"Skip ahead to the sexy parts," Mary interrupted me.
I lost my train of thought. I glowered at her. "This book was written in 1871."
"Okay," Mary said. "Then stop reading."
I tossed the book aside, exasperated. Mary tugged on the braid beside my temple.
"Ow!" I said.
"You and your dove's feathers," Mary said.
A silvery-gray dove's feather hung knotted in my braid. Mary touched it with painted fingernails. She recognized Mom when she saw her.
"Mom loved you, you know," I said.
"Sure she did," Mary said. "She loved you more, though."
"Does it have to be a competition?" I asked sourly.
"Don't worry about it, it doesn't bother me any," Mary said. "It's just Mom subscribed to some weird Freudian bullshit. I was a lesbo, and she knew it, and she wouldn't let me in the dressing room with her whenever we went to the mall. You ever notice she made Dad bathe me?"
My stomach turned. Mary was older than me; it made sense that she remembered things I didn't. The more she remembered about Mom, though, the more I wished she wouldn't.
"People aren't perfect, Raffy," Mary said. "You have to love them the way they are."
"Some people are perfect," I muttered.
Mary snickered. "I know you're gaga for him, but Chrissy's kid's not perfect, either."
"Sky," I said. "His name's not Chrissy's Kid."
"Anyway," Mary said. "Enough about that. I wanna try and get some sleep."
"Have you?" I asked. "Gotten any sleep," I clarified.
"Two hours last night," Mary said. "Don't do drugs, Raffy. Take it from me."
"Wait," I said.
I left Mary's room. I came back with a bowl of sage leaves from the pantry. I didn't have a matchstick on me, but Mary took the cigarette lighter from her bedside table and set the sage on fire. It seared red, cooled black, and crumbled.
"Smudging and purging, huh?" Mary asked. "Haven't done it in years."
I blew on the black ashes, smoke coiling around our faces. I hated the scent of sage, but then most of the stuff that heals your body smells really bad.
"You don't need the hospital," I said. "If this was good enough for our ancestors, it's good enough for you."
Mary stuck her finger in the bowl, testing. The ashes must've been cool enough, because she scooped up a handful and rubbed 'em on her face. She breathed in the fumes. Grandmother Earth cuts off her own hair for us to use as medicine. It's bad form to deny her, and arrogance to think we know better.
"Any better?" I asked.
"My head feels clear," Mary said.
"Yeah?"
"Clearer than it's been in a long while."
I put the bowl on Mary's nighttable, in case she wanted more later. I got a towel from the bathroom, came back, and wiped the ashes from her face. I told her to get some sleep.
"Do you wanna do the Weird Dreaming thing?" Mary asked.
I pulled the quilts up over her bony legs. I wanted to sweat the fever out of her. "Right now?"
"Why not?" Mary asked. "We haven't done it in years."
She saw the sheepish look on my face. "You tried it without me, huh?"
"It didn't work," I confessed.
"No shit. Okay, get over here."
I folded up my glasses and hung them off the bedpost. I climbed onto the bed with her and felt like I was four again. Mary and I used to sneak into each other's rooms at night and stay up talking instead of sleeping. It got so bad eventually that Mom and Dad moved Mary's bedroom to the second floor. I was four again, and Mary was the biggest, safest thing on the planet, and it didn't matter that I was grounded; I had my best friend back.
"Where you wanna go?" Mary asked. She closed her eyes, her head on her pillow.
"The aquarium," I said. I put my head beside hers.
"Meet outside the walrus enclosure?" Mary asked.
"Hell yeah." I added, angry, "They got rid of the walrus."
"Those bastards."
I shut my eyes and made my arms and legs go numb. My body fell asleep, my mind still awake. The colors behind my eyes warped into a black iron fence. I leaned over it, peering at the murky gray water on the other side. Smooth, flat rocks and artificial ice decorated the grounds, a mesh net separating the enclosure from the hot sky.
Dream Mary came and stood next to me. She whistled. "They really did get rid of the walrus."
"Why were you so fixated with that thing, anyhow?" I asked.
"Because his teeth were almost as big as yours!" Mary said. She ruffled my hair. I batted her hand away.
