by Janel Kolby
I slap his back. He doesn’t move. Except for his nostrils, which open with each outtake of breath. I slip his rolled blanket from under his arm and tuck it under his neck. “Suit yourself. We’ll be back.”
Might be better anyway, so I can explain him to Dad.
I tuck my hair in my cap. Rub my sleeve across my face to clean off any dirt.
I slug against the earth. My feet plant themselves with each step, and I’ve got to pull them out again to tell them they’re not home yet.
There. There is King’s tent. And beyond.
Beyond.
I stand to full height.
Our tent is green. Hard to see. Hidden.
I walk around King’s tent. My new rock taps against my knee.
My rock garden has been waiting. There it is. Calling to me.
Crying.
A circle with its guts ripped out.
My own guts rip.
My eyes play tricks.
Can’t trust them. Can’t listen to what they tell me.
My garden path surrounds:
Nothing.
I scuffle to the garden. A cloud of dry dirt rises and blinds. Me.
“Dad? Dad!”
My voice echoes.
“Dad!”
My soldier trees tower, my Bruces and Evergreens. They look down. At me.
Me.
In the center of an empty circle.
Where our tent used to be.
22
“OPEN YOUR EYES.”
I dig my fingernails in the earth. I’m on top of it, not under it. “King.”
“Open your eyes.”
I lose my grip of the earth and look up. His face blends in with the sun. “I didn’t wish this,” I tell him. “I didn’t. How could he be gone if I didn’t wish?”
He kneels down to me in the tree shadows. “You didn’t do this. I should’ve brought you back yesterday. I never should’ve left.” I feel his hand on my back. “Don’t lie in the dirt.”
“This is where we live.”
“Not in the dirt.”
A sound comes from behind. “What’s going on? Where’s her tent?” Jessiebel. He thought we were going home. I keep my face down.
Jessiebel doesn’t say another thing.
“Get up,” King says. “Rest in my tent.”
I push myself to my knees and study the dirt—the castoff of rocks, the rot of trees, the carcasses of larvae. No glass beads anywhere.
I dent my palms in the dirt. “He wouldn’t leave without me. Not like you did.”
He covers my hands with his, and his fingers tremble.
“Maybe he didn’t want you to come back,” Jessiebel says from behind.
I turn around, and my hands leave King’s.
Jessiebel hugs his blanket. “That’s right. What if he didn’t want you living out here anymore?”
“No. We’ve always been together. We’re a pair, that’s what he says. We’re no good without the other.” I have a thought. “Maybe he’s found a new place for us. Getting our tent set up. We told him we had to leave, so maybe he got a head start.”
King avoids looking at me.
Jessiebel kicks up some soil. “He should’ve left you the tent.”
The trees above tell me. Given the choice, he would’ve.
“Maybe it was Cook,” I say.
King looks up and across the hill. He stands. It’s possible. He believes. “I’ll call Matisse.”
I jump to take his hand, but he backs up before I grab it.
“No. You two stay out of sight. In my tent.”
He takes my arm and lifts my sleeve. His finger rubs slow across the numbers, and they rise with my goose bumps. He clears his throat. Memorizes. Tugs down my sleeve. “I have some water in my tent, and another MoonPie. Eat it. You can change into one of my shirts. A big one. I’ll be back. I promise.”
He runs off before I know what to say.
Jessiebel steps toward me.
“Go eat the MoonPie,” I tell him.
“You need it more than I do.”
“He’ll be back. They both will. My dad gave me a hamster for my birthday. He wouldn’t’ve done that if he were gonna leave.”
I scan the ground for the hamster, but there isn’t anything moving.
“My hamster will be back, too,” I say.
He dusts off the back of my shirt. “Okay.”
I step away. “You don’t think he’s coming back.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. What do you think?”
“That I don’t have a home no more.”
“That tent?” he asks.
I didn’t always have a tent, but I always had a home. “No. My dad.”
Jessiebel frowns. “You’re still here.”
My hands and feet look like mine, but they might as well belong to someone else.
“You’re still here,” he repeats, “and so am I.”
He unrolls his blanket and wraps it around me. “I carry home with me.”
I squeeze the soft fabric in my hands. “This?”
“For now. It takes me to tomorrow. What takes you?”
My eyes wander up the hill where King went, and I remember how his hands trembled on top of mine. But that’s already in the past. I can’t think about the past, and tomorrow doesn’t exist yet. I don’t know what to think.
Jessiebel taps my arm. “Where’s that rock of yours?”
I lift the stocking off the ground, reach in, and pull out my new rock. Not picked by me.
“Where are you going to put it?” he asks.
I examine my rock garden—hardly a garden without the tent, but still mine. All those rocks. I’m the only one who hears their wants. I planted each of them.
“It’s already fifteen wide,” I say. I don’t want to start on sixteen.
I turn the new rock in my hand.
And throw it down the hill.
23
I THOUGHT I’D BE hollow if King came back alone, but when he steps in the tent, I’m not. He came back.
His head casts down sorry. “I talked to Matisse. She’s still looking for . . .”
“Cook,” I say.
