

### Two Sisters

by

Jeffrey Anderson

Copyright 2015 by Jeffrey Anderson

Smashwords Edition

This story is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Though this e-book is being distributed for free, it remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reprinted or reproduced without the permission of the author. If you like this book, please encourage your friends to download a copy at Smashwords.

An Ending

"No, no, no, Leah," Brooke said in rebuke. Then her expression softened. "Let me show you."

Leah wondered how many times she'd received exactly those words with exactly that combination of looks—reprimand immediately followed by cajoling—from her sister over the years. For some reason, today's rendition recalled a long ago exchange in their brother's treehouse in the backyard, preparing an afternoon tea for some imagined guests.

Matt had one day without word or warning abandoned that formerly zealously guarded treehouse in favor of long stints in his bedroom with the door closed and the blinds drawn in what Leah at the time had assumed to be some mystical communion with the gods of his adolescent reverie but now understood to have been masturbatory rhapsody, perhaps even that early with images of the boys from his gym class mixing with the air-brushed pictures of women in the well-thumbed pages of the Penthouse magazine he'd got from Joey Hanson down the street. It was Brooke, of course, who had set her straight on this point years later when in one of their rare discussions (as opposed to exasperated complaints) about their brother she had said, "It's a wonder he didn't yank that little thing off in all those hours alone in his room" and Leah had been naïve enough to tilt her head in puzzlement, prompting one more rolling of the eyes from her older (only two years on the calendar) and infinitely wiser sister.

At the treehouse tea preparations Brooke handed Leah the plastic plates and silverware from the canvas tote she'd dragged up the rope ladder; and Leah set them out on the square of plywood balanced atop the milk crate and covered with a floral cloth. They'd cut the tablecloth along with matching napkins from some curtains Momma had tossed in the trash. Brooke had taped the hems, using a whole roll of masking tape, and Leah ironed each piece with her play iron—the batteries actually warmed the aluminum face—on her play ironing board set off in the utility room end of the treehouse.

"No, no, no, Leah" Brooke had said as Leah carefully set the knife and spoon on the right side of the each plate, the fork on the left, in the manner she'd learned from Momma and duplicated countless times in her designated duty of setting the table for Sunday dinner each week after church. "Let me show you," Brooke said then picked up the fork and set it on the right side of the plate, moving the knife and spoon to the opposite side.

Leah stared at this new arrangement with wide eyes—big and brown to her sister's somewhat smaller and more closely set gray—and her mouth open. She'd not challenge her sister with the obvious and reliable But that's not how Momma does it that she would've used on anyone else if they'd tried something so outrageous. She just stared and waited for the explanation that was always forthcoming and would always be right.

"What hand do you use to hold your fork?" Brooke asked in her big sisterly gaze of authority that Leah never saw anywhere else and that Brooke offered to no one else.

Leah held up her right hand.

"And what piece of silverware do you use to eat with?"

Leah pointed to the fork.

"Then what is the most logical place for the fork?"

Leah pointed to the right-hand side of the plastic plate with her right hand, where Brooke had already set the plastic fork.

"Doesn't that make so much more sense, Leah?" Brooke said as she proceeded to reverse the silverware placement at the other three settings.

Leah didn't respond, at least not audibly. But within herself she issued a silent affirmation. Yes, it did make sense coming from Brooke. It always made sense. She couldn't resist.

"Now let me show you, Leah," the grown up Brooke spoke into the lounge's mirror as she slid the white satin waist sash from her wedding gown's thin loops and raised it so that it crossed higher on her torso, up under her breasts encased in the lace bodice, freeing the lower part of the gown to hang loosely over her belly. Brooke handed the loose sash to Leah standing behind her. "Now tie it in a pretty bow so that the ends are the same."

Leah did as directed, adjusting the bow so that the trailing sash ends were exactly equal and fell naturally into the dress's lower pleats.

"See!" Brooke said, gazing with satisfaction at the modification in the full-length mirror, the beautiful bride she'd long hoped to be now staring back at her in the mirror.

And Leah did see, not only her sister the bride reflected in the mirror but also all the way back to the start of their lives inextricably twined together, tighter even than that sash's knot.

Floating and Sinking

The morning unfolded with a soundless grace and beauty, like a flower greeting the day, like one of the vibrant daylilies in Momma's garden that was closed tight at dawn but slowly, resolutely, and silently unfurled the arms of its petals to welcome the sun, embrace it, be embraced in return. By ten it was already hot.

Brooke was in charge. She filled her Barbie thermos with lemonade, made two peanut butter sandwiches and cut off the crust, feeding those scraps to Roscoe their Boston terrier who was already way too fat, and wrapped the sandwiches in wax paper and set them in the lunch box. Then she loaded the wood-sided wagon—another hand-me-down from the aged-out Matt, off somewhere playing Army with the other neighborhood ruffians—with their lunch and two beach towels and a tube for Leah and a raft for her, both deflated and stored in tight rolls and tied with a piece of twine by their father. Then she rolled the wagon out of the garage and into that blazing sun.

Leah watched from the garage's shadows in her shorts and T-shirt covering her bathing suit.

"Come on, Lee!" Brooke yelled soundlessly from the glare of the day outside. She had on her Barbie sunglasses—pink rims with dark green plastic lenses looking like big black holes where her eyes used to be.

Leah held on in the garage's cool shade.

Brooke shook her head, her brown hair swaying back and forth in a slow motion wave that clearly brought her pleasure even as she tried to register annoyance, then dragged the wagon back into the garage. "The sun won't hurt you, Leah," Brooke said deliberately.

It wasn't the sun Leah feared.

Brooke sighed then took a minute to rearrange the supplies in the wagon. She slid the lunchbox and inflatables to the front and used the towels to pad the wagon's sides and back. She then pointed at the space she'd opened in the wagon's bottom.

Though Leah was too old to be dragged around in a wagon, the spot looked good and safe to her. She sat down with inordinate grace and care, crossed her legs and leaned back against the towel-padded rail. She smiled up at Brooke.

Brooke couldn't help but smile back. Then she held up a finger, ran into the house, and came back with Momma's broad-brimmed straw hat, the one with the pink ribbon as a sash. She set the bonnet on Leah's head. It was too big and fell low on her forehead. Brooke squatted beside the wagon. She could still see her sister's eyes beneath the hat's rim, and those eyes glowed big and round in their joyful best offering to her or the world. She nodded and tied the ribbon beneath Leah's chin to secure the hat. She stood and looked down and laughed at the sight her sister made, her head hidden beneath the big round hat. Then she grabbed the handle and rolled the wagon's now heavier cargo out into the sun and down the drive to the sidewalk winding off through the shade of the maple trees lining the street.

Leah loved the feeling of the wagon's wheels rolling over the pavement and vibrating up through the wooden frame and into her body. This combined with the hat's broad brim low over her eyes defined a safe and manageable domain, with sunlight far off twinkling down through the leaves and the purr of the wheels going straight into her bones and her hands holding tight to the wooden sides swaying gently to and fro and rattling in their own way, into her fingers, her hands. She eased into the rhythms of the outing, her eyes finally settling on her sister's head and back as she towed the wagon along the sidewalk. When she was older, she'd wonder what it was like to stride with that determination and confidence into the future. But at that moment in the wagon, it was enough to know that her sister was in charge, watching over her. She felt supremely safe in her big sister's care.

At the pool the gate attendant—Sally Milton, a high-schooler from the neighborhood—blocked Brooke's entry with the wagon and pointed to the bike rack. Brooke said something Leah couldn't see, but she did see her sister's shoulders and neck tense the way they did when she was really mad. Leah's hands gripped the wagon sides tighter in case Brooke decided to barge her way past Sally. But then Brooke relented and faced Leah. "Miss Bossypants says we can't take the wagon in."

Leah looked up from the shade of her hat and nodded. Brooke had tried. She didn't want to get her big sister in trouble. She climbed out of the wagon with the same precocious grace as when she'd sat down, then grabbed the lunchbox and the towels and held them wrapped in her arms.

That gear, combined with the hat, left Leah all but buried beneath stuff. Brooke grinned at the sight then bent quickly and kissed her sister's right hand, about the only piece of her body visible. Leah giggled beneath the hat. Brooke dragged the wagon to the bike rack and parked it parallel, blocking a half-dozen spaces. She looked over her shoulder to be sure Sally was watching. She grabbed the tube and raft and returned to Leah at the gate. She took the towels from Leah's arms then led her past Sally who glared down at the Fulcher sisters but said nothing.

They spread their towels near the shallow end amidst other young children running about and playing with their moms watching from the shade of the pavilion. Leah sat on the first towel Brooke spread out, the one with Snow White asleep in the middle of the anxiously peering Seven Dwarfs. She crossed her legs as in the wagon and from the continued shade of her sun hat looked out onto a dazzling world of light and motion, from the glittering spray thrown up from the pool (the water itself invisible from where she sat) to the brilliant white concrete to the colorful bathing suits and towels to the children themselves, scampering about and chasing each other and gesturing with open mouths and shouts of exclamation.

Brooke lay down on her stomach on the other towel and stretched her already long legs out the way the teenaged girls did. She wished she had a two-piece suit like those older girls and had three times put one in the shopping cart at Belk's and three times watched as Momma returned the suit to the hanger and picked out a pink frilly one-piece that Brooke called a "baby suit," a pun that made Leah, standing beside the cart and watching this epic battle, giggle so infectiously that Momma and her elder daughter forgot their obstinate anger and joined Leah's laughter. Leah had that effect on people, even her family, even then.

Brooke watched her younger sister watching the world with wide eyes and a riveted gaze. She wondered what Leah saw, wondered what it felt like to be so captivated by everything unfolding around her. Brooke could never see things with that open curiosity and fascination. She only saw what was in front of her, in the way of her goal. But Leah saw it all, and the world was always so glad to be watched by her.

Then Brooke decided her sister needed to see the world from a new vantage point—floating and weightless out there in the middle of the pool. That area was empty this early in the day, with the kids all confined to the shallow end and the adults either watching those little kids or at work and the big kids all still asleep on their summer vacation or engaged in some secret and shadowed endeavors. Brooke liked the middle part of the pool, partly for the freedom and space it gave her and partly because it allowed her to show off her natural grace in the water. It was the one skill where she surpassed not only all those her age but also girls a good deal older (not to mention that witch Sally Milton). She'd come to consider the middle of the pool her personal domain and stage, and hung out there for hours on end—doing backstrokes and butterflies, front and backwards somersaults, underwater handstands and jackknifes, or just floating easily on her back, in silence with her ears below the waterline, immune to the world around her but surely shaping an impressive and graceful figure.

But all that was when Momma was here, taking care of Leah. Today that was her job, and she couldn't leave Leah alone. So she'd take her with her, introduce her to her domain, her favorite spot on earth. Leah would love it.

She untied the raft and unrolled it on the pool apron. The bright orange plastic was soft and supple. She blew up the raft with quick, huffing breaths. Leah laughed at her cheeks puffing out and her face turning red. At one point Brooke stopped to catch her breath and said, "You want to do it?"

Leah shook her head beneath the bonnet, looking demure and serious.

The look made Brooke laugh and shake her head before returning to her task. When she finished she punched the raft's taut skin in satisfaction. Then she sat up and slid off her shorts and T-shirt, trying to ignore the pink little girl's suit that action revealed. She then sat opposite Leah and took off her sister's flip-flops and shorts. "You want to leave on the hat and T-shirt?"

Leah looked confused, staring first at her sister then at the tube still rolled up and tied.

"You don't have to get wet," Brooke said. Though Leah always wore a bathing suit to the pool, she rarely ventured into the water. Its feeling against her skin was almost too much to process. "You can stay on the raft."

Leah looked doubtful.

"I want you to feel what it's like to float on the water. I'll make sure you stay dry." Brooke nodded confidently.

Leah looked from her sister to the raft then back again.

"Come on, Lee. Give it a try." She stood and extended her hand.

Leah finally reached up and took it.

They walked together, Brooke guiding Leah with one hand and holding the raft with the other, around the edge of the pool to a spot beyond the young children playing in the shallow end. Brooke dropped both the raft and Leah's hand and jumped into the waist-deep water. She then reached back and pulled the raft in beside her. Leah, now a head taller, stared down at her sister.

"Come on, Lee. I'll support you." Brooke raised her arms toward her sister in a gesture caught between offer and insistence.

And for once Leah didn't hesitate. She stepped forward into those arms and beyond, out over the water.

Brooke was caught off-guard and almost lost her balance at the sudden weight. "Whoa, Lee!" she said before steadying herself.

Leah tucked her legs up under her torso to avoid touching the water.

Brooke turned and held Leah over the raft, but the raft began to drift away. Brooke started to stumble after the fleeing raft. She feared she'd drop Leah in the water or bash her against the pool apron. Either way she'd betray her sister's reckless trust. She began to fall toward the water, trying to hold her sister above it but knowing she was doomed to fail.