"It's nice," Mary said. "Being here without the crowds."
"I went here with Sky last summer," I said. "We watched the pilot whale show."
Mary's teasing grin made a comeback. I inched sideways, fuming.
"It's weird how close you guys are," Mary said.
"Weird how?" I asked dully.
"I don't know how to explain it," Mary said. "It's like now that I've seen the two of you, I can't believe you weren't together before. You're so gentle with the kid, too. Crazy."
She was embarrassing me. I walked away from the walrus enclosure, looking for the eel exhibit. Mary followed me. Mary said, "Kind of makes me wish his dad wasn't the one who staked the blood claim."
It wasn't his dad, I almost said. I bit my mouth to keep silent. I felt my teeth pierce my lip and marveled over how real dreams seemed while you were in them. Maybe life was the same way. Maybe when our lives were over we looked back and wondered how we'd ever been deceived.
"What d'you think comes after life?" I asked Mary.
Mary made pretend puking sounds. I got ready to yell at her. But then she said, "We go back to the planet, like all Plains People do."
I had the feeling we really came from the Sky.
"Seriously, Raffy," Mary said. "They put us in the ground and we decompose. We break down into water and nitrogen and fertilize the dirt."
"That's gross," I said.
"No, it's not," Mary said. "Because without water and nitrogen how do you expect the soil to grow? Face it, kid. We are the life that feeds the next generation. They eat us, and then they die, and then they feed the next generation, too. As long as this planet is here, we'll be here, too."
We came up on the tent where the pilot whales performed their daily shows. We went inside; but the water tanks were empty. I sat on the white bleachers, Mary still standing. I thought about the Sacred Hoop, an ancient name for all of reality. Maybe it made sense that our ancestors saw circles everywhere they looked.
"Watch," Mary cackled. She nodded at the chlorine water. It rose and bubbled like a monster lay underneath.
"Stop it," I said, creeped out.
"What I wish," Mary said, "is that I understood why we bother being born at all if we only wind up in the dirt again. Seems like we should've just stayed inside the planet for good. Be happier that way."
"We used to live that way," I reminded Mary. "It was Coyote who tricked us into leaving the heart of the planet. He made himself look like Wolf and he told us we'd be happier on the surface."
"What a jackass."
"Yeah, but it's okay, 'cause we go back in the end." That was what death was for.
"Wowie zowie," Mary remarked.
"Don't say that ever again."
The Statue of Liberty rose out of the pilot whale tank. I gave my sister a weird look.
"My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of Mary," she sang.
"You're so full of yourself," I groused.
"So you think we should just off ourselves?" Mary quipped. "If we were happier being one with the planet, and that's basically what we go back to in the end, it makes you wonder why we bother with the crap in between."
What I really wondered was whether the questions Mary kept voicing were my own questions. This was a dream, after all. There was a reason Mary and I never talked about the conversations we'd had in our dreams once we woke up. Talking about 'em would've shatt
ered the illusion that they were real.
"I mean, you know?" Mary went on. "Hell," she said. "Our people are nuts. Probably there isn't any truth to their teachings. Probably we only exist by accident. Everything's an accident."
"Do you really believe that?" I asked.
"That we're an accident?" Mary said.
"How can you believe that?" I asked. "You and I have totally different minds. They shouldn't fit together, but they belong together. We belong together, and we wound up together. That's not an accident, Mary. That's magic."
Mary shrugged. "It's humans' job to give meaning to things that don't have any meaning."
"You really think there isn't a plan behind the world?" I asked.
"I don't know anything anymore," Mary said. She finally sat beside me. "I'm nineteen. I'm too old."
"You're a baby."
"An old baby."
"Listen," I said. "Remember staying at Grandma Gives Light's house in Idaho? Remember when it snowed?" I said, "Haven't you ever bothered looking at a snowflake?"
Mary shook her head slowly.
"You'd understand if you had," I said.
"Boo," Mary said. "Like that helps me now."
A glassy blue trinket glittered underneath the bleachers. I reached down and picked it up. Shaped like a pilot whale, it hung on the end of a willow string. I tied it around my wrist, entertained.
