"Aw, shucks," Mary said, rolling her sleeves down. "I'm clean now. Honest."
"That's very nice," Uncle Gabriel said, "but you're still going to rehab."
"Can't she do it traditional way?" I asked.
Rosa looked at me first. Abashed, I said, "Smudging and purging and stuff. And burning peyote, and going to the sweat." Our medicines worked fine for us for thousands of years. I didn't see why Mary had to spend depressing hours at the hospital.
"She can do that, too," Uncle Gabriel said.
Mary winked at me. I fumed in retaliation. It wasn't like I was taking her side or anything. She'd chosen to abandon me.
"Hey," Mary said suddenly. "Where's Izzie?"
"Who?" Uncle Gabriel asked, polite.
"You know," Mary said. "Isabel? My BFF?"
"Your what?" I asked, thrown.
"Best friend forever," Rosa supplied.
"How the hell do you know that?" I asked.
"Rafael, language," Uncle Gabriel said.
"It's alright," Rosa said.
"Go take a shower," Uncle Gabriel told Mary. "You smell like a gas station."
Mary tromped leisurely out of the room, her monstrous boots banging against the hardwood. I cringed. I sat on the sofa's armrest, Rosa's forehead wrinkling. Rosa worried her teeth with her lip.
"I'm sorry to put you through this," Uncle Gabriel told Rosa, his weary face in his hands.
Rosa touched his shoulder. Uncle Gabriel looked up. "I do not mind it," Rosa said. "It was my decision to be with you."
For the first time I appreciated what Rosa meant to Uncle Gabe. She was another adult in the house. This time around he wasn't stuck alone with two bratty, high-maintenance, developmentally challenged teenagers.
"Are we going to the group dinner tonight?" I mumbled.
Uncle Gabe put his hand on Rosa's. Uncle Gabe looked my way. "I think it would be best if we sat this one out."
Because of Mary, he didn't say. My temples throbbed with anger. I half wondered whether steam gushed out of my ears. I wanted to have dinner with Sky and Annie and Aubrey and maybe Sarah, not sit around pampering my runaway sister. I wanted to lend Aubrey my Genesis Alpha book, to taste-test Annie's newest casserole, to lay my head on Sky's lap while he combed his fingers through my hair and rendered me bigger than the world I belonged to.
"Could you make sure everything's in order in her room?" Uncle Gabriel asked.
"Fine," I mumbled, miserable.
I dragged myself down the hallway beside the kitchen. I heard the water running in the narrow bathroom, something that caused me to scowl; not because of Mary, but because I hated indoor plumbing. To my right I tossed open Mary's bedroom door, flipping the lights on. I stared at the untouched mess within.
Talk about traveling back in time. The posters on the walls were exactly as Mary had left them, long scrolls boasting goth metal vocalists in powdery white makeup. Topless girls hung crooked on her closet door. I covered my eyes to give them privacy. Mary's dingy black luggage lay haphazardly next to her bed, her bass guitar on top of the mattress. Iron skulls dangled from the ceiling lights, which weren't normal lights at all, but fake candles in stained glass jars.
"Gross," I muttered.
"Gross yourself," Mary snickered.
She skulked into her room like a suave shadow in a pair of fuzzy bunny pajamas. It wasn't even evening. Now that her hair was clean it fell as far as her waist, thick and blue-black, the same color as mine. Her face looked better without all the gunky makeup crusted all over it. Apart from Mom's sloping chin, she didn't resemble either of our parents, her nose long and skinny, the groove in her upper lip wide. I wondered where she'd inherited her eyes, an eclectic hazel in brown and green patches and scattered, faint gray dots.
"Don't bother me," I muttered. I made ready to leave her room.
"Not a chance!"
Mary wrapped her arm around my neck in a headlock. I sputtered, staggering, because I was taller than her, and tiny people really, really shouldn't grab tall people's necks. It made no sense to me that I was bigger than my big sister. It was one of those whaddoyoucallem's--an OxiClean, I thin.
"Don't tell me you didn't miss me!" Mary urged, her elbow digging in my ribs.
"The hell I did!" I lied.
Mary let go of me and I nearly went flying. She collapsed backwards on her bed in a lackadaisical heap. I threw her a scathing look, only she decided not to notice, or pretended not to; or didn't care.