But just then Leah reached out from Brooke's arms and grabbed the raft and pulled it toward them. This allowed Brooke to drop her on the raft rather than in the water. Leah knelt in the middle of the raft, on her hands and knees. A little water sloshed onto the raft but not much. Freed of her cargo, Brooke let her body continue its fall into the water, pushing the raft out in front of her. Leah looked back over her shoulder under the straw hat, a smile on her face at the successful transfer (had it ever been in doubt?) and this new floating weightlessness. Brooke smiled back then, using the fast fading pool bottom as a springboard, launched herself in a shallow dive that took her under the raft and all the way to its front. She turned her body underwater and rose up facing backwards toward the raft. Leah was still looking over her shoulder to where Brooke had been. Brooke said, "Boo!" and tapped the raft. Leah faced forward to discover her sister, her hair wet and slick like a seal's, floating there in front of her. Leah's eyes grew big at the wonder and newness of it all.

"You O.K.?" Brooke asked.

Leah nodded.

"You like it?"

Leah's broad grin was a generous affirmation.

"Watch this," Brooke said. She disappeared under the water and out of sight.

Just as Leah began to feel panic, Brooke's arm rose up out of the water to her left and her hand ringed Leah's wrist. Then Brooke's other arm rose from the other side of the raft and found Leah's leg. Leah giggled at the touch before Brooke let go and surfaced on the right side.

"Pretty good, huh?" Brooke said.

Leah nodded.

"Even if you can't see me, I'm always here," Brooke said firmly.

And Leah believed her.

Brooke was beside herself in delight at having combined her two greatest passions—swimming and care for Leah. They had the center of the pool all to themselves. For Brooke at least the world began and ended right there, everything she needed; and maybe for Leah too, so happy was she to be out here with her sister. But her joy was offset by a cringe of fear every time Brooke disappeared beneath the water. Also, she started to tire of crouching on her hands and knees, wished she could maneuver into a sitting position but was afraid she'd fall off if she moved too much. Pleasure and fear alternated with each appearance then disappearance of her sister.

Brooke in her boundless enthusiasm reeled off every aquatic maneuver she knew and several new ones. She wasn't showing off for Leah, who couldn't see most of her moves anyway (and had already watched them from poolside many times). No, she was just thrilled with the day and the chances it offered, impassioned in the possibilities for them both. She swam circles beneath the raft, did twirls, rolling corkscrews, walking handstands along the pool bottom.

From that bottom she saw a shadow cross above and felt a roiling of the water, or was it the brush of a hand? She surfaced and spotted Billy Alexander, a fifth grader who teased and tormented her mercilessly, laughing over his shoulder as he glided through the deepest end of the pool then hoisted himself out of the water and scurried across the pool deck and out of sight, daring her to follow.

"I'll get you later, Billy," she yelled then muttered under her breath "Boys" as she turned to Leah.

Except Leah wasn't there. The raft was there, with Momma's straw hat floating in the water alongside. But Leah was gone.

Brooke would have many shocks in the years to follow. Sometimes she thought her life a lightning rod to the world's surprises (generally choosing to ignore her role in inviting such lightning bolts, always reaching to the sky). But no subsequent shock would rival that instant and the paralytic fear it produced. For some length of time, everything froze—her usually limber body first and foremost.

Then it unfroze. She dove beneath the water. Most times she kept her eyes closed in the pool because the chlorine irritated them. But now her eyes were not only open but wide with fear and desperation. She spotted a dark shape at the bottom, where she'd been just seconds before (had that been what she'd felt?). She swam to the shape with a speed she didn't know she possessed. And suddenly Leah's face was inches away through the pale blue medium. Her sister's eyes were also open, and not frightened at all, just staring to Brooke, to where she knew her help would descend. Leah's blond hair billowed out behind, framing that trusting gaze.

But when Leah saw Brooke's terrified expression that calm faltered. Leah's eyes closed and her mouth released a huge bubble of air, her cheeks that had been puffed out suddenly deflating. Brooke pulled her sister tight against her body with both arms and braced her feet against the pool bottom. But before pushing off, she instinctively put her mouth over Leah's, to keep it sealed or give her sister air, whichever was needed. Then she pushed off.

They surfaced directly under the raft which bobbed off to one side. Brooke unsealed her lips from Leah's, which had never parted, and leaned her head back a few inches. Leah's eyes opened and showed the briefest moment of surprise before settling again into the trust that seemed their natural state when pointed toward her sister. Leah drew a long draft of air. She hooked her legs around Brooke's waist, her arms over her shoulders.

Brooke laughed. "What you do with Momma's hat?"

Leah looked around and pointed to where the hat was floating beside the raft toward the deep end.

Brooke turned and saw the soaked hat. Beyond that, she saw the lifeguard, a hunky senior, making moon eyes at Jackie Stevens, a svelte cheerleader in a very skimpy bikini, from his seat in the lifeguard's chair. Then she took in the whole pool perimeter, looking over Leah's shoulder as they made a slow twirl. Children were playing, in the water and out, parents were reading newspapers or dozing or chatting away. No one was looking at them. No one had seen what had just occurred.

Brooke again looked at Leah, whose eyes had never left her face. "I broke my promise," Brooke said.

Leah tilted her head in question.

"You got wet!" Brooke shrieked.

They both laughed. Leah hadn't even noticed. Then Brooke used one arm to stroke their way toward the shallow end of the pool, holding Leah, who was still wrapped tight around her, with her other arm, nudging the raft and the hat ahead of them with their conjoined bodies.

That night Momma gave them permission to lie out on the deck for a few minutes before bed. In their pajamas and bare feet they spread the beach towels from this morning and lay on their backs looking up at the sky. The sun's heat still clung to the moist air that draped itself over them like the world's biggest and best blanket. But the sky was clear, and the stars sparkled above in their infinite multitude. They stared off into that infinity, each lost in her own thoughts.

Brooke was already hatching a plan to get even with Billy Alexander. It had to be good and it had to be secret. He couldn't know who'd done it, just as he didn't know how nearly his show-off stunt had come to tragedy. She considered lots of options before settling on biting red ants. Matt, in a rare confidence, had shown her the hill of a large colony of such ants on the vacant lot next door, warning her to steer clear or suffer the penalty of many painful bites. She could lure some ants into a jar with a cloth soaked in sugar syrup, then drop that cloth into Billy's gym bag tucked under the seat while they rode on the bus. That plan would have to wait till September and the resumption of school, but no matter—it would work and it would be good.

Leah thought of the silence inside the silence of the blue world she'd descended through this morning. Until that moment she'd always perceived the world as a hum of motion—inside her eyes, her bones, her head, even in the quiet moments before sleep, even in her sleep: always that hum, that sense of motion all about her, whether seen or not, touched or not. But in falling through the water, everything else had stopped. It was only her moving then, nothing else—a new stillness, inside the silence. Then suddenly Brooke had joined her in that new place, that total silence, mashed her body, her lips against hers, made them a single entity in this just discovered realm where nothing else moved, nothing else existed. From that point forward Leah never wondered what it was like to be someone else, like the others. It was enough just to be herself, be that person inside that stillness within the silence, and Brooke there too. That would be a place she could always go.

Above them a meteor flashed its brief trail across the sky. They both saw it. To Brooke it was a prod toward the future and the life that future held, no place else to go. To Leah it was the heavens' seal on her silence, a flash without sound or hum but bearing promise. That these different perceptions found their way to a common sharing and purpose seems in retrospect incredible, but to those two sisters lying on that deck it was already taken for granted in that part of themselves beyond reason and sensing.

Smoking

Brooke slammed the phone down and glared at Leah. "Why are you always listening in?" she screamed. She jumped off the bed and pushed Leah toward the door. "Get out of my room."

Leah didn't fight but didn't run either. She'd stumble sideways a couple steps at each push then catch her balance and wait till Brooke pushed again. In this stumble and stop sequence the two made their way across the room toward the door.

"Get out!" Brooke shouted as she pushed Leah into the hall. "Leave me alone!" She slammed her door.

Leah stood outside the door. She hadn't been listening in. She'd been doing her homework in Brooke's chair while her sister was lying on the bed talking on the phone. She wasn't even looking at Brooke, so how could she be listening in? But sometime in the midst of her multiplication tables she felt a tension enter the room. As with most of these instinctive perceptions, she could not have described the feeling or how she'd become aware of it; but something made her look up. Roscoe felt it too, as the Boston terrier quietly rose from his pillow at the foot of Brooke's bed and made a discreet exit out the door. Maybe that's what she'd felt—Roscoe's unease.

She looked to her sister. Brooke was lying on her stomach on the bed, her feet in sneakers nearest Leah and her head and face not visible from where she sat. But even with this limited view, Leah could tell Brooke was upset. Her legs were extended out straight, her feet pointed like arrow tips wanting to stab something, anything. And Brooke's shoulders were square and tight, not their normal relaxed swagger. Leah knew from the start of the phone call, when she'd entered Brooke's room with her math book and her sister had smiled and nodded toward the chair as she dialed the phone, that the call was to Billy—yes, the same Billy that had nearly drowned her at the pool five years ago—because Brooke's face exhibited that recent giddiness that maybe charmed Billy and other boys but seemed fake and forced to Leah. But then Brooke didn't ask her permission or her opinion.

Nor did she ask her advice once whatever was said on the other end of the line had sent her into this fit of emotion. She'd just slammed the door. Leah stood outside the door for a few more seconds, waiting for it to open, willing it to open. But it didn't open. So she walked the few steps down the hall and into her room.

Her math book was still in Brooke's room—she'd left it on the chair. But she didn't feel much like multiplication tables right now anyway. They made her head hurt even under the best of conditions and usually required Brooke's help on the most difficult parts. She had her well-thumbed Laura Wilder Little House books and a copy of The Secret Garden Momma had given her for Christmas, along with some Welty stories and a Cather novel that Brooke had checked out from the junior high library (at Leah's specific request—Brooke wouldn't read a book for pleasure if her life depended on it). But those options of escape into imagined worlds, soothing and captivating in almost all circumstances, offered little consolation at the moment. She flopped down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. Roscoe, who'd been hiding under the bed, suddenly appeared and jumped up beside her. He gave her face a quick lick with his dry and raspy tongue, then settled into the notch along her side. She let her arm gently wrap itself around his chubby body, making an impromptu cradle for the dog—security for him, comfort for her.

Leah couldn't understand what was going on with Brooke. One minute she'd be dancing on air and figuratively, sometimes literally, lifting Leah up with her. She'd pull Leah into her room and ask her opinion about this or that outfit, pairing the outfit with her hair piled atop her head in a bun, tied in a braid (that was Leah's favorite part—combing and braiding Brooke's hair), gathered in a simple ponytail, or hanging loose about her shoulders which was how she'd always worn it till these latest changes. They'd visit the Teens department at Belk's and Brooke would hold up all sorts of skimpy and revealing tops (clothes Momma would never let her buy let alone wear) over her still almost flat chest, sometimes pairing those tops with a hat or a scarf or a Puka-shell necklace. Leah couldn't help but get caught up in Brooke's outpouring of energy but even at times like these wondered where the old Brooke, the one with a swagger and single-mindedness and devil-may-care attitude, had gone.

And then there was the dejected Brooke, the one prone to outbursts as had just happened or withdrawing into her own world of secret troubles and disappointments. This Brooke was new also. In the past, Brooke met disappointments with renewed determination and creativity, always looking for a way around the obstacle, never surrendering to the defeat in the long-term, even if it meant accepting it for now. Brooke never gave up. Now, it seemed she was daily, and all to a largely unseen force named Billy Alexander. Billy couldn't by himself make Brooke act like this. There was something else going on, and Leah had no idea what. The worst part was, Brooke wouldn't tell her.

Two nights ago she'd snuck into Brooke's room on the way back from the bathroom, to snuggle up beside her sister as she'd often done when they were younger. But Brooke wasn't there. Her window over the porch roof was open on the warm spring night and the screen set off to the side. For some reason Brooke's absence wasn't a surprise. She'd been absent in so many other ways recently her physical absence seemed a natural development. Leah had slid between the covers of Brooke's bed to await her sister's return, which she never doubted. She hoped that return would occur before Momma knocked on the door in the morning and opened it to find Leah alone in Brooke's bed. And she had returned, at some hour deep in the night. At first Leah had thought it a dream—Brooke's arms around her, her lips kissing her cheek, her body full-length along hers. But then Brooke had pressed her mouth tight to Leah's ear and said something. Leah, awake by then, could tell by the three bursts of air, measured and deliberate, pushed into her ear.

A long time ago, after Leah had asked what spoken words were like, Brooke had pressed her mouth to Leah's ear and pushed many bursts of air—some soft, some powerful—against her eardrum. The feeling of Brooke's lips on her ear and the compressed air in her head made Leah giggle. Afterwards, Brooke wrote that was the Lord's Prayer on the chalkboard she carried but rarely used since Leah had long since learned to read her lips. Maybe Brooke thought writing the title would help Leah hear the spoken words. For weeks afterwards, Brooke would speak long passages directly into Leah's ears—news from the morning paper or the comics or from the Beatrix Potter books Leah knew by heart—trying first the right ear then the left. Leah could easily recognize certain common syllables from differences in the way the air making the word was compressed and the shape of Brooke's lips on her ear. She loved that touch. But even when she knew the words being spoken, could measure the beat of the syllables against her eardrum, she could never understand what those words sounded like, what it would be like to receive words as invisible vibrations rather than visible shapes on the mouth or the page. They'd finally stopped the experiment when Momma caught them one day and told them in no uncertain terms that "Proper girls do not act like that!" Leah saw Momma's scolding. Brooke's frown settled across her face even though her back was to Momma. It was in that moment—Brooke's descending frown without looking, not all their lengthy mouth-to-ear efforts—that Leah came to understand, as well as she ever would, what it was to hear spoken words.