"Let's meet again someday," Mary said.
I didn't get to ask her what she meant. I woke up.
Mary's bedroom was swathed in darkness when I opened my eyes. I raised a lazy arm, reaching for Sky's lights on the ceiling. I tugged them like a drawstring. Gold and green and robin's egg blue splashed the walls in clarity. The clarity sharpened when I scooped my glasses off the bedpost, tucking them over my ears. Mary slept with her arm across her forehead, her hair in her mouth. I realized, maybe for the first time, that we both had dimples. I'd always thought of them as Mom's dimples. I'd never thought of them as Mary's.
I made my way into the kitchen, grimacing because the clock on the wall said it was six in the evening. Probably I wasn't going to sleep at all tonight. The sucky thing about lucid dreaming is it really messes up your sleep schedule. I think it has something to do with jumbling up your REM cycles, but I ain't a math scientist.
"Rafael?"
Rosa crept into the kitchen. The house was very quiet, I realized, which made me wonder where Uncle Gabriel had gone. Rosa was quiet, too; but then that was her nature. She worried her lip when she gazed at me, her forehead wrinkling.
"Want something to eat?" I mumbled.
Rosa inched closer to the island. "I will cook," she said.
"S'okay," I said. "I'll, uh--I can warm frybread."
Rosa hesitated. "You know how?"
I scratched my cheek, noncommittal. I shuffled around.
"We will use the microwave," Rosa decided.
I frowned. Days ago Uncle Gabe had brought home this huge black contraption with a weird glass door. He'd planted it on the counter, plugged it into one of those wall-sprocket-things, and proudly declared that it was going to make all of our lives easier. Mary had burst out laughing. Uncle Gabriel was out of control.
Rosa took a bowl of mattache out of the refrigerator. She put it inside the black contraption and pressed a bunch of beeping buttons. I tossed it a dark look. The glass door lit up and Rosa turned away from it. I shoved my hands in my pockets.
"Um," I began.
I knew I had to apologize to her. It's just that I hated the taste of crow.
Rosa looked me in the face. Rosa looked away.
"I didn't mean to take advantage of you," I said quietly.
Rosa looked at me again. "I know."
The microwave hummed and whirred. I leaned back against the counter, awkward.
"You are a boy," Rosa said. "I've told you before that you are at the age when you meet yourself for the first time. It's alright if you make mistakes."
My throat tightened with emotion. Great. I put my head down and pretended to read the lacrosse magazine Uncle Gabriel had left on the island. I hated lacrosse.
"Is Mary alright?" Rosa asked. "She's slept long."
"She's okay," I said. "Just feverish."
Rosa fretted. "If only it weren't winter..."
I didn't know what she meant by that. My best guess was she was talking about willow leaves, a good fever alleviant. "Maybe we've got some in the bathroom."
The mattache in the microwave popped and banged. I jumped in my shoes. I glimpsed the glass door and it was covered in butter-and-pepper goop. Rosa opened the microwave and the scent of burnt corn wafted out. I sneezed.
"Maybe we will stick to the wood-coal stove," Rosa said skittishly.
I cleaned the microwave with a dish towel and Rosa reheated frybread on the stovetop burner. If you don't put cream cheese on your frybread, you don't know what you're missing. About ten minutes later Rosa took the bread off the stove and cut it in half. I asked her, haltingly, if she knew how to cook eggs.
"Yes." Rosa paused. "Would you prefer those?"
"No," I said. "I just--I wanted to know how to cook 'em. For Sky."
Rosa's face softened. I debated ducking and hiding.
"I'll teach you eggs over easy," she said.
She tried to, anyway. She greased two pans and put 'em on the burners; she cracked two eggs, one for each pan. I watched her flip her pan like it was nothing, the runny egg sailing through the air. The hell was this, gymnastics? I picked up my pan by the iron handle, uncertain. I gave it a jerk. My egg splattered all over the red-hot stove.
Rosa giggled. "That will happen."
I turned the stove off. I buried my face in my hands. "I suck."
"No, it's alright," Rosa said. "No one gets good at cooking without trying."