“Yeah. She thought I . . .” He laughs. Hoarse. And pulls at the back of his neck. “She thinks . . .”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “She was worried. About you. You were supposed to stay at the hotel. She went to the hotel to find you, but you weren’t there. See? Even she wanted you to stay. I wasn’t the only one.”
“I didn’t, cuz I was worried about you. I couldn’t sit there doing nothing.”
He glances up. “I don’t know where your dad is.”
“That’s okay. He’ll be back.”
Jessiebel and King exchange looks. But it’s more than not believing me. King’s not telling me something.
“Saw more Winterfolk writing,” he says.
“You did?”
I know he said it to make me feel better, but he jabs the air with his elbows as he zips up the tent and hunches to a corner, where he drops a full plastic bag. I wish he was a storybook I could read. But he’s not. He’s the boy who brought the stories to me.
“You got groceries?” Normal words come out of my mouth. Expecting to turn everything back to normal. But they don’t. “Your T-shirt looks like a dress on me. See?” It doesn’t impress him. I don’t know why it would.
He rifles in his duffel, throwing out shirts and jeans, then rips out a fleece blanket. He leans over to hand it to me. “You can use this tonight.”
My fingers, clumsy as I take it, brush against his hand. His eyes flicker sharp on mine. Angry? The fast-dying sun shadows my face, and I’m grateful. I know I must be looking at him strange. I hide my mouth with the blanket.
He turns his head stiffly. “I’m going to unzip my sleeping bag and lay it flat. I think we’ll all fit. I have a foam pad under here, so it should be comfortable.” He pulls the zipper of his sleeper. “What’ve you guys been doing?”
I jump to the top of his bag to hold it steady while he unzips. My heart’s the last to follow, so heavier than the rest of me. “Talking.”
“Yeah?”
I fold down the corner of the sleeping bag to keep it taut. “So he understands.”
“They can’t just make you leave,” Jessiebel says.
King shakes his head. “You’re still talkin’ from inside a house. Shut your door.” He looks over at me. “You tell him anything else?”
“He knows what happened. What Cook did.”
King stares at the ground a moment, then looks over at Jessiebel. “So we’re good?”
Jessiebel’s smile is thin. “We’re good.”
I stuff his scattered jeans and shirts back into his duffel. “We haven’t had the MoonPie yet. We’ve been waiting for you.”
He looks up at us. “That so?”
“We wanted to share it with you.”
King tries a smile, but it doesn’t complete. He runs his hands rough through his hair while Jessiebel and I spread the sleeping bag smooth. “I’ll be back,” he says.
Jessiebel turns to me with a blank face while King leaves the tent. It zips in one, hard tug.
“Where’s he going?” Jessiebel asks.
A THWACK startles me. Was wooden—tree against tree. Echoing.
Jessiebel backs into a corner.
“It’s okay,” I say.
THWACK!
My body locks in one position, anticipating.
The thwacks continue.
Jessiebel scoots over to me. “What’s he doing?”
The words are tight in my mouth. “Storming. Un-upsetting himself. Though he shouldn’t take it out on the trees. He knows he shouldn’t.”
“Does he do this often?”
“No.” I reach over to Jessiebel and feel the top of his mohawk—just like a peacock’s crown. “Sometimes he can’t help it. He has a lot to be angry about—not finding my dad, sharing his tent, thinking he has to protect. He’s the closest thing in the world to me, but I can’t stop him when he’s like this. I can take care of myself, though. He’ll see. Plus, my dad will be back tomorrow and things will get better. Boys get angry like that, don’t they?”
“What? Hit things? Erupt? Leave?”
“Yes. I don’t ever do that. Not like that. Do you?”
“It’s one of the reasons I’m here.”
“Well, I stay quiet. You should try staying quiet.”
And we do. Stay quiet.
Jessiebel and I stretch across the bag, testing what it’ll be like to sleep all together.
“Do you always stay quiet?” he says.
“Yes. Well, most of the time.”
“It kind of sucks,” he says.
“Yes.”
We listen to the pounding outside get slower and weaker.
My hands on my stomach rise up and down too fast. I try to get them to rest, but they don’t. Not until the noise outside stops.
I close my eyes and hear the tent unzip. King climbs inside. Then a long, slow zip. His body lies down on the other side of me. His arm is bare against mine, jacket off from his rant. Hot and moist. His body worn.
I think of Carter’s kiss. I don’t know why, but I think of it, and how I bit him.
No, I don’t always stay quiet when I’m angry.
My arm tingles against King’s, and I move it closer.
King turns away.
“This isn’t going to work,” he says. “Jess, move to the middle.”
I flatten myself to the ground as Jessiebel flips over me. And we all lie still together. Testing again.
And I feel alone, even though the three of us are side by side. I try to keep my mind inside the tent and not wandering up after those who have left.
I want to hold King.
But I think he might know that, and that it’s something more I want—something smaller and bigger all the same—warm, wordless, and comforting. As warm as my face now for thinking. That’s why he wants to stay away from me. He can hardly look at me.
I press my arms over my chest, and the rise and fall is slower now. So slow. But I hear him breathe slow, too, and it adds to my thinking.
“I can’t sleep next to him,” Jessiebel says. “Sweet Mary, save me.”