So two nights ago after Brooke's return, her sister's words were not heard but they were understood. They were not understood as sounds, never would be. But they were understood by the gentleness of Brooke's lips against her ear, the secretive soft bursts of air on her eardrum, and the vibrancy, the shimmer emanating from Brooke's body beyond her lips. And Leah also knew the cause for all this happiness, for she could smell Billy on Brooke's clothes and skin. But knowing all these details didn't solve the mystery of Brooke's behavior, only deepened it. Where had she gone? What had she done with Billy that his smell was on her? And why did it matter enough to cause all these unprecedented changes?

These same questions pressed on Leah now, as she lay on her bed this time, earlier in the evening, her lights on and Roscoe beside her, but the same darkness of not knowing engulfing her. There were many things in her world that she did not understand, things other people took for granted that she might not ever understand. But Brooke had never been one of them. The rest didn't matter as long as Brooke was clear. But if Brooke joined the ranks of the unknown, where would she be? What would she know?

Leah closed her eyes. This simple action placed her in another realm, immediately and seamlessly. With her primary connection to the world around her suspended, her body and consciousness fell into a familiar bright abyss. To keep from falling too far too fast, she spread her hand atop Roscoe's belly. His skin was warm, his thin fur there unbelievably soft. She imagined the world she now occupied as warm like his skin, lined with that soft fur. She felt a gentle rhythmic thumping to this world. It was the beat of life and promise and welcome.

She descended deeper into the bright abyss. She wasn't frightened. No harm had ever come to her here, in all her visits. The place had always welcomed her, and in it she was queen—the good and gracious queen from the picture books, with the glowing robes and her hands clasped at her waist and a gentle and loving smile beneath her blond hair radiant under a golden crown. As the queen she could go anywhere in her kingdom and be greeted warmly.

So she went to her stables. They were all white too. You didn't see them until you were there. Then you saw them. The horses, all white, emerged from the white stables that had emerged from the white background. The horses did a sort of light-hoofed prancing dance, together and coordinated yet separate and distinct, each movement its own note yet collectively all the movements, the mincing prancing steps forming a visible music.

She raised her hand and the music stopped. She asked the lead horse, "What would it take to ride?"

The horse said, "Ride? What is that?"

"To climb on your back and be carried around," Leah said.

"Ahh, you mean fly," the horse said.

And suddenly Leah was flying, maybe on the horse's back but she saw nothing beneath her, nothing carrying her rushing through the white and brilliant air. She held her breath at the rapid movement but knew she was safe, knew her kingdom would not betray her.

The horse set her down on the beach. "There you are, Your Highness. I must return to the others. You know how they are."

Leah nodded, and the horse was gone.

She knew she was on the beach not by any water or waves cresting. Her world was a sea of white. But there was a dolphin standing beside her. He was all white too, but she could see him. Maybe no one else could, but she could.

"How was your ride?" the dolphin asked.

"Flying," Leah said.

The dolphin laughed. "Lead Horse has such singular pretensions."

"Pretensions?"

"Wishes beyond his abilities," the dolphin said.

"Yes," Leah said. "And you?"

"I swim the seas, Your Highness."

"And stand on the beach."

"Only for you, Your Highness. My legs work only in your presence."

"And you've known that long?"

"Long as I've known anything."

"And the others?"

"They stay in the water, Your Highness, as has been decreed."

"By whom?"

"By you of course."

"When?"

"At the start of time."

"And this cannot be undone? The others can't ever stand?"

"A royal decree has never been undone."

"Not even by me?"

"By you least of all."

Leah didn't understand how this could be, but the dolphin seemed so sure. "Take me for a swim."

"It's flying," the dolphin said.

"That's what the horse said."

"But I'm telling the truth."

And suddenly Leah was flying again, through the brilliant white water, the waves cresting, the sea swallowing her.

Brooke lay down on the side opposite Roscoe on the bed.

Leah opened her eyes but for just a moment didn't seem to be seeing—or seemed to be seeing too much, her eyes aglow with some hidden light or secret. Then she blinked once and focused on Brooke's face just inches from hers, her sister leaning on her elbow and looking down.

Brooke's eyes were tinged in red but dry. She smiled at Leah in their oldest immediate connection. Then her face grew contrite. "I'm sorry, Leah. I know you weren't listening. Even if you were, it was O.K."

For a second Leah couldn't imagine what she was talking about, then she remembered. She nodded to Brooke and offered full forgiveness with her eyes. But then her eyes and eyebrows and entire face formed a question mark—Why?

Brooke sighed. How could she offer an answer or explanation she herself didn't have? Then suddenly she knew. She leaned over and pressed her mouth to Brooke's near ear and spit out a single violent syllable against Leah's eardrum. Then she leaned back laughing.

Leah laughed too, puffed out her rosy white cheeks and spat out her own burst of air to the ceiling above. To both of them, heard and unheard, the word was the same—Boys!

Not long after Brooke tried to more fully explain this episode, but the effort required the lubricant of cigarette smoke. That's how Leah perceived the silver stream flowing forth from Brooke's barely parted lips, as some kind of greaseless lotion freeing her words on the subject, her thoughts. That is, until the lubricant made Brooke cough, at which point it became acrid gray smoke emerging from Brooke's mouth in hacking bursts, swirling about her face as Brooke tried to disperse the irritant and catch her breath. The incident left the eyes of both sisters watering, though Leah's in laughter, Brooke's in moderate distress eventually merging to laughter.

They'd reactivated the long dormant treehouse for this latest sharing. Though Father smoked a pipe in the evenings while reading the paper and Momma had long been a habitual cigarette smoker who was now trying to wean herself of the habit to serve as a better role model for her children, and the smell of smoke in the house would not have been immediately suspicious, Brooke decided that this latest experiment in being grown up could not occur inside the house. She wasn't so much worried about what discovery and the resulting punishment might mean for her, but she was concerned about what it might mean for Leah and for their unsupervised time together. So when she snuck a single cigarette from Momma's open pack in her dresser drawer after school one afternoon, she hid it in the breast pocket of her shirt then found Leah reading in her room and led her out the back door and to the treehouse.

The structure was a little worse for wear and neglect, with mold on the rope ladder and sidewalls, leaves in the corners, spider webs along the eaves and between the rafters. But it creaked and swayed only a little bit as they climbed up there and was dry inside and most importantly secure from prying eyes or sniffing nostrils. Brooke led the way then helped Leah through the hatch. She brushed a thick layer of dust and pollen off the peach-basket seats then gestured for Leah to sit and did likewise, facing her sister from a few feet away in the close space.

She took the cigarette and matches from her pocket and, without pausing to meet Leah's eyes and the surprise and censure she knew would be there, hung the cigarette between her lips, struck the match, and placed the flame to the cigarette's tip, her eyes big as she focused on what was a tricky and unfamiliar maneuver—bringing a lit match that close to her face without burning herself or missing the tip of the cigarette. This was not the first time she'd smoked; she'd done so with Billy a couple of times. But this was the first time she'd tried to light her own cigarette, and it was a little more complicated than she'd anticipated. The match burned to her fingertips and she said "Ouch" and the cigarette dropped from her lips to the dirty treehouse floor. She picked it up, blew the dirt off, rubbed it lightly against her jeans leg, then placed the filter between her lips again. She lit another match but it went out before she could raise it to her lips. The third match wouldn't ignite despite more than a dozen passes over the cover's lighter strip.

Leah reached across the short distance between them and gently eased the matchbook from her sister's fingers that were now shaking in frustration and anger. Brooke looked up at her sister. Leah stared back with an expression not of censure but of indulgence. She took a match from the book, lit it with one sure strike, and held the flame to the tip of the cigarette. Brooke's laugh burst forth around the cigarette and extinguished the match.

Leah looked at her and said with her eyes, "Do you want to light it or not?"

Brooke grabbed the cigarette from her mouth as she doubled over in giggles. After a minute, she sat up straight again, locked her face into a composed and serious mask, returned the cigarette to her lips, and nodded gravely, as if authorizing her launch into outer space or the push that would send her tumbling out the back end of a plane into her first skydiving freefall.

Now it was Leah's turn to laugh, though more in control. She struck a new match and lit the cigarette.

With Billy she'd only drawn the smoke into her mouth, afraid she'd embarrass herself if she tried to inhale. She'd held the awful tasting stuff in her mouth for a few seconds, trying to keep her cheeks from puffing out, then slowly pushed the smoke out through her lips as if exhaling, the way actresses did on television. But since those faux samplings, Brooke had become determined to experience the real thing, to draw the smoke into her lungs and hold it there. To that end, she'd discreetly tried inhaling the pale steam of Leah's vaporizer, which disappeared or changed somewhere down in her lungs and didn't come back out in visible form. Then she tried inhaling the propellant of the whipped cream can, mainly because she'd overheard older girls whispering about the practice one day on the bus. The gas went in invisible and came out invisible but somewhere down there made her dizzy in a giggly way but nothing like the effect she expected, or wanted to create, from smoking. Finally she lit a cone of incense she'd gotten as a gag gift at a Secret Santa party. Hidden Passion it was called. The smoke that rose in a gentle spiral from the ashtray was white and pungent and not entirely unpleasant smelling, with hints of ginger and citrus and something the box called exotica but smelled a lot like burning rope. She positioned her face above the curl of white smoke, drew it into her mouth then, with some hesitation, down into her lungs. She held it there for a few seconds before breathing it back out again. Wonder of wonders, the smoke emerged still white and tasting only mildly repugnant. She inhaled a larger draft of smoke, and exhaled in front of her dresser mirror. She looked so cool. She nodded proudly to her smoke-exuding reflection. Then she stopped that trial. The incense was irritating her throat and filling the whole room. Though the day was frigid, she threw open her window. She tried to snuff out the smoldering cone, but that only made it smoke worse. She thought of throwing it outside but figured that might start a fire. She grabbed the ash tray, ran out her room and down the hall trailing white smoke, and dumped the ashtray's contents into the toilet. The incense sizzled and sparked before she pulled the handle and flushed it down. Momma asked about the odor when she got home. Brooke told her it was from a scratch and sniff perfume sample in one of her teen magazines. Momma had stared then nodded once, in a well-practiced response to Brooke's improbable claims, keeping to herself whether she actually believed her eldest daughter or was simply choosing in maternal magnanimity not to challenge her fib this time.

So when Leah lit her cigarette, Brooke thought she was well-prepared to inhale. She pulled a short drag of smoke into her mouth then removed the cigarette and pushed the smoke out without inhaling. Then she returned the cigarette to her lips and took another short drag. This one she pulled down into her lungs, mixing it with some fresh air drawn through her nose. The mix settled in her lungs and didn't feel too bad. She counted to five then released the smoke in a slow stream. She looked at her sister through the haze and grinned with calculated nonchalance. Then she took a slightly longer draft, inhaled it entirely through her mouth, and counted to ten in her mind before exhaling. But this time she tried to push the smoke out through her nose. That was a mistake. She'd not tested that method in her trials. The first wisps emerged in orderly fashion from her nostrils, but the rest quickly irritated her sinuses and the back of her throat and launched her into a fit of violent and tear-streaked coughing. The smoke probably wouldn't alert anyone to their naughtiness, but Brooke's voluble hacking might. Fortunately, their parents weren't home and Matt was locked in his adolescent daze with headphones on his head and Jethro Tull thumping in his ears.

When Brooke's coughing had finally dissipated and her eyes had dried and she snuffed out the barely burned cigarette and dropped it in a soda can left over from some long ago party, she looked up at Leah and said, "With boys I wish I was deaf."

Leah tilted her head. She never felt sorry for herself, but that was because she had Brooke to do her hearing for her. If Brooke were deaf, they'd both be in trouble.

Brooke smiled. "Not all the time. Just with the boys."

The way she said "boys"—the lifting of her eyes, her forehead, her whole body—made it clear to Leah just which boys she was talking about: those special boys, the boys of her ardor, the boys of her crush.

Brooke chuckled to herself in soundless mirth tinged with regret, then looked down at the rusty soda can she was absentmindedly cupping in her hands. "Like Billy," she said, staring at that can.

Leah could easily read Brooke's lips even when she was looking down or to the side. She could almost read them without seeing them at all, inferring the words from all the other signs in Brooke's face and expression and gesture and manner. But though she could read the words, this reflective Brooke was the hardest for her to understand because she couldn't see her eyes. And without her eyes, her sister's words, though understood, had no meaning. When Brooke looked up, her eyes had taken on a rare serenity, looked a little like the eyes Leah saw when she looked into the mirror.