"Annie's good at cooking," I said.
"I am sure she's had practice."
"Why are they called eggs over easy if they're so damn hard?"
"That is a very good question."
Speaking of Annie: She visited me the following morning. I was already feeling antsy because being grounded meant being indoors, but the Weird Dreaming thing had kept me awake all night, itchy and restless. I paced the sitting room like a wild animal when Annie walked inside the house.
"Your hair looks longer," I said. It reached her shoulders now.
"Yes, it's funny that hair grows, isn't it?" Annie carried a basket full of peyote petals on her arm. "I visited the Sun-And-Moon Crater recently. I thought your sister might make use of these."
"Thanks," I said, reaching for the basket.
Annie gave it to me. Annie wavered. When I touched her hand by accident I felt reluctance and resolution. Annie was more like me than either one of us cared to admit. Much as I hated the taste of crow, Annie refused even to sample it.
"I didn't know," I said. "That you wanted to come on the car ride."
Embarrassed, Annie took a while before she responded. "I suppose I just wanted to be invited."
I felt crummy. I knew what it was like to watch everyone else having fun without me, to wish that just one of them would look my way. The car ride hadn't been fun at all, but that was beside the point. I told you Annie and I had too much in common.
"I don't mean to be so petty about this," Annie said, flustered. "It's just--"
"It's okay."
"Well, I worry," Annie said. "You and I rather loathed each other until fairly recently, didn't we?"
"Yeah," I said, trying to keep my face straight.
"I know you didn't always like me," Annie said. "So I worry that... I worry that you don't really think of me as your friend."
"That's nuts," I said, staring.
"It isn't," she insisted. "I don't have very many friends, don't you see that? I know I'm a bit of a--well, I suppose I'm a shrew--"
"Don't say that," I growled.
Annie glanced at me, unfazed.
"I didn't ask you to come with us 'cause I didn't wanna go myself," I
said. "And anyway, I knew you would've thought the whole thing was stupid, and I care too much about what you think."
Annie's face lightened. "Really?"
"Uh-huh."
Uncle Gabriel came inside the house with a bloody handsaw and a skinned calf quarter. He put the saw on the floor, muck and all, and hung the exsanguinated hank from the ceiling rafters. He said to Annie, "How are you doing today?"
"Oh, fine, thank you," Annie said, polite as could be.
"That's wonderful," said Uncle Gabriel, who was a gentleman. "You know Rafael's grounded, don't you?"
"He is?" Annie asked, the consummate actress.
"He is," Uncle Gabriel returned, the consummate intuitionist.
Annie was 5'1'', the kind of girl you wanted to pick up with one hand. Uncle Gabriel was 6'5''. Annie had practically to bend over backwards just to look up at him. By contrast, Uncle Gabriel stooped low to return her gaze. He looked like the freaking Hunchback. It was funny, and it distracted me from the fact that Uncle Gabriel was about to send Annie home and leave me by my lonesome. But Uncle Gabriel never got around to that. Mary dragged herself out of her bedroom, yawning, her pillow under her arm. Her hair stood up in every direction, pajamas baggy on her bony body.
"Whoa," Mary said. "Nice welcoming committee."
"You look dreadful," Annie said.
"Aw, shucks," Mary said. "Not too shabby yourself."
"Annie came over to give you these," I said, thrusting the peyote petals at Mary.
"Yes, that's right," Annie lied seamlessly, "I came to visit Mary."
There was nothing Uncle Gabriel could do. He went back outside to wash off his saw at the water pump. I looked between Annie with her red aura and Mary with her nothing aura. Not for the first time, Mary unnerved me.
Mary powered suddenly to life. She tossed her pillow aside and put the basket down. "I wrote you a song!" she told Annie.
Annie shifted her weight. Annie frowned skeptically. "You did?"
"Chyeah, it's totally awesome! Come on, follow me!"
The three of us went inside Mary's room. Annie gaped at the nude girls on the closet door, with the result that I pulled the door open, just to hide them from view. Annie glanced discreetly at the mess beyond, fishnets and corsets hanging tangled on their hangers. Her face was pink and bothered.