"Why are you so pissed at me, huh?" Mary wondered.
"You really need to ask?" I retorted darkly.
She sat up straight, scuffing her damp hair with her long, purple fingernails. My fingernails were purple, too. She noticed. She smiled wickedly. She didn't have an aura, and now that I thought about it, it scared me. Everybody had an aura. Everything was painted in Sky's light.
"Raffy," Mary said softly.
Mary and I used to be able to communicate without words.
Mary's eyes were mottled forests. The green splotches were the weathered leaves, the brown the ancient trunks and rolling hills. Every hint of hidden gray was a flicker of sunlight, the early kind, when the sky isn't blue just yet, but getting there.
The forests in my sister's eyes sucked me into them. The bedroom left us. We sat together on a forest floor, scattered foliage under our thighs. The treetops were so tall they broke through the sky. What gave them the right, anyway?
"I had to leave the rez," Mary said cheerfully. "I hate this stinking place."
I'd thought I hated it, too. I'd thought it was a place of shadows and ugliness. But it wasn't.
"You could have taken me with you," I murmured.
Mary grinned. "And leave Uncle Gay all by his lonesome?"
"Stop calling him that," I said.
"Nah."
When Dad first got found out, and chased off the rez, the whole of the reservation had turned wary eyes on Mary and me. None of the kids our age had wanted to be our friends anymore. As badly as I'd taken to the distrust, Mary had taken worse. I remembered the way she used to rake her nails down her arms, clawing them open. Uncle Gabriel cut her fingernails to stop her. She resorted to using her sharp teeth instead.
"Why did you come back here?" I asked quietly.
Mary wet her thumb with her tongue. I scrambled out of her way before she could stick her finger in my ear. She booed at me. I flipped her off. I think there's some kind of universal law that says brothers and sisters are supposed to get on each other's nerves.
"How's Dad?" Mary asked casually.
I stared sharply. I felt sick. "Don't even joke about that."
"No joke, baby bro," Mary said. "I heard he bit the big one."
"Knock it off," I begged.
"Paul Looks Over, huh?" Mary said.
I faltered. "Did Uncle Gabe tell you?"
"Nope," Mary said, spreading her mouth in a vicious smile. "You just did."
I didn't know what to say. I replayed the conversation in my head. My head spun on my shoulders, my arms and legs going weak.
"I wonder what he used to kill the old man," Mary mused. She stood up and paced the forest floor, which looked ridiculous when she was wearing rabbits on her hands and feet. "I heard you poke someone in the soft part behind the ear and you can kill them practically without a mark. Just use a long enough needle. A sewing awl, even."
"Who told you that?" I asked, mouth dry. Mary had plenty of needles to spare.
"What do you think?" Mary asked. She grinned with malice. "Wanna take out a blood law of our own?"
"Stop it," I said, my voice breaking. "Cut it out."
Mary advanced on me like one of those crippling shadows from my past. It was ridiculous. I couldn't be afraid of my own sister. I couldn't be afraid of a skinny, nineteen-year-old girl in fleece pajamas. She was a shadow with a crocodile smile, all fangs, all Neverland. She fought imaginary wars with Lost Boys, not real ones.
"It's allowed," Mary said. "If somebody hurts your family
member, you're allowed to hurt them back. That's the rule. It's the only rule."
"But that's why Dad's dead in the first place," I said weakly. "Because he hurt people. He killed all those women, Mary. Mary, you can't--"
"I can't? Says who?"
I clutched my stomach. I swallowed real bile. She was right. Nothing about blood law said you couldn't avenge a loved one if that loved one had hurt someone first.
"I'll tell Uncle Gabe," I threatened.
"What's he supposed to do about it?"
Then Mary didn't know Uncle Gabe was the Daigwani. I considered telling her; except there had to be a reason he hadn't told her himself. I didn't want to think about what that reason might have been.
"Mary," I said. "Dad deserved--"
"Don't say it," Mary cut me off.
Her hard, flat tone scared me. It scared me more that she never stopped smiling. It scared me that her forest was devoid of forest sounds, that the sun never moved in the sky, but remained hidden, blotted, behind her eyes' gray clouds.