“Then flip back over me,” I say.
I catch King’s eyes changing with his thoughts—turning inside to figure things out and then looking back out at me. His eyes settle a decision and split from me.
He rolls over to a space, his head at our feet. “Will this work?”
I press my big toe against his shoulder, and he swats it away. “If you wanna keep that toe, you’d better be careful,” he says.
Almost like normal. Almost like it used to be.
“You want the MoonPie?” I ask.
Jessiebel climbs out of the tent with his cape. King climbs out with his radio. I’m the last to climb out with the pie.
I try to put on my normal self with normal thoughts and feelings, as if nothing has changed and I don’t know anything about anyone. Maybe that will make King happy.
King turns on his radio, and hip-hop music comes through the static.
I open the pie. This one is chocolate. I try to break it in three equal pieces. Pieces are never equal, but I do my best and give myself the smallest.
“Do you see those stars?” I say before they get in their bites.
They both look up.
“See them shining on our food?” I hold mine up, and the milk chocolate illuminates. “This is star medicine. We eat this, and we’ll see better in the morning.” I pop mine in my mouth—the whole thing—and taste the sweet marshmallow, chocolate, and graham as it works its way down.
“I like that. Star medicine.” Jessiebel pulls his apart and eats one side at a time, swaying to the music. “Do you want to know what I just wished?” he says.
I choke on the MoonPie. “You made a wish? On a star?” I check the sky to see if any are falling. Mom’s star is heavier. “Was it that one?” I point. “That brightest one there?”
Jessiebel looks up. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You’ve gotta take it back. Take back your wish.”
“No,” he says. “You can’t tell someone to take back their wish. It doesn’t work that way. Once it’s out there, it’s solid.”
I open my mouth but can’t say anything. He looks over at King, who takes a small bite of his MoonPie and lets it linger. Finally tasting something.
“Why should I take it back?” Jessiebel says. “Haven’t you ever wished?”
“Yes, I have, but I’m not proud. Look how burdened she is. She’s going to get sick on account of you. She’s gonna give up, and then she won’t be able to take care of us. Just look at her.”
Jessiebel stops swaying. “What the . . . ?” His arms flap up and his cape billows behind. “If there’s any medicine at all, it’s wishing. If we don’t wish . . .”
The rocks in my garden dull, and I rush over to them. “Don’t worry, he doesn’t know what he’s saying.” How will they ever shine again if we don’t show them care? I rub my black-and-white-speckled rock.
“Do you hear this?” Jessiebel asks King. “Are you hearing what she’s saying? What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you say something to her?”
After a minute, Jessiebel walks over to me. “Don’t you want to know what I wished?”
“That’s yours, personally.”
The music gets loud to shame us for fighting.
“Come on, don’t be upset,” he says. “My wish wasn’t personal. It was for us. The three of us.”
I turn to him. No one’s ever wished for me.
He wraps his blanket around his waist and curtsies to King.
I can’t help laughing.
“Did you just laugh?” Jessiebel asks.
I shake my head.
“Actually,” he says, “you giggled.”
“I don’t giggle,” I say.
“You did. Didn’t s
he, King?”
King nudges Jessiebel’s toes off-balance, which only makes me laugh harder, and then King bursts into a laugh, too. A single laugh, but it’s something.
Jessiebel throws his cape ’round his shoulders. “Forgive me.” He bows to me and holds out his hand.
Before I can think too hard, I’m up and twirling to the music, and the stars twirl above us so I can’t tell one from another.
King bobs his head to the music, and he moves his hips left and right and right and left. I spiral, and King catches me and we spin. I hold him tight and smell how sweet he is with MoonPie and soap with no lavender.
“I wish I had my kilt,” Jessiebel says.
The song slows down now that we’re all getting along again, the music not mad at us no more. And King’s teaching me how to dance. His feet guide mine. His arms around my back. Around and around.
The trees turn to pillars; the leaves into tapestry; the dust beneath us to clouds. And I’m dancing in slippers, not the kind with red ribbons, but the glass ones with the size that fits only me. High heels. I dance on my tiptoes, and King is there for me to hold. Not some pole stuck in a V—cold and slippery—but warm and real. His head leans down to mine.
“Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” he says in my ear.
“What?”
He pauses. “I got you a toothbrush and some other things. And one for you.” He nods to Jessiebel, then points to Jessiebel’s head. “What is that?”
“My nun coif.” He whips the blanket off his head.
“Coif?” King asks.
“Thanks for the toothbrush,” Jessiebel says. “I . . . thanks.”
I put my hand on my stomach. Lumpy now that we’re no longer dancing and the pillars are back to trees. I tilt into the static of the radio.
“Are you okay?” King asks, and I know he’s not asking about my stomach, but that’s where I’ve shoved all my strange feelings. I just need to wait for the cramping and shrinking that always comes to take those feelings away.
“You’re not my dad.”
“I know I’m not,” he says. “I just . . . Are you okay?”
I nod, though the sky is spinning. “I will be. Star medicine’s always worked. She’ll work again. You’ll see. And when my dad comes home—”
“Rain . . .”
All I hear is static.