the whole thing because of all the trees around it, so it just looks as green and squishy and dimly lit as the rest of Skyland. It’s pretty, though, especially when the sun’s out and the water’s still.

I think it’s too cold to swim, but Kylie slides down the bank right away and wades in, holding her skirt up so it doesn’t get wet. Neither she nor her mother could ever grasp the concept of a swimsuit, especially since Kylie’s never seen me wear one (I never go outside without long pants and sleeves), but since I’ve told Kylie again and again that she’ll get in trouble if she tries to swim naked (and it’s really appalling how much convincing it took), she just imitates me and goes in fully clothed.

“Come in with me!” she calls over her shoulder, seeing me sit on the ground at the edge of the water. But I shake my head, refusing persistently, even when she wades back over to me and offers her hand. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I promise,” she urges me.

“I don’t want to,” I mutter, folding my arms so she’ll have a harder time pulling me in. She’s tried it before, and it never worked out well for her. That was the first, and last, time that I ever swam with her. “What if I get bit by a catfish?”

“Well, what if you do?” she tries to reason with me, shrugging.

“It’ll get infected,” I snap back, resting my arms on my knees. “And then they’ll have to cut my leg off.”

“No, they won’t. You won’t get bit. Catfish are nice.”

“Yes I will, you get bit all the time, don’t you?”

“By perch. It doesn’t hurt. They just tickle.”

“What about the biggest perch, the one that eats all the other ones? That would hurt.”

She sighs, resting her hands on her hips. “Are you scared of the water or the fish?” she demands.

“Neither,” I protest. But I can tell that she knows that means both.

“It’s not going to hurt you,” she says soothingly. “It’s just water. Like a shower.”

“It is not!”

“Well, like a bath then.”

I don’t do baths either, not anymore. But instead of revealing just how deeply my cowardice runs, I argue, “The water’s clean in a bath, and you can see the bottom, and it’s not deep, and there aren’t any fish. And you know I can’t swim.”

“I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“You might. If I drown you can’t lift me, I’m too heavy for you, and you don’t know CPR.”

She opens her mouth to ask me what that is, but then realizes that that’s exactly the point; so then, to my amusement, she crosses her arms, sticks out her tongue, and says huffily, “Yes I do.”

“Yeah?” I challenge. “What’s the ratio?”

She scowls at me, defeated. “But how are you ever gonna learn how to swim if you won’t try?” she argues.

“I don’t want to learn. And I don’t need to. When will I ever need to know, huh?”

“What if it floods? Or what if you’re on a boat and it sinks?”

“I hate boats, I’d never get on one. And if it floods I’m screwed anyway, you can’t swim in that….”

Kylie sighs and gives up, climbing onto the bank to sit next to me. “Are you really that scared?” she asks me, but not disapprovingly�"she just sounds curious.

I look away from her, frowning at the carpet of dead pine needles on the grass. “No,” I mutter halfheartedly.

She brushes the lie aside with a wave of her hand. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’re you scared?”

“Because�"jeez, Kylie. Because I could drown.”

“’Kay…. What else?”

“Huh?”

“What else’re you scared of?”

I glance at her, suspicious, but her face is totally open, expectant, and I know her well enough to see that she’s got the best of intentions for…whatever she’s up to. She’s got some kind of idea.

“I don’t know,” I mumble. “Lots of stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like….” I hesitate, then give up, burying my head in my arms. “Forget it.”

“No, it’s okay�"look, if you want, I’ll tell you what I’m scared of.”

“But you’re not scared of anything,” I protest, but I’m not so sure.

“Sure I am,” she tells me solemnly, reaching for my hand. “Like dogs.”

“No you’re not! You love dogs!”

“Nuh-uh, only if they’re nice. They’re scary when they’re mean.”

“But everyone’s scared of dogs when they freakin’ attack you….”

“Not really brave people. They don’t get scared, they know what to do. You’d know what to do, right?”

“Uh…no. I’m scared of dogs too. Kylie�"”

“Really? You are?”

“I�"” I’m not sure what to say. Does she really think I’d know what to do if a dog came after me? “Yeah,” I mutter. “I mean…dogs can like, rip out your throat if they want to. That freaks me out.”

“And…what else?” she wants to know.

“Well…um, cars.”

“Cars?” she repeats, her eyes wide. “Me too!”