"He's our father, you punk," Mary said.
She threw her head back, laughing hysterically. I realized she must have lost her mind. I didn't know where she'd lost it, or when. I thought I was going to cry like a baby.
"Mary and me, we're cut from the same cloth," Dad had said once.
We'd been visiting the aquarium when he made his declaration. Mary had just finished climbing into the walrus enclosure for the millionth time and park security had fished her out, irate. Dad had brought a towel just for the occasion. He wrapped Mary up in it, and her wet, impertinent shivers stopped.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"We do what we want to do!" Dad exclaimed.
He bent down and high-fived Mary's little hand. Her face lit up in a validated smile. He did that. He validated her. She might have learned to stop climbing into the walrus enclosure if only he would stop bringing towels to the aquarium. But it never occurred to him--to either of them--that their whims weren't paramount.
3
At Sixes and Sevens
At the start of October the oak trees turned color, the apple trees bursting with fruit. All Sky wanted to do was walk around the rez and stare at them. Weirdo. The weirder part was the coywolf pup dogging his heels, like Sky was his mom or something. I couldn't blame the coywolf all that much. Knowing Sky was the same as loving him, as wanting him to yourself.
What are they doing over there? Sky asked.
He touched my elbow, nodding at a group of women gathered around a beehive. The farms all around us sighed with soft colors, orange where the pumpkins and the carrots breached the golden soil, sprightly green with thyme and basil, burning red with radishes and red onions and fallen leaves.
"They're smokin' the bees out," I said. "The bees fall asleep and you grab the honeycomb. It's good. Y'want some?"
Sky shook his head. Sky grinned. Slight and scrawny, his dark green turtleneck all but gobbled him up.
"I gotta tell you something," I said, nervous.
The grin slid off Sky's face. He took my elbow in a gentle hand, leading me over to an empty folding table. We sat together on the ground while his coywolf pup ambled away in search of forgotten food scraps. Yards away I watched the Threefold family on the other side of the iron gate, boxing their kale for homeless shelters.
"Where's your dad?" I asked.
Sky rubbed soothing circles in my back with the heel of his hand. A hand that small didn't belong on a back that big. Sky didn't seem to mind.
Over there, Sky said. He nodded down the road, where Paul Looks Over stood chatting with Mr. Red Clay.
"Watch him," I said. "Don't let him go anywhere unless you know about it."
Sky looked at me. Sky's hand slowed, but didn't let up.
What's really the matter, Rafael?
"It's--"
I didn't know how to rat my sister out without betraying her. I'm sure that sounds crazy; but Mary had been my sister longer than Sky had been my best friend. The only reason I cared what happened to Paul was because I loved Sky. If I'd never met Sky--if I'd only known Paul as the man who killed my father--
Rafael?
Thoughts like those were the ones that scared me. I scared me. My hands shook from knuckle to fingertip. I couldn't be like my father. I couldn't think so little of human life.
Rafael.
Sky threaded his fingers with mine, stilling them. He took his time lining our palms up. He made sure to smile, to show me it was okay to smile.
"Mary," I said, "is a daddy's girl."
Sky understood right away. His eyebrows knitted together. He chewed on the inside of his mouth.
"I'll watch her," I promised. "And you gotta watch your dad. She'll calm down; she usually does. It takes a while is all."
How long is "a while"? Sky asked, his face uncertain.
"A long while," I confessed. I thought about the collapsed veins on her arms.
Sky touched the back of my hand. I'm sorry.
"What the hell are you sorry for?" I asked, thrown.
For you, he explained, by holding my gaze. I know you missed her. You told me so.
What did that matter? I floundered for words. Sky watched me patiently. The words never came.
"Freaking hippie," I huffed.
I snatched him into my arms and he all but disappeared in them. He settled back against my chest, laughing, king of the world. I even decided to forgive him when he tugged playfully on my braids. He had some kind of fixation with them, which was the only reason I kept braiding my hair these days.
Oh, Sky said suddenly. He put his hands out and pretended to type on a keyboard. How do you like your new computer?
"It's stupid," I said flatly. "I don't see why we gotta have 'em."
Sky ran his hands through my hair until pencil stubs fell out. He took a post-it pad out of his front pocket and scribbled on it. I frowned, leaning over to see what he had written. All the note said was, "Dude...you're getting a Dell." Alright, weirdo. I held him tighter and told him about the trial scene in Charlotte Doyle, and Captain Jaggery's daughter, and Mr. Cranick and the missing arm. He listened to me like he was fascinated, tilting his head back so he could watch the nuances on my face. Before I had the opportunity to get embarrassed, Aubrey jogged over to us, breathless.
"My scallions are gone!" Aubrey said, upset. "I turned my back for one moment and... Could you help me? I'm terribly sorry to ask--"
Sky waved his hands, cutting off Aubrey's apology. Sky and I stood up. We followed Aubrey to the gates of his farm manor, to the mound of dirt on the other side. Apart from the pumpkins, the tilled black soil was empty.
"Don't tell me that was your only yield," I said dubiously.
"No, no, of course not," Aubrey said. "But what could have done that?"
He was right for asking. Theft in Nettlebush was rare, considering we didn't have an economy.
What's that? Sky asked, pointing at the ground.
I crouched down. I ran my fingers across the loose soil. Oblong hoof marks marred the terrain, small at the top and fat at the bottom.
"Antelope prints," I said.
"You sure?" Aubrey asked anxiously.
"Yup," I said. "Deer prints are cloven. Antelope prints are solid."
"What on earth is an antelope doing this far west?" Aubrey gaped.
"Maybe it's a Delgeth," Mary's voice said.
She loped over to us from the other side of the fence, her grin dark, her eyeshadow darker. Aubrey swallowed, visibly nervous. Sky smiled politely, waving his hand.
"Knock it off," I said harshly. I stood up. "It ain't a Delgeth."
What's a Delgeth? Sky asked, his eyes curious.
"Aw, what would you know?" Mary asked me, dragging her knuckles all over my hair.
I slithered away from her, scowling. I told Sky, "A Delgeth's a man-eating antelope. They're monsters that were born when man tried to procreate on his own. They're at war with the human race."
Mary sn
ickered like I'd said something untoward. I glowered at her. Annie came around the gate at the same time, a basket of apples on her hip.
"Why are we talking about the Delgeth?" Annie asked spiritedly.
Mary rounded on Annie, scaling her with her eyes. I said, "She's just trying to scare you is all."
"Well," Annie said, and winked at Sky, "we're not easily frightened, are we?"
Sky grinned innocently. Sky shook his head back and forth.
"If this antelope's gonna eat our yield," I said, "I gotta kill it."
Now Sky looked frightened. Do you have to? he asked, his face going wan, his hand loose around my elbow.
I softened. "I know you like animals," I said. "But the rest of us gotta eat, too, Sky. Antelope belong in the badlands, not on farms."
I was a goner. I couldn't say no to Sky. Not when he looked all soft and vulnerable. Not when he looked at me like I had the answer to everything under the sun.
Not ever, if I was honest with myself.
"I'll try an' trap him instead," I compromised. "Put him out in the Sonoran. Okay? Antelope like feeding on cactuses. He'll be fine out there."
The relief on Sky's face was tangible. I felt it in the light around me, open-mouthed kisses on my skin. I felt it in the light dawning in his eyes and the shyness swelling in my gut. He grabbed my hands and his emotions curls around my fingers. Thank you. I know I'm silly. I'm sorry for that. Thank you so much.
"Well, well," Mary said.
Humiliated, I'd forgotten she was hovering over me. I thought to let go of Sky's hands, but didn't. It felt unprecedented to touch him. It felt like understanding who I was and why I was for the first time in my life. Try asking a starving man to stop eating samosas. Hell, try asking any man to stop eating samosas. Samosas are good.
"Is there a problem?" Annie interjected.
Annie was a rescuer, a fiery, indomitable soul. She put her apples on the ground and leapt to my defense.
"I don't remember you being such a cutie, Little Hawk," Mary said.
"That's--what?" Annie stammered.
Mary's ability to unnerve anyone was without contest. Annie looked from me to Sky to Aubrey to see whether her loss of cohesion was unfounded. Sky shook his head, equally stunned. Aubrey twisted his hands together uncertainly.