We’re six. Bethina has taken us all out on a picnic.
It’s late summer and I’m lying on a blanket trying to find shapes in the clouds. Beck’s head rests on my stomach. He’s so much smaller than the rest of us. I twirl his hair around my finger.
An older girl, from another house, trips over her own clumsy feet as she runs past and lands on Beck.
Beck cries out. His nose bleeds. The girl runs off but as she moves beneath the trees, a branch falls and knocks her to the ground. Her leg sticks out at a strange angle. Bethina, frantic, scoops Beck up and tells the rest of us to follow her.