"The language of his face and body and hands—" she said, then paused. "And his lips." She was looking directly at Leah but seemed not to be seeing her.

Leah tilted her head, trying to understand.

Then Brooke's eyes regained their fire and laughter. "But his words were all bullshit!" she said, shaking her head. "When he tried to say sweet things, they came out all wrong. He said my hair was 'like hay'! Like hay! When I protested he got all hurt and mopey and muttered 'But I like hay.'" She rolled her eyes in disbelief. "And when he decided he liked Cindy more than me, his words went from stupid to more stupid, as if I'd still want to go with him to the pool or the arcade 'as friends'. What kind of idiot does he think I am?"

Leah stared at her, taking it all in.

Brooke noted her sister's rapt attention, saw that gaze for once in all its complexity and intricacy and responsibility. So she returned to her earlier assertion. "If I'd been deaf I wouldn't have had to hear any of those dumb words. There'd be only his face and hands, and those luscious lips." She smiled dreamily.

Leah raised her eyebrows and wrinkled her forehead in protest.

"I know, Leah. I know. The words come eventually. Whether you hear them or not, they still come." She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Leah's. She spoke from that proximity, her mouth near touching Leah's nose, her syllables fluffing Leah's bangs, trailing across her cheeks. "But can't you let me pretend?"

Leah arched her eyes in teasing consideration then shook her head once, her skin rubbing against Brooke's forehead.

"I know," Brooke said. "It's dangerous to pretend about boys."

Boys, Leah signed.

Period Piece

O.K. So it really didn't make sense to take Leah to a movie, especially not a period romance spoken in verse using archaic Elizabethan English. Not only did it not make sense, one might even consider it cruel, making a deaf girl sit through a two-hour movie that was mainly experienced, and understood, through its sounds—maybe not as bad as taking her to a symphony but close. That's more or less what the snotty high school girls two rows behind were whispering back and forth, though in language much more petty and mean. Thank goodness Leah couldn't hear.

But Brooke didn't care if it made no sense or might be judged by outsiders as selfish, even cruel. She was fed up with the August heat and humidity and boring long days at the pool with the water too hot to give any relief, or their futile attempts to find some hint of cool beneath the porch's paddle fan or in the shadiest corner of the den. It was a hopeless search. And she was growing bitchy under the strain. She liked that newest word, bitchy—well, not new exactly but one she'd only recently grown brave enough to use, around Leah anyway and some of her friends from school. She even liked the attitude the word carried with it, a hard-edged insensitive sensitivity. She'd catch her friends off-guard with the word, then quietly excuse her crabbiness in the wake of their shock—I know I'm being bitchy (pause to let the surprise sink in) but he shouldn't have said that!

But being bitchy for effect or release was one thing, being more or less permanently so to the point of growing weary of your own bitchiness was another matter altogether. And that's what it had come to. She couldn't bear to be around her own peevishness. She had to escape herself.

Besides, she'd been wanting to see Romeo and Juliet since it came out over a year ago. But on that first go round, with the theaters full and everyone talking about it and the theme song playing on the radio, Brooke had made a big mistake in declining repeated opportunities and invitations to see the film in hopes that a certain someone—in this case, Frank—would catch her overt hints and invite her to go to the movie with him. Needless to say, that didn't happen (how many disappointments was she doomed to endure at the hands of clueless boys!). And then the movie had left town and she was maybe the only one on the whole earth who hadn't shed tears to its tragic tale.

Well, one of two, though how could Leah be expected to cry over a movie she couldn't hear and a star-crossed romance she couldn't understand? But no matter that—the movie was back in town, showing in a matinee at the budget theater within a walking distance of tolerable sweatiness if they stayed on the shady side of the street. She was going this time. And since Leah was in her charge, Leah was going too, however senseless the endeavor for her. She could close her eyes and take a nap if she got bored or frustrated with the bewildering actions on the screen.

Leah loved the summer and never felt uncomfortable in the heat. Most children are more tolerant of the heat than adults, but Leah was exceptional even among children. She never perspired and didn't show the slightest discomfort even in the oppressive heat and humidity that settled over the region in August. So when Brooke grabbed her hand and said they were going somewhere "to get a breath of cool," she set aside the book she was reading, The Moonstone, on the porch's swing and followed but couldn't for the life of her understand her sister's sense of urgency.

And now she was cold in the dark and drafty theater. During the previews she started shivering so violently her teeth chattered. That noise prompted another round of whispers from the girls two rows back. After rubbing Leah's shoulders and bare thighs below her shorts failed to stop the shivering, Brooke signaled for Leah to stay put then stood in a huff and raced out to the lobby. She asked first the ticket taker then the ticket seller if they had a blanket for her sister. The two, both pimply high-school dorks (neither of whom she knew, thank God!) seemed more interested in looking down her tanktop than finding Leah a blanket, shook their heads. Brooke began to think she was doomed never to see Romeo and Juliet and started to ask if she could get her $1.98 back when the woman behind the snack counter waved her over and handed her a dark red wool blanket. "It's from when my daughter used to come to matinees. She was always so cold." Brooke noted the past tense and the woman's sad tone but said only "My sister thanks you; I'll return it after the movie" then hurried toward the theater doors. The leering ticket taker made her wait as he paused before unclipping the end of the velvet railing from its brass post. She shook her head and deftly stepped to one side and jumped over the railing.

"You can't do that," he blurted.

But she had. She strode through the doors and into the theater without looking back, daring him to follow. He didn't.

The big screen was blank then showed the words now for our feature presentation. Brooke quickly tucked the blanket around Leah, totally covering her body so that only her face and blond hair showed above the wool. She laughed at the sight—that radiant face floating above the dark blanket and seat. "You look like a ghost," she whispered.

Leah's teeth chattered one last time.

Someone said in a stage whisper "Or a skeleton" followed by muffled laughter.

Brooke ignored the comment and was glad Leah couldn't hear. She slouched down into her seat. The movie started. Maybe now everyone else would shut up and leave them alone.

Contrary to Brooke's assumption, Leah experienced the movie in profound complexity though in a manner far different from that of her sister clutching the armrests tightly and hanging on every word from the luscious lips of the dreamy couple. Though touched by the ethereal beauty of the teenaged stars, released from the stranglehold of their lyrical phrasing and equally seductive and sad background music, Leah was able to observe the story from a perch of detachment that granted insight beyond her years. The scenery was as breathtaking as the lovers—the city streets, the countryside, the ballroom, the garden, the bedchambers: grand yet serene and finally indifferent backdrops to the tragic events played out upon them. The characters—every last one of them—exhibited the flashing flaw of narcissistic self-indulgence to match the flamboyance of their costumes. Sure, Leah's lip-reading missed some of the words, mainly those that were spoken off camera and shone to break on this or that rapt and shining face (usually Romeo's, both shining and vapid); and she puzzled over a few of the archaic words she could read (what meant thou to these eyes oh fair for "wherefore"?—by the middle of the movie she was thinking in Shakespearean rhythm and rhyme!). But those missed words had nothing to do with her confusion about the motives underlying the steady stream of bad choices. These lovers were not doomed by fate, as they and later their survivors wished to believe; they were doomed by their own self-absorption, by their feckless (Leah loved that word, gleaned from a Welty story) and fickle hearts. She could see how one would be tempted to forgive Juliet this shortcoming, so young and innocent and pure was she. But Juliet too knew the rules of right behavior and chose to ignore them in favor of short-term gratification with no long-term resolution. Leah could not for the life of her understand the force behind such folly. She ended sympathizing most with the Nurse who, though marked by plenty of ditziness, at least cared for another above herself and paid a high price for that love and witness.

But of course Leah couldn't explain all this, or any of it, to her sister as they emerged into the blazing day after returning the blanket and hiding in the crowd (why'd Brooke do that?) to avoid brushing past the male attendants. She didn't have the language to share it with Brooke, didn't have the language or experience to decipher it within herself. And even if she had, Brooke wouldn't have understood.

"Wasn't he just heavenly?" Brooke asked and then swooned, and not from the heat, in answer to her own question.

Leah grinned but not in recollection of Leonard Whiting's perfect features.

"He's so much more beautiful than his pictures!" She had some of those pictures, cut out of her teen magazines, posted on the bulletin board in her room. Now she had something even better, clear in her mind at least for the moment. "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art though, Romeo?" She clutched her hands up under her chin and fell backward into Leah's side.

Leah expected the swoon (Brooke was a great one for telegraphing her grand gestures—otherwise why do them?) and steadied her sister enough to keep her from falling.

Brooke caught her balance and ran ahead, launched into two perfect cartwheels on the shimmering sidewalk.

Leah didn't know wherefore Romeo was, but she well knew where Romeo's heartthrob face had lodged and saw the immediate effects. Now if she could only figure out why.

That evening, after the passing of a raucous late-day thunderstorm and the resulting relief from the heat, they were sitting cross-legged in their baby-doll pajamas on Brooke's bed with her windows open on the vibrant night. Brooke was drawing endless variations of arrow-pierced hearts in her Billy scrapbook resurrected from under the bed. It mattered little that the original focus of that scrapbook was long forgotten if not gone (they rode the bus together and he was in Youth Group at church). The spell that notebook was under—it fairly reeked of romantic longing and tear-streaked suffering—made it the perfect antidote to today's latest fanning of Brooke's flames.

Leah was, as usual, reading. She'd finished The Moonstone before dinner and was now started on Tess of the D'Ubervilles. It was a paperback she'd borrowed from the shelf of dog-eared beach-reading at the cottage they'd rented earlier in the summer. The soft but knowing gaze of the young woman on the cover had been what caught her eye, and she'd tucked it into her tote and brought it home for future immersion. So why not now? Knowing was in short supply this day. Maybe the girl in this book could help.

Brooke was in the midst of a sighing pause—her sigh evident in her slumped shoulders and lax cheeks—after the furious flat-pencil shading of one of her hearts when she suddenly sat upright and got the strangest quizzical look on her face. Leah wondered if it was Momma or Father calling out from downstairs. But if so, why the puzzled expression? And why didn't Brooke reflexively touch her ear to alert Leah to the sound?

Instead, without any gesture or even a glance at her sister, Brooke jumped off the bed and ran out of the room. That's when Leah saw the spot of red on the bedspread where Brooke had been sitting. In later years, after she'd had her own anticlimactic experience of a first period—a smear of blood on the toilet paper after peeing followed by the dutiful installation of the bulky pad that Momma'd given her in anticipation of such an occurrence—Leah tried to recall her mix of thoughts in the moments before Brooke returned. Why wasn't she more alarmed, both by her sister's startled actions and the blood on the bed? First she wondered if Brooke had cut her finger on the notebook's wire spiral, but then realized that Brooke's hands had been atop the notebook (which sat to one side on the bed, Brooke's hearts mute witness to this heart's outpouring). She did wonder briefly what she later learned most girls wonder at such moments—am I dying? Or, in this case, was Brooke dying, which would be even worse for Leah than her own death. The blood on the quilt was a far more stark and potent affirmation of her mortality than the pretty entwined corpses at the end of the movie. Why wasn't she afraid? Or maybe she was, a fear she forgot later. All her attempts to recall the details of those fraught moments alone with the blood returned her to the same generalized reaction—Brooke would take care of it, which also happened to be her response to almost every challenge of her childhood and early adolescence.

After what seemed a very long time, and Leah not moving or reading one word in Tess open on her lap, Brooke finally returned dressed in full-length flannel pajamas despite the season. Keeping her eyes downcast, she leaned over from the side of the bed and hugged Leah in a prolonged embrace, quivering slightly.

When she finally stood, Leah expected the worst. Instead she was greeted by a beaming smile from Brooke and the giddy statement, "I'm a woman now!"

Leah was confused. Brooke was no more a woman than the man in the moon was—or the precocious Juliet.

Brooke plowed right through her sister's confusion. "I can have a baby!"

Now Leah was really confused. She glanced over at the child's rocking chair in the corner with all of Brooke's "babies" carefully arranged on the seat—Sammy, Meredith, and Jack: two stuffed bears and a floppy-eared white rabbit.

"No, no, no, no, Leah!" Brooke exclaimed. "Me! My body can have a baby!" She sat down on the bed and took Leah's hand in hers and gave a generalized summary of the female reproductive organs and the menstrual cycle, including an explanation for the spot on the quilt that had faded from bright red to dull maroon. While Brooke got sex education in school, and plenty of additional information (of varying accuracy) outside the classroom, Leah's special school had not yet incorporated sex education into their curriculum. So all of this came as genuine news to Leah. Brooke left out many of the details, including the entire male side of the equation; but even so, the lesson was too much to absorb. She just nodded each time Brooke paused to see if she were following along.

Brooke finally finished and jumped up. "Isn't it great? I'm a woman now!"

Leah turned and looked at the blood spot. She couldn't for the life of her understand how that spot made Brooke a woman.

Brooke followed her gaze. "Don't worry, Lee. It'll wash out." She started to untuck the quilt.

Leah grabbed her book and the notebook and stood up to let Brooke remove the stained quilt.

But Brooke paused suddenly in her efforts. "Don't touch it, Leah," she said.

Leah nodded assent. Touching the spot was not something she planned on doing.