“Yeah�"I knew that.”

“But I didn’t know they scared you. Why?”

“Same reasons they freak you out. And ‘cause they could hit you. And�"” But I stop myself with a shudder. She wouldn’t understand. She’s never even been in a car before. “They’re just�"ugh,” I finish lamely.

“Yeah,” Kylie agrees with utmost seriousness. “Is it my turn?”

“No, it’s mine, I guess,” I mumble, mulling it over. “Kylie, I’m…this isn’t gonna work. I’m scared of a lot of things.”

“Well�"what if you just spit ‘em out? All at once?”

“No…’cause I can’t remember ‘em all….”

“Then they can’t be that scary….”

“Yeah…yeah they are. It’s…forget it.”

“But…maybe….” She bites her lips, deep in thought. Then she asks me, “D’you think…maybe they’re like…the same thing? ‘Cause I know mine are.”

“They’re�"what? All the same?”

“Yeah,” she says very quietly. She glances up, meeting my questioning look, then looks away and confesses, “Everything I’m scared of is just stuff that’ll hurt. So I guess…I’m probably just scared of getting hurt, right?”

“Um�"I think so,” I reply, surprised. I never thought of it like that before.

“Well, maybe it’s like that for you, too,” she ventures, twisting her fingers together in her lap. “Don’t you think?”

“I dunno….” I lay back on the grass with a sigh, folding my arms over my face, thinking it over. What am I scared of? Dad…and cars…and high places, and water, and darkness, and bright lights, and small spaces, and dead people….

Dead people. Dying. Maybe…well, I’m not sure. What I’m most scared of isn’t getting hurt, I know that�"I can handle pain. But it’s that�"that anticipation of getting hurt�"waiting for it, expecting it�"that’s when I’m most afraid. But I never know what I’m afraid of, exactly. If I get hurt, it won’t be that bad, but….

But I could die. And that is…terrifying. I shiver at the thought of being locked in a box, buried underground, and having no say in it at all…being unable to defend myself….

Kylie, perhaps in response to something showing on my face, reaches for my hand again. “It’s okay,” she promises me, even though she can’t know what I’m thinking about.

I don’t really want to tell her what I’m thinking about. “Yeah,” I mutter. “I’m not worried about getting hurt,” I add, sensing her concern. “That’s not what scares me.”

“That’s really brave,” she says, sincerely awed.

“No, it’s not,” I say mildly, staring up at the trees. “Just practical. Getting hurt’s easy to handle if you know what to do…’cause you’ll get better….”

“Ohh,” she says, catching on. “But…if you don’t….”

I sigh, closing my eyes. “Yeah,” I mutter. “That’s what scares me. I don’t know if�"”

“W-…wait,” Kylie says hastily, her voice shaking as she reaches impulsively for me, resting her head on my shoulder, her arms circling my head. I stiffen, surprised, and have to fight back the impulse to shove her off. “D-d-don’t�"it’s not�"don’t talk about things like…it’s bad,” she finishes lamely, but she sounds terrified.

I ease myself up, taking her with me, and give her an awkward hug. “Sorry,” I mumble. “I didn’t mean to…I mean, I forgot.”

In Cherokee culture, death is considered perfectly natural, but one of their superstitions warns them against talking about it: if you talk about someone who’s dead, there’s a chance that their spirit won’t find rest and will roam the earth, poisoning the crops and making people sick�"or at least, that’s my interpretation of what her mom told me. Kylie herself doesn’t like to talk about death at all, which doesn’t make much sense to me: she doesn’t know anyone who’s died.

“Sorry,” I say again, worried that I really upset her. There’s so little that bothers her that I think I take it for granted that I can say whatever I want around her. I didn’t bring it up in the first place, but even so….

“’S okay,” she says in a tiny voice, sounding a lot younger than usual, which is saying something…to be honest, sometimes I forget that she’s my age, but now….

…this is awkward. I haven’t hugged her this close for awhile, and…she’s, um…grown…. Yikes. Sometimes I forget she’s a girl. Not so much now. And it’s not like I wish she weren’t one…it’s just that stuff like this….

But I can’t pull away from her; it’ll hurt her feelings. So I just keep hugging her, thanking God that she can’t see how hot my face is, and wondering why she doesn’t seem to want to let go.