"I've got to preserve the moment." Brooke ran out of the room.

"Preserve" when associated with the spot didn't seem all that wise to Leah. In fact it struck her as downright disgusting. And if Brooke cut up the quilt Momma would tan both their hides.

But Brooke didn't return with scissors. Instead, she brought the Polaroid camera from the hall closet. And with one press of the shutter and the simultaneous brilliant flash, Brooke had preserved her moment. She set the camera and its developing print on the dresser and resumed stripping the bed. She balled up the quilt and ran out of the room, headed for the laundry, practically flying in her joy and excitement.

Leah walked over to the dresser and looked at the instant print in the camera's holder. Its black background slowly resolved into colors and shapes. The reddish-brown spot that emerged in the middle looked like just one more accent in the quilt's diverse patterns and design. No one except Brooke and Leah would know its true meaning.

Later in the month, a week before the start of school, Momma informed Brooke that she'd be feeding Sally Milton's cats for a few days.

Brooke responded with predictable obeisance. "Why?"

"Because I said you would."

"Why can't Matt do it?"

"Because I said you would be glad to help out."

"Why did you say that?" Brooke shrieked. "She's a senior and I'll be a freshman! She'll probably force me to carry her books or shine some boy's shoes! Why should I help her?"

"Because it's the Christian thing to do," Momma said calmly.

"Sally Milton has never done one single Christian thing or even a normal sort of nice thing to me my whole life. She's been nothing but a pain in my derriere!"

Leah giggled. She loved Brooke's expanding vocabulary.

Momma said, "Their family needs our support."

Brooke said, "Why? You don't hardly know Mrs. Milton. What's so important about helping them?"

Momma had had enough. She pinched her right index finger against her thumb and drew them in a zipping motion across her lips.

Brooke took a breath to speak and Leah feared she might actually try it. But in the end she swallowed her continued protest unspoken and substituted the stomp of her foot and a low growl.

After a pause, Momma continued, her face calm again. "The key will be in the mailbox, the food and feeding instructions on the kitchen counter. You begin tomorrow evening."

Brooke stormed out of the kitchen.

Leah looked at Momma and shrugged as if to say, "You know Brooke."

Momma sighed and said, "Watch over for your sister, please."

Leah nodded then followed after her new charge.

The next day they were returning early from the pool in the cloudy and cool mid-afternoon. They passed the cul-de-sac where the Milton house was, and Brooke turned down that road. She answered Leah's question without even pausing her stride. "So Sally's stupid cats get fed a little early; I'll be darned if I'm going to make a special trip all the way back over here." She strode on ahead.

Leah followed.

They rounded the end of the tall hedge along the road and turned up the Miltons' drive when they spotted a car parked in front of the house. The two girls stopped at the end of the drive. At that moment the front door opened. They slid behind the screen of the hedge but were able to see the front of the house through a gap in the branches. Mr. Milton emerged from the doorway carrying a suitcase in each hand. He was a balding round-faced, round-bodied man who was so naturally jolly that the Rotary Club always used him as Santa Claus at their family Christmas party. But today, for the first time in their viewing, his face was weighed down in a somber expression. Had someone died? There'd been no mention of such a loss at church this week. And what about the bags? Brooke and Leah looked at each other with wide eyes, coming to the same conclusion simultaneously—Mr. and Mrs. Milton were getting a divorce! Poor Sally! No wonder Momma wanted to help them out. But why would they need to take care of the cats if only Mr. Milton was moving out?

Just then Mrs. Milton came out on the front stoop. She too had a very serious expression, and her eyes squinted as if into the sun though the day was cloudy.

Mr. Milton finished loading the bags into the trunk of the car then waved to his wife before getting in the driver's seat.

Mrs. Milton said something into the void of the doorway and Sally walked out, pausing on the stoop while her mother locked the front door and dropped the key in the mailbox. Then the two paced down the front walk together, Sally hobbling on swollen feet and leaning lightly on her mother's arm. Even carefully wrapped and belted into the large gray trench coat, months ahead of season, Sally's ballooning midsection was conspicuously apparent. Leah looked up at her sister. Brooke's mouth fell open.

Then Brooke grabbed Leah's hand and they ran down the road toward the next house—the Taylors', empty this time of day—and ducked behind the hedge just as the Miltons' car emerged from the drive and headed for the main road. It cruised slowly past the Taylor house and the Fulcher girls peeking around the end of the hedge. Mr. and Mrs. Milton were in the front seat, staring stone-faced straight ahead. Sally was in the back, gazing out the side window and straight toward Brooke and Leah. If she saw them, she didn't let on. Her gaze appeared distant and sad.

Once the car had turned right and disappeared on the main road, Brooke turned without speaking and headed in the same direction. Leah got ahead of her and asked about the cats.

"I'll come back tonight and feed them," she said. "It's the least I can do."

There were a handful of times in their childhood when Brooke's actions totally confounded Leah—well, maybe more than a handful. Of those times, there were a select few when Brooke seemed to be acting from something or someone outside herself. Conscientiously tending Sally's cats that week, then bringing her school assignments every day and leaving them beside the door, then not participating in the vicious gossip that spread around the school before Sally returned a month later, or the continued gossip that greeted her return with those loose-fitting clothes (to hide her residual weight gain) and wounded gaze—that was one of those times, perhaps the single most inexplicable, especially in light of the fact that Sally never again spoke to Brooke, let alone thanked her.

The Ring

At some point early in her teens (Leah couldn't say exactly when), Shawnituck Island became Brooke's vision of Shangri-la. They'd known about the small island off the coast accessible only by ferry for years—with no paved streets (just boards laid across the sand) and a few hundred year-round residents tripled during the summer months with the influx of renters and hardy or poor or ignorant souls sleeping in tents in the no-see-um infested campground (with swarms of mosquitoes waiting outside the tent if anyone attempted to flee the no-see-ums). They received these and many other details about the island from Aunty Greta, the self-described "Black Lamb" of Momma's family, the youngest of six children. She'd followed a native islander from the coastal state college out to the island one summer long ago; and though the boy married a local girl ("first cousins" Greta said), she'd chosen to stay on anyway, living in a small cottage and painting watercolors she sold to tourists for a pittance and swapped with locals for services or supplies.

Brooke and Leah would see Aunty Greta once a year, the day after Christmas at Mim and Pap's house—Momma's parents—for their annual family gathering. Father and Momma and the sisters and Matt (sulking in one corner of the backseat, far back as anyone could remember) would leave mid-morning for the two-hour drive down east on thinly travelled but well-maintained roads. Aunty Greta (according to her version) would have to rise before dawn and brave stormy seas on the decrepit ferry then drive for interminable (her word) hours through swamps infested with snakes and cloaked in spooky fog just to reach the highway pointed west toward her birthplace. "From there on it was smooth sailing," she'd always conclude, letting the girls, and anyone else who was listening (most weren't), know that mainland travel was an exercise in privilege and pampering.

She gave the sisters hand-made presents—animal figures made of shells when they were younger, then photos of the ocean or sunsets mounted in driftwood frames lined with shells, and more recently jewelry—bracelets and necklaces—with the shells held together by monofilament fishing line. She'd always dismiss their awe and praise with a wave of her arm and an aw-shucks "That's nothing." But then later, after dinner and a couple of glasses of sherry, she'd sit in the soft upholstered chair in her old bedroom with a sister on each knee (or each armrest, once they'd grown taller) and describe in detail where she'd found the shells she'd used in their gifts, and how from the moment she'd spotted them in the water or on the sand she had a vision of their final placement, a vision that linked that particular shell to either Brooke or Leah through the hand and heart of Aunty Greta, her face weathered and worn beyond its years.

Maybe that was what had captured Brooke's imagination at a formative moment—Aunty Greta's passion, and the romance implicit in her life story. Or maybe it was the romantic appeal of the Shawnituck Island itself, cut off from the world and time, even its language preserving the Elizabethan accents and vocabulary of its seventeenth century settlers, idiom that would make Brooke laugh and cause Leah to tilt her head, in much the way she had on viewing Romeo and Juliet. Leah for her part never understood Brooke's fascination. The Shawnituck Island she knew, both from Greta's stories and her face, seemed a harsh and demanding place that shaped its residents, human and otherwise, far more than they shaped it. Though she loved all the gifts Aunty Greta gave her, it was a watercolor Greta had given her parents that most vividly represented both her aunt and her aunt's adopted home. It was of an ancient gnarled live oak shaped by and locked in perpetual battle with invisible gale-force winds.

So starting at about age thirteen, every spring Brooke would ask Momma if they could go to Shawnituck this summer for their annual beach vacation. And every year Momma would give the same unbudging answer—it was too far, the ferry service was unreliable, and what would they do if a hurricane came along during their stay. She never mentioned that Father and Greta "had a history" and an even greater hurricane might form if those two were kept in proximity for days, let alone weeks. Instead, each year they made their mid-July pilgrimage to the same second-row cottage on Bogue Beach, a thin strip of barrier-island sand firmly anchored to the mainland by a four-lane drawbridge and stocked with many of the amenities of home—supermarkets, arcades, movie theaters, libraries—and even some of the same residents, when the vacation dates coincidentally overlapped.

The summer Brooke was sixteen and still on her learner's permit (but not in the vagaries of beach traffic, Father made clear before they even left home), the Garrisons overlapped their first week on Bogue, staying at a plush beachfront place a block to the east. Within a day, Brooke had decided that Jennifer Garrison, a year behind her in school, was her new best friend, perhaps in part because Stuart Garrison, a year ahead in school, looked a whole lot more alluring dressed in swimming trunks and backlit by the beach's sunshine than he did back home. Jennifer was happy for Brooke's attentions, whatever their origins, as they palled around with long walks on the beach, afternoons at the pier's arcade, and evenings strolling (or, as Brooke said, "trolling") the beach and gently rocking pier thrust far out into the ocean and stocked with fishermen lolling and smoking and watching the teenaged girls strolling past out of the corners of their eyes. By then, Momma had reluctantly allowed Brooke to start wearing two-piece suits ("But not too skimpy!); and her sister's breasts, though still small, were perkily displayed in those suits or under the bright tank top with her bra strap peeking out beneath the thin shoulder straps.

Leah, with no breasts displayed within her one-piece suit, was not invited on any of the girls' excursions and, truth be told, just as glad. She didn't like Jennifer, who talked too fast and with the annoying habit of looking down when she spoke, leaving Leah confused about her words and acting stupid in her presence. Leah was this year content with their old beach pursuits—taking long walks with Momma and Father (Matt was off at Boys State, a two-week on-campus retreat for rising high-school seniors), collecting shells in her plastic bucket, making a sandcastle or two, burying Father's legs in mounds of fragrant and sloppy dark sand. It was as if she knew, by watching Brooke change, that these family moments were fleeting; and she should enjoy and preserve them long as she could.

And all the other times she read—on the beach under the umbrella, on the chaise on the cottage's screened porch, curled up in the soft-cushioned chair in the open family room, or in the top bunk before going to sleep or on waking. The books she brought from home, borrowed from the library, were all nineteenth century novels by women—Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch. There were also a few recent additions on the cottage's bookshelf, and she read all those by women—The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Delta Wedding, and If Morning Ever Comes. Between her real parents and her imagined lives, Leah hardly missed her sister during her Garrison week. She was almost glad to be on the sidelines, spared the burden of having to try to understand her sister's choices and evolving behavior.

Brooke would go out every evening—"Oh, just hanging out with Jen"—while Father wrestled with the rabbit ears of the T.V. in hopes of getting a snowy version of Kojak or Bonanza and Momma sat at the dining table and leafed through her Redbook magazines, smoking her daily cigarette, and Leah escaped into her fictional worlds that generally seemed more real than the cottage world her body occupied. Then the three would retire and Leah would lie in the upper bunk with the lights out and nothing but the smell of salt air and the brush of a saturated breeze and the occasional slash of headlights crossing the far wall—and let her fictional world blur into an imagining of what Brooke was doing at that moment. And in those imaginings, Jennifer Garrison was nowhere present and not even Stuart Garrison but men—men, not boys—always properly dressed in Victorian wool suits and leaning over and whispering—yes, whispering in her mind, an imagining of what it was like to hear, of the sense of sound that somehow matched in texture and feel the wisp of salt-laden air, the brush of a feather, the crumple of a tissue—and following that whisper with a chaste kiss on the cheek, a solicitous smile, a fathomless stare that was nonetheless known. These were Brooke's adventures out of sight that became her adventures, lying there in the dark bed.

Then Brooke would arrive back at the cottage—always faithfully at 11:29 on the dresser clock's digital face, exactly twenty-nine minutes past her curfew, just short of raising Momma's ire—and sneak in the never locked side door. Leah felt the vibration of Brooke's footsteps on the side landing, across the kitchen, up the stairs and down the hall. With her head cushioned in the pillow and one eye open, she'd see her sister slip into the bedroom, carefully close the door, then slide out of her clothes and into her pajamas, sometimes holding onto the bedposts for support. Then Brooke would disappear from sight as the bunks rocked ever so slightly from side to side. And at that moment Leah's imagining of Brooke's experiences out of sight would transition from the idealized vision of Victorian courtship and heartbreak to the rough-edged reality of wine-tainted breath and the faint scent of someone not of this house. Her mind wouldn't build outward from those stimuli—not that it couldn't but it chose not to. Sleep proved a welcome refuge then. And the next morning, after swinging down from the upper bunk, she'd leave a stick of gum beside Brooke's sleeping head before scurrying off to the bathroom then the sandbars unmarred by human or dog print.

The Garrisons left after the first week and Brooke seemed relieved. The only direct reference she made to her time away was on their first walk together along the incoming tide that hazy Saturday morning as the Garrisons were packing to leave and Brooke made a point of being as far away as the close confines of Bogue Beach would allow. When they were to the end of walkable beach, where a wide creek of inrushing seawater blocked their way, Brooke paused before turning and said simply, "He was more fun to look at than spend time with." Leah had tilted her head and waited for further explanation on both points, as she didn't think of Stuart as even sort of "fun" to look at—all gangly and with a shock of dark hair permanently across his right eye—and couldn't imagine spending time with the dour, withdrawn soul. But Brooke met her question with a light-hearted giggle and a piece of seaweed pulled off the jetty and trailing out behind her like a pennant as she ran prancing through the shallow water shouting something that Leah finally recognized as "I'm free" during a return pass just before Brooke trailed the slimy seaweed across her head.

More explanation on what Brooke had done came later in the day when she gestured with a finger over her lips for Leah to follow after she glanced around to see that no one was watching then darted onto the rocks underneath the pier where it tied into the shore. From the beach those rocks looked like a solid wall underpinning the pier and the arcade and market that separated that pier from the street and parking lot, and controlled access to it. But once on the slippery, algae-coated rocks, Leah saw that there were gaps between the boulders. Most of these gaps were barely big enough to fit your hand into (and who would be brave or foolish enough to do that—risking the pinch of a crab or sting of a jellyfish, or worse). But Brooke led her up the rock wall to a boulder near the top, where the rough beams supporting the pier deck intersected this foundation, and on the right-hand side, then disappeared! Leah felt a brief gasp of panic. Had Brooke fallen into a hole? But then she felt equally sudden relief when Brooke reappeared in the shadowy dark beneath the pier deck and waved her on. She scurried across the rocks to where Brooke could reach her hand. Then her sister helped pull her up the last and steepest boulder to a narrow ledge so close to the pier deck that she could reach up and touch the bottom of the boards forming the walk and had to duck under the beams supporting the walk. Then Brooke, still holding her hand, shimmied along the narrow ledge with her body tight to the boulder and pulled Leah into a small cave behind the boulder and between two of the pier beams, barely big enough for them and entirely invisible until you were right upon it. In the thin light that sifted down through the cracks between the pier decking, Leah could see that the rocks up this high were clean and dry, and that someone had wedged a piece of driftwood into notches in the rock walls to form a rudimentary bench. Brooke sat on that driftwood now and pulled Leah onto the seat beside her.

"What do you think?" Brooke asked with evident pride and satisfaction.

Leah thought it both the most captivating and frightening hideaway she'd ever seen. She felt like she was on a different planet but simultaneously wondered about all the risks. What if the incoming tide rose higher than normal and drowned them? What if the boulders shifted and trapped them? What if some snake or giant crab emerged from the crevices and attacked them?

Brooke laughed. "Relax, Leah," she mouthed with her lips and tongue and teeth moving with the exaggerated precision that told Leah she wasn't making sounds. "It's safe!"

Just then someone walked directly overhead, casting a shadow down through the cracks in the boards and sifting a little sand onto their knees. Leah jumped in surprise.

Brooke quickly threw one of her hands over Leah's mouth and raised the other to put a finger over her lips.

Leah, wide-eyed in the dim light, slowly nodded understanding.

Brooke lowered her hands and mouthed, "No one knows we're here. It's our secret."

Leah stared at her sister, her eyes framing the obvious question—you didn't find this place on your own; someone else knows about it.

Brooke laughed and said, "But he's gone!" Then she wrapped her arms around her own torso, closed her eyes, and puckered her lips in a mock kiss. She opened her eyes just enough to see Leah's understanding and astonishment. She raised one finger, then leaned back into a half-reclining position against the rock walls, closed her eyes again, and made like more kissing, rumpling her hair with one hand, using her other arm to push an imaginary hand away, first from her breasts then from her waist. After many seconds of this miming that extended past demonstration and into the realm of fond and perhaps slightly sorrowful recollection, Brooke suddenly sat up, opened her eyes, and shrugged to her sister in a gesture that needed no words to say He's gone; you're here; I'm better off.

For the briefest of instants, Leah wondered about the lure in boys that would bring Brooke to such a place and such a state with someone as insubstantial as Stuart Garrison; or, for that matter, with anyone not your soul twin. But realizing she could not answer that question, could not understand—not now anyway—Leah dismissed the question and simply gazed at her sister with her mouth slightly open in an expression of thanks for that sister's return, a conveyance of a week's worth of stored love.

Brooke understood—she had a way of always understanding Leah even if Leah so rarely understood her—and reached out and cupped her chin and said in a whisper (spoken words, Leah knew) "I missed you, Leah. No matter what I do or how stupid I act, we're always together." She lowered her hand and held it out between them in the dim light, palm out, thumb and fingers pointed up.

Leah raised her hand and pressed it against her sister's, her fingers long as Brooke's and pushed tight, tip to tip.

Brooke smiled, parted her fingers, let Leah's twine naturally between hers. Brooke pulled the paired hands to her lips in a kiss that might, or might not, have recalled Stuart. It hardly mattered to Leah the reason why.

For the rest of their vacation, they spent part of each day in this hidden grotto. They'd head out after lunch telling Momma they were going for a walk on the beach or to arcade to play video games then quietly slip out of the hot midday sun and into the cool dimness of their cave. With so few people on the beach at that hour and none under the pier, Brooke and Leah were never challenged as they disappeared into the rock buttress.

And once there they never grew tired or bored despite the close and unadorned confines of the space. At first they played games together. They'd try to outdo each other making silly faces. They'd arrange each other's hair in elaborate braids and twists and pleats. They turned a silent pattycake game (everything they did had to be silent, to avoid detection by people passing above) into an elaborate choreography of fingers and thumbs, fingernails and knuckles, wrists and forearms. This game in turn gave rise to wrist-tickling, where they'd take turns closing their eyes and having the other lightly brush their wrist turned pale side up until the light brush of fingertips became unbearable and they jerked their wrist away, leading to gales of silent laughter. This in turn led to dramatic narratives played out on their knees with finger actors—royal courtships and weddings, family fights and estrangements and reconciliations, vacations to mountains and forests and island getaways, trips to relatives and friends in far off cities. As these dramas became more elaborate and required more than ten actors, the storyteller began to recruit the other's fingers into the play, positioning them as needed and moving them about with nudges and tweaks that eventually became pushes and pulls and quick shoves. In one of her plays, Brooke brought her foot up onto her knee and pretended it was a car—a station wagon like the one Father drove—with her five toes as Brooke (the big toe) and Leah (second toe, a little taller than the big toe, just as Leah was about to surpass Brooke in actual height) and two kids (the next two toes, one boy and one girl) and Roscoe, their Boston terrier (the little toe). Everything was going just fine with this toe family riding around in the foot car seeing the sights until a cow (Brooke's fist) ran out into the road in front of the car and her foot swerved and crashed into the rocks. Leah gasped. Brooke frowned. Things looked bad for several long seconds of stillness in the wake of the crash. Then, joy of joys, here comes the ambulance of Brooke's other foot racing across country roads with five skilled ambulance attendants arrayed across the front seat and they get to the crash site and jump out and pull first Roscoe then the two kids then Leah and finally Brooke from the wreckage. And everyone survived, to live happily ever after, though the station wagon was a total loss.

Sometime early in the week, they discovered the voyeuristic pleasure of eavesdropping on conversations from above. During a pause in one of their joint games, Brooke raised one finger to freeze Leah, tilted her head and looked toward the shadows passing above, then translated for Leah what was being said, mouthing the words and adding facial expressions and body language to indicate different speakers and the tone of their words. I don't care if he's just being a kid! Brooke mouthed, puffing her chest out and miming patriarchal authority. He will not run on the pier! Then Brooke pulled her head down onto her shoulders in a cower of wifely obedience. I'll hold his hand next time. Please don't spank him. Brooke mouthed contritely. Then suddenly she rolled her head back and started wailing in spasms, rubbing her eyes with her fists and kicking her feet. The spanking had occurred despite the wife's pleas.

Leah was mesmerized. She'd never listened in on a conversation before. She didn't know it was possible.

The shadows above moved on. Brooke dried her eyes of imaginary tears. Her face and body lost their artificial tension, and she grinned at Leah. She slapped the back of her hand three times to let Leah know how many swats the little boy had gotten from his father. Then she shrugged—one of the world's infinite small dramas overheard and recorded forever within the two sisters.

And in this way, eavesdropping on private exchanges from above became their main activity in the cave. This pursuit was enhanced by the fact that there was a bench in the shade of the pier market only a few feet to one side of where they sat hidden below. People—mostly couples, sometimes families with children, sometimes groups of fishermen returning from their efforts on the seaside end of the pier—would pause there to escape the sun and sometimes exchange words of idle conversation or intense emotion, which Brooke would "translate" for Leah.

Dem suckers ain't bitin' today!

Yep.

Dat water too hot.

Yep.

Dat sun too bright.

Yep.

Da tide all wrong.

Yep.

You say anythin' but yep?

Yep.

How 'bout I throw you in da ocean?

Yep.

That pair of shadows moved on.

Leah stifled her laugh.

They waited for another story to descend from above, but the shadows all just moved past without pausing. The afternoon was hot, not conducive to pausing for conversation on the sun-baked pier. Brooke pulled Leah's wrist into her lap. Leah tilted her head back against the rock wall and closed her eyes. Brooke sent Leah's wrist into a paradise of tender touch. Leah's whole body and finally her mind followed that wrist's euphoria, arrived in her white fantasy world.

"So where would you like to go, Madame?" the white gazelle asked.

"Why, here is just fine," Leah responded.

"But here is somewhere," the gazelle said. He had a long pair of spiral horns arcing out beyond his head, of unimaginable length and beauty, all brilliant white and somehow visible despite the white surrounding world. "We have to go there to get here," he said.

"How can we go there?" Leah asked.

"On my back," the gazelle said. "I'll take you."

"But we're already there," Leah said.

"Because I brought you," the gazelle said. "Don't you remember?"

"I guess," Leah said, though she didn't remember who brought her here.

"I'll do so again, if you like," the gazelle said.

"Please do."

And then they were flying, out over the white sea and in the white clouds. But it wasn't on the gazelle's back she rode but on a bird's, a huge bird big as an airplane, so big she didn't feel motion but saw it in the passing of the white clouds over the white sea. She couldn't remember where she'd come from and didn't know where she was going, but it was enough just to be on the back of this bird flying somewhere.

Then she was on the sand, white sand soft as powder the exact temperature of her skin. A white seahorse stood on white legs beside her. They were both looking out at the placid white water.

"Did you have a good trip?" the seahorse asked.

"When?"

"Just now," he said. "Before you were here."

"I don't remember," Leah said. "I think I've always been here."

"No, that's not possible," the seahorse replied. "This is only a stopover. No one stays."

"I'm the Queen," Leah said. "I can stay if I wish."

"Even the Queen has rules," the seahorse said.

"And who makes those rules?"

The seahorse was stumped. "Why, I don't know. It's just always been so."

Leah nodded. They looked out on the white sea. White dolphins crested above the white waves. Leah pointed to one of the dolphins. "I think I know that one." She waved.

"Maybe he brought you here," the seahorse said.

"Maybe," Leah said.

Someone tugged at her arm. Leah woke with a start.

Brooke put her hand over Leah's mouth to stifle her alarm and pointed toward the deck above. She smiled an apology for having startled Leah then held up two fingers to indicate a couple and twined those fingers to indicate lovers and puckered her lips to indicate young lovers.

Leah, fully back now, giggled silently.

How will you tell your parents? Brooke held her hands loosely cupped beneath her chin in girlish coquetry.

I'll just tell them. Brooke mouthed stiff-backed in toy-soldier boldness.

But they hate me! They'll never let us be together!

I don't care what they think. They can accept our marriage or suffer the consequences.

But your scholarship! Your apartment! Your car! Brooke wrung her hands and scrunched up her face in an exaggerated whine, then mouthed with a wink. Your trust fund!

Suddenly stiff-backed again in rigid resolve: I love you, Sandy. That's all that matters.

More lip puckering, then more puckering, then more puckering. Brooke got tired of the lips and slid one of her hands up under her T-shirt, though surely she couldn't see the figures to know that. For that matter, how did she know the kissing?

I don't want to destroy your life. Brooke mouthed with the downcast eyes of dejection and sacrificial surrender.

You've not destroyed my life. Brooke beaming and clutching the shoulders of an imaginary person, speaking intently into her eyes. You've made my life—made it whole, made it worth living.

Oh, I love you, Edward!

Kissing, moon-eyes, kissing, moon-eyes. Brooke grew bored with all that, slid her hands again under her T-shirt, tried to move these two along. Soon after, Edward and Sandy did move along, their shadows passing above as they headed for their room, their future, and whatever secret ecstasies they might uncover there.

That night lying together in their pjs atop the sheets on Brooke's lower bunk, Leah turned from her book and asked her sister—using her simplified and intuitive sign language, not the elaborate formal one they forced her to use at school—What is love?

Brooke smiled as the heart Leah shaped with her hands lingered long after the question. Then she answered simply, using the same shorthand sign language, "I don't know."

Leah frowned in disappointment.

So Brooke took her sister's hand and raised it to her cheek, freshly washed with astringent to ward off the blackheads that kept forming there. She rubbed Leah's hand lightly across her cheek.

Leah seemed confused. The face was appearance, looks, not love.

Then Brooke moved her sister's hand down to her chest, placed it over her heart.

Leah felt the thumping beneath the light fabric of the cotton nightshirt. But that was life not love. Everyone had a heart pumping blood. Everyone had life. Not everyone had love. She didn't have love, not like in her books, not like in the scenes played out on the T.V. and in the cinema and on the boardwalk above them. She looked up from her hand in Brooke's still pressed over her sister's heart and gave a look of ongoing confusion and doubt. This love remained a dense mystery.

Brooke gazed into her sister's bafflement and finally recognized it as her own. She felt love, felt its pull anyway, but had no more understanding of it than Leah in her innocence did. They were looking at the same mystery from different sides. She said as much to Leah with her eyes as she let her sister's hand drop.

Leah, with her hand paused on Brooke's shoulder, recalled her sister's miming of roaming fingers earlier in the day. With a mischievous glint, she darted her hand beneath the hem of Brooke's baby-doll nightshirt and up over her stomach.

Brooke, apparently well-practiced in intercepting such attempts, grabbed Leah's hand before it got very far and quickly pinned both Leah's arms against her sides and rose above her sister, straddling her waist and tickling her sister as she held her arms down with her knees.

Leah shrieked in joy and torment.

Brooke stopped after a few seconds and waited for Leah's eyes to clear then said in careful deliberation, "That's not love; that's sex. It's important to know the difference."

Leah's eyes framed a new question. "What's sex?"

Brooke screamed in exasperation and threw herself face down on the bed.

Leah leaned over and patted her sister on the back as if to say, "That's O.K. Brooke. I love you anyway." The she returned to reading her book—a Jane Austen novel, about love.

One cloudy afternoon past midweek, they were again in their cave. Most of their overheard conversations this day were from fishermen, and the fish were apparently biting, based on the exclamations and back-slapping (Brooke loved miming those) and strong odors that drifted down through the cracks in the boards. Leah had begun to wonder if Brooke were fabricating or at least embellishing some of the relayed dialogue. If so, it marked a new excursion into creativity for Brooke, who'd not previously shown such interest or ability. It didn't matter to Leah. She adored watching her sister enact the scenes from the world above, whether they were literal or imagined or a combination of the two.

The sky grew darker, leaving little light to make its way through the cracks in the pier deck; and their "cave" seemed now the real thing, shadowed and lonely and cut off from the world. Above, fishermen rushed past, hauling tackle and coolers and folding lawn chairs toward the safety of pick-ups with camper shells. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Leah glanced at Brooke at the vibration the thunder caused. She'd already felt the approach of the storm through all her working senses. Now it was time to leave.

Brooke reluctantly agreed and started to rise from her seat on the driftwood when she suddenly stopped and raised her hand for Leah to wait.

Leah looked at her sister with evident impatience—a rare emotion but she was terrified of thunderstorms.

Why? Brooke mouthed with a painful scowl.

Leah tilted her head. She thought she could make out two people on the bench. Why would anybody be pausing on that bench now?

Brooke waited, listening intently, her mouth unmoving, her eyes closed as if that might help her hear. Why, Jackie? She mouthed, her face twisted in pain.

Leah felt another vibration of thunder, stronger this time. She rose to leave.

Brooke held her down with the gentle press of a hand on her shoulder while holding the other hand up, a single finger extended in a gesture of temporary pause.

Leah grew angry in fear. Was Brooke fabricating this conversation to goad her? She knew how much she hated thunderstorms. Why was she stalling?

Because I don't love you anymore! Brooke's face showed cold-hearted determination.

Leah paused in her flight, stared at Brooke.

Who is it? Brooke's shoulders slumped in abject resignation.

Leah leaned forward in anticipation. If Brooke was making this up, she'd kill her.

Brooke looked down at her sister, a glint in her eyes. Was she teasing Leah, or waiting for a response from above.

Leah tensed. The next vibration of thunder and she was gone, with or without Brooke.

Who is it? Brooke's resignation changed to anger and insistence.

For just a second, Leah forgot the storm. Who is it? she wondered. Who had caused this break?

There's no one else, Sean. People just fall out of love. Brooke mouthed the words with a remote sadness.

Leah looked confused.

Who is it? Brooke looked angry now, shaking Jackie, insisting on an answer.

There's no one else. You're hurting me!

Silence.

I'm sorry, Sean. I'm very, very sorry.

Footsteps passed overhead.

Leah and Brooke waited, both holding their breath. They waited. There was another rumble of thunder. They should go. But they waited.

Then something fell through the cracks of the boards into Leah's lap. It glinted in some hidden light. Leah picked the object up from the crease in her shorts. It was a ring, a simple gold wedding band. Leah froze in that pose, holding the ring out for Brooke to see.

Then she turned and rushed out of the cave, scurried down over the rocks with well-practiced ease, hit the sand running, raced up the dunes past the sign reading Do Not Climb On The Dunes, climbed over the railing bordering the pier deck, and ran out to the bench above their cave just as the storm broke.

But there was no one there. There was no one anywhere on the pier, all the way out to the fishing end where it widened out or back to where the doors opened on the market. The rain fell in big, cold drops, each like an ice pebble striking her face and head. Then it started to rain harder and heavier. Leah looked around the pier in desperation. Where was Sean? Where was the owner of this ring?

Then Brooke was beside her, wrapped her arms around her like some mothering hen, and pushed her toward the shelter of the market. They burst through the door into the market just as the wind and the deluge struck outside. Then Brooke let Leah go. The two sisters stood there, in the entry to the Penny Pier Arcade and Market, soaking wet and bedraggled, water dripping off their hair, their clothes, their bodies, onto the well-worn floor.

The attendant behind the cash register, a middle-aged woman, said, "You girls need a towel?"

Brooke looked up at the woman and said, "Yes, Ma'am. That would be nice."

Leah looked at Brooke and started laughing, a baby's bubbly and infectious giggle reserved now for only her sister.

Brooke could laugh too, as she caught the towel the woman tossed from behind the counter and began to dry her sister's hair.

It became Leah's obsession to return the ring to its owner, and she had only half a day to find the man as they'd be leaving tomorrow at noon. She had no idea what the man looked like, if he were young or old, fat or skinny, bald or with cascading locks. In her mind she pictured an average height and build fortyish man with well-trimmed dark hair starting to gray at the temples—in short, someone just like Father, an image that added urgency to her search even as she could not imagine Momma ever being so cruel to Father (but what if he'd fallen in love with someone like Jackie—how sad would he be? how sad would his children be?). In her mind she thought that if she could get the ring back to the man, it would somehow ease his pain, maybe even help mend his marriage. She had to find him. She just had to!

They went out to dinner that night to their favorite fried seafood restaurant in town. Leah stared at every man that walked past, trying to spot in each face the weight of sorrow that would surely be burdening Sean. But all the men she saw were either laughing or gorging on fried shrimp or cozying up to girlfriends or slapping the backs of guy friends or yelling at their kids to keep it down. None of these could be the crestfallen Sean. At one point Momma gently touched her hand and shook her head "No"—Stop staring at the men! It's impolite.

Leah blushed and nodded and looked down at her food. When she looked up again, Brooke caught her eye from across the able and tapped her ring finger. That was it! She didn't have to look the men in the eye. She could focus on their hands and look for someone with a band of pale skin where his wedding band used to be.

But that was easier said than done. She quickly discovered that men liked to keep their hands moving—cutting their meat or raising the food to their mouths, gesturing to the waiter or for emphasis while telling a story, waving to someone they knew, raising their arms in surrender, boxing the ears of a recalcitrant child or caressing the cheek of a girlfriend or, sometimes, maybe a spouse. And if their hands weren't moving, they were usually shoved deep into their pockets, even if those pockets were only the shortened ones of a pair of Bermuda shorts. By contrast, she noticed that women kept their hands much stiller—lying calmly on the table, tucked up under their chins with their long fingers curling over their cheeks, gesturing open-handed in request or offer, lying gently across a child's shoulder or around her mate's waist. Leah learned a lot about how grown-ups used their hands, but she had no luck in finding Sean.

As they were leaving the restaurant, she glanced over the patrons seated at the bar beyond the cash register and overlooking the ocean. And to her great excitement she spotted a male ring finger with a pale band of skin where a ring recently resided. She looked at the man's profile. He was younger than Father and with blond hair in a crew cut. But he was old enough to be married, old enough to have lost a wife. And he was staring out at the ocean with a gaze that might've been forlorn. And his hands rested easily on the bar, next to his mug of beer—could that be in resignation and loss? Leah took two steps toward him. He turned and faced her way. Her hand went into her pocket, felt the ring there. She'd hand it to him and walk away. He looked straight at her and a broad smile came across his face. Did he somehow know what she carried? Had he somehow seen her after he threw away the ring?

Then his eyes lifted a little higher, above her head, just as a rude woman nudged her aside as she walked toward the bar. The woman was taller and thin, with long black hair and a slinky low-cut dress. The man's entire countenance, his whole body, seemed to inflate as the woman walked up to him and sat down on the open stool next to him. Then Leah noticed the half-full wine glass that had been sitting there on the bar all along. The woman took a sip of wine. The man leaned over and kissed her cheek, whispered something in her ear, caressed her hair with that hand sporting the ring finger with the band of pale skin.

Momma grabbed Leah's shoulder a little roughly and nodded toward the restaurant entrance. Father had already paid the bill and was outside waiting with Brooke. What was Leah doing, lingering by the bar? Leah couldn't explain so she just shrugged. Momma tilted her head in puzzlement but decided not to pursue the matter. First Brooke, now you, her eyes seemed to say as she sighed in all-suffering resignation. But then her hand assumed a gentler demeanor, curled around her neck and across her far shoulder as she nudged her toward the door and the other half of their family, both supporting and cajoling her with that singular touch.

When she told Brooke about the bar patron, she said, "Probably was Sean, forgetting Jackie with the company of Miss Sexpot."

Leah shook her head adamantly.

"Leah, it happens," Brooke said. "Life goes on."

Leah shook her head again—not Sean's life, not this soon.

Brooke shrugged. "Suit yourself. But you might as well give up looking. That guy has moved on—either with another woman or back to the mainland. You're not going to find him. And even if you did, he doesn't want that ring. He threw it away."

Leah wasn't listening. She could easily ignore Brooke's words (or anyone's, for that matter) by simply looking away. She stared at the ceiling of their bedroom. Then she had an idea. She grabbed Brooke's arm and dragged her toward the door and down the stairs. There was still a half hour of sunlight left (the sky had cleared after the storm). Brooke told Momma they were going for a walk to watch the sunset on their last night here.

But once outside the cottage, Leah turned north, toward the town center, rather than south toward the beach. She dragged her sister along.

"Leah, where are you going?"

Leah just kept walking.

Two blocks north and one block west, she turned into the parking lot of the one motel on Bogue Beach. She led Brooke into the small lobby with its registration desk. A white-haired gentleman behind the desk looked up from his small T.V. and said something. Leah looked at Brooke and nodded.

Brooke shook her head. "No!"

Leah nodded. Yes.

Brooke again shook her head. "No!"

Leah went and sat in one of the lobby's two chairs and crossed her arms. She wasn't moving until Brooke completed their mission.

Brooke rolled her eyes in exasperation and stamped her foot like she did when she was mad (sometimes Leah could feel that stomp in the shaking floor back home, but not with the motel's concrete floor beneath the cheap carpet). Then she turned and went up to the desk clerk.

The two talked for several minutes. Leah entertained herself by watching from behind her sister use her nascent (or maybe not so nascent to the world—only to Leah's awareness) feminine charms—the coy tilt of her head (was she batting her eyes?), the light toss of her hair, the clasping together of her hands (no doubt accompanied by a gentle pout). The man surely should've been well past vulnerability to such nonsense, but darned if he didn't eventually accede and pull out his registration book and scan the names before finally shaking his head. He even turned the book around for Brooke to see. Brooke thanked him profusely, nodding her head many times. The gentleman smiled helplessly, utterly beguiled by this sixteen-year-old siren.

Then Brooke turned, nodded angrily at Leah (Are you happy now?), and stormed out of the lobby.

Leah stood, caught the bewildered man's eye, shrugged her shoulders and tried to smile coyly (though with none of the effect of Brooke's version), and ran out after her sister.

"Leah!" Brooke shouted from where she was standing under the unloading portico.

Leah held her hands up, trying to calm her sister. I know. I should have asked first. I'm sorry. Thank you for trying.

Brooke stamped her foot again.

Leah thought—If I don't find Sean soon, Brooke's foot will be getting sore!

Brooke saw the look and started laughing. "Let me see that ring," she said.

Leah started to pull it out of her pocket then guessed at Brooke's intent and shook her head.

"Oh!" Brooke said, stamping her foot again. "Sisters!" She turned and stormed off across the parking lot.

Leah followed, fingering the ring safely stowed in her pocket, warming to her touch.

On their way back to the cottage they took a detour to make a slow circuit of the pier, all the way out to the end and back again, Brooke trolling for cute guys, Leah searching for Sean. Neither quest was successful, but the beautiful sunset was reward enough for their effort. And the two sisters etched a striking pair in the golden sun—near equal in height, both richly tanned, the brunette emitting an insouciant sexuality, the blonde a precocious grace—to the fishermen watching out of the corners of their eyes.

The next morning was taken up with packing and cleaning. The girls' assignment was to strip the bunk beds—stuffing the dirty sheets into one of the pillowcases to be taken home and fold the blankets and leave them and the pillows neatly stacked on the end of the beds—pack their clothes in the two duffel bags, assemble their books and magazines and other personal items in the cardboard box they'd arrived in, and sweep out the room and the hall and the stairs. They'd finished these tasks and were lingering in the family room when the cardboard box of leftover canned goods Father was carrying ("We leave with more than we come with," he complained to Momma) tore open and the cans crashed to the floor, some on his bare feet. Leah felt the rumble and Brooke heard the cussing. Momma caught their eyes and gestured toward the beach and made the sign of a half-hour (a circle with a vertical slash) before racing to help Father still cursing loudly in the hallway to the back door. The girls didn't have to be told twice as they bolted for the door and the freedom from chores, not to mention their father's shortened temper, that exit promised.

On the beach it was a beautiful morning—clear and dry and not yet too hot. It was very crowded in front of the public access and on over toward the pier, with lots of young children playing, blankets spread out and umbrellas set up, fathers and children splashing in the water while mothers watched from the shade of those umbrellas. Brooke turned toward the pier. The market had a lime-green T-shirt with the phrase Oh yeah? blazoned across the front in dark purple. She'd decided to buy it with her allowance as a memento from this strange vacation. But as she headed that way, weaving between the close-packed blankets, Leah caught up with her and stepped in front.

"I'm going to the pier," Brooke said.

Leah gestured I know, then indicated I'm going to walk the other way. She pointed west, toward where the crowd thinned and the cottages stopped. That deserted end of the beach was a good place for shelling but not much else.

Brooke said, "Why?"

Leah shrugged. Just want to be alone for a few minutes.

Brooke looked at her watch. "Twenty-five minutes. Right here." She pointed to a nearby multi-colored umbrella as a signpost.

Leah nodded. I promise she signed by making a cross over her heart. She turned and headed west.

Brooke caught up. "Don't get your clothes wet," she warned. Leah had on clean shorts and a fresh T-shirt for the drive home. "Or Momma will kill me."

Leah smiled. Mainland Brooke, with all her rules and responsibilities, was getting a jump on her duties. She saluted—order received and recorded. Then turned and continued to the west.

Within a few minutes Leah was past the crowds and into an area of beach with only occasional blankets occupied by couples lying close together on their stomachs or sometimes a solitary person stretched out on a towel. Here the beach gradually took on the feel of the beach of her imagination—the windswept loneliness where the endless sea encountered the shore, no people or animals anywhere, just water and sand, far as the eye could see or the mind perceive. She always liked this end of the island but had never been here alone. An exhilarating freedom accompanied this realization. The world in its soundlessness would open to welcome her. She need not be afraid.

At first she wasn't sure why she'd turned this way, hadn't followed Brooke for yet one more trip, a final one, to the pier. She'd felt an unconscious need to get away from the crowds and had acted on it. And somehow she knew Brooke would let her go on alone, and she was glad for that.

But now here, she knew why she'd come. She felt the ring in her pocket. Its sharp edge cut for her a sense of loss, not only for the man who had thrown it and the life it represented away but also for her, for her futile attempts to return it to its rightful owner, somehow facilitating a mending of his breach. Brooke was right—that search was hopeless.

But neither could she carry the ring back home with her, take its sadness back into the rest of her life. It had to stay here—the ring, the loss, the sorrow. It belonged to the sea, the one thing big enough to hold it. But she had to go where no one else would find it, no one else could desecrate the secret it bore.

She walked without pausing the quarter mile or so to the end of the beach. She stood on the jetty that separated the beach from the inrushing creek that fed the vast and wild marshes at this end of the island. She turned and looked back along the beach and the dunes. The nearest people were a couple over a hundred yards away, lying on a blanket in the sun, too far away to see what she was doing and too absorbed in each other to care. She again faced the creek, slid the ring out of her pocket. She looked at it one last time—as perfect in its circle as it was flawed in its history. There was no inscription or identifying marks. Once it left her hand, it would be anonymous forever, even if someone did happen to find it.

And so it became, glinting in the morning sun as it turned over once before striking the water and being swallowed by the murky crosscurrents where the incoming tide collided with the outflowing brackish water.

But it didn't end that way in her imagining, which was in some ways clearer than her reality. There she was walking on this same stretch of empty beach, same sun, same morning. Only this time just as she went to drop the ring into the creek, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. There was a man sitting alone atop a nearby dune, staring blankly at the blank sea. Something made her stop what she was doing. She placed the ring on her finger and went toward him. He continued to stare at the sea, even as she walked directly up to him. She held out the ring, dangling too big on her finger. He finally looked. Tears welled in his eyes as she placed the ring in his open palm. She stepped back and offered a nod of blessing on him, his marriage, his life. Then she turned and left, free now at the last.

On the way home Brooke mouthed across the backseat, where they sat facing each other playing Go Fish. You should have come to the pier. I saw someone that might have been Sean.

Leah shook her head as she lay down the six of clubs.

Brooke waited for her to look up. It was him, I'm sure.

Leah stared hard at her sister. She shook her head once with unblinking certainty.

How do you know?

Leah set down her remaining cards. She was tired of this game.

Leah, how do you know?

She curled up in the corner by the door, closed her eyes, slept or pretended to sleep the rest of the way home.

Driving Lessons

Brooke got her driver's license early that fall, but it was of minimal use that first year. Their family had just two cars in those days—Father's shiny Buick that got the garage slot and was only driven by him, and the family station wagon that Momma used for shopping and errands during the day and on weekends then was available to Matt for preapproved daylight or early evening use. If neither of them had reserved the car, then Brooke could request of Father permission to use the station wagon. But even under those circumstances, permission would be granted only if her request involved family activities. All of these activities included Leah, since Father, Momma and Matt could drive themselves wherever they needed to go and would never voluntarily hand Brooke the keys and take the passenger seat.

Brooke was glad to have Leah along whenever she drove, glad for the companionship but more so for the opportunity to show off. She looked so cool driving, even if it was just a clunky old station wagon. She had several rules, though—Leah could never change the radio station (Leah laughed at that one), roll down the window on her side (the far side window open messed up Brooke's hair, though it was O.K. for Brooke to leave her window down and mess up Leah's hair—kid's hair was supposed to be messy), or wave to boys even if they waved to her. Leah readily accepted all these rules; none of them mattered to her. She was just glad to be with Brooke, watching and watching over her in this new grown-up activity.

From the start Brooke's one guaranteed chance to drive was taking Leah to and from her weekly dance class on Thursday evening. Mrs. Stafford, who ran a dance studio, had mentioned to Momma after church that Leah might benefit from the exercise and precision of movement that would come with dance lessons. When Momma had asked how such lessons would be conducted given Leah's condition, Mrs. Stafford had said, "Let her try it for two weeks, free of charge. If she doesn't like it, no harm done." Well, Leah loved it; and now it was Brooke's assignment to get her to and from the studio across town.

The first few weeks, Brooke would drop her off, drive all the way home, wait about ten minutes, then drive all the way back to pick her up. Father quickly identified this as a waste of precious gas and suggested Brooke wait at the studio for Leah to complete the hour-long class.

Brooke promptly protested. "What am I supposed to do for an hour?" She was loath to give up driving time, even if it was just going back and forth to the dance school.

"Do whatever you like. Just don't be driving around wasting my gas."

Brooke stamped her foot and stormed out of the room.

But later she saw opportunity in his commandment. With their return to the house less carefully monitored, and all that gas saved, she and Leah could maybe take a little side excursion on the way home, maybe even swing past the Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone and an appearance among the crowd hanging out there. Who would know?

Brooke tried staying in the car but got bored despite trying every radio station on the dial. So she left the car and walked along the strip mall where the dance studio was located. Several of the storefronts were vacant with brown paper taped over the windows from inside. Those that were occupied—a tailor, a dry cleaners, a real-estate agency—were all closed this late and would have been poor entertainment in any case. Beginning to get chilled and with only the dance studio open, she slipped inside its bright doorway.

The small waiting room was empty at mid-class. Brooke sat in one of the wooden chairs along the wall and flipped through a couple of the outdated magazines on the end table. They were all women's magazines—Redbook and the like—of little interest to her. She checked her watch. Still fifteen minutes left.

She stood and paced around the room. There were two doors on the wall opposite. The first led into the studio. She heard music coming from that door with a person clapping in rhythm and occasional shouted instructions. Through the window in the upper half of the door she could see Mrs. Stafford standing beside a record player leading the class, but she couldn't see any of the dancers hidden behind the wall to the left. Mrs. Stafford saw her looking in and nodded but kept on teaching.

Brooke went to the second door. It was unlabeled and solid wood. She tried the knob and the door opened. It led to a dim hallway and another door at the far end labeled Office. Along one side of the hall was a large plate-glass window looking into the studio. Brooke walked to the window and peeked around the end. Mrs. Stafford was to one side, her back to the window. On the far side of the room, facing the window, nine junior high girls were dancing in unison in their leotards and legwarmers and dance slippers. They were all watching Mrs. Stafford. And off to one side, Leah—also in her dance outfit which Brooke had helped her pick out though she refused the bold colors Brooke suggested—precisely mirrored the movements of the class, just a fraction of a second behind, her eyes focused on the dancers, not Mrs. Stafford.

Leah's dancing was effortless and graceful, far more natural and beautiful than the stiff and clumsy movements she was mimicking. Was that really her sister? How had she learned to dance like that? She watched her sister around the edge of the window, not wanting to be spotted but unable to look away.

Mrs. Stafford bent over and lifted the needle off the record. Everyone stopped dancing at once. Brooke wondered if she'd been discovered and slunk away from the window. But then she heard Mrs. Stafford say, "Thank you, class. I will see you next week. Remember, 'Graceful movement makes a grace-filled woman.'"

Brooke opened the door into the waiting room and looked around the edge. Some parents were there, greeting their children as they emerged from the studio. One older girl—Jesse Rogers, a senior and the most popular girl in school—was standing to one side waiting to get into the studio, her dance bag slung over her shoulder. No one noticed Brooke. She stood beside the door and waited for the commotion to settle down.

The waiting room cleared but Leah still had not emerged. Brooke stuck her head into the open door to the studio.

Mrs. Safford spotted her from across the open room. "Brooke, come in. Leah is almost ready." She waved her on.

Leah sat against the wall in the far corner. She'd put on her sweatshirt and sweatpants over her dance clothes and was tying sneakers. She seemed at that moment as helpless and small as she had a few minutes ago seemed composed and self-possessed. As Brooke walked over she automatically looped out onto the dance floor so as to approach Leah from the front. Her sister looked up when she was still several feet away and smiled broadly.

Brooke nodded. "Almost ready?"

Leah jumped up. All ready!

Brooke nodded. "Then let's go."

As they walked across the room, Brooke was at first puzzled to see their figures reflected in a large mirror on the wall where Mrs. Stafford had been teaching. Then she realized the window where she had been watching was a one-way mirror, for parents to watch without being seen.

Mrs. Stafford said as they passed, "Come and watch anytime. Your sister is a lovely dancer." Then she stepped in front of Leah and made a courteous bow. "Thank you for showing the rest of the class how to dance," she said slowly and with deliberate annunciation.

Leah blushed but managed to grin shyly and nod before scurrying on ahead of Brooke toward the door.

Once inside the car Brooke said, "We're going for a little ride."

Leah had no idea what she meant but nodded happily. She'd let Brooke worry about answering to Father.

Brooke drove through some backstreets Leah didn't recognize then emerged on the four-lane highway leading out of town. They drove a short distance on this road then turned into the Dairy Queen at the edge of town.

"How about I treat you to some ice cream as reward for your hard workout?" Brooke said.

Leah nodded. She wasn't hungry and it was kind of cold for ice cream, but she was glad to go anywhere with Brooke.

The parking spaces near the take-out window were empty, but there was a cluster of cars at the far corner of the parking lot. Brooke headed toward those cars and parked alongside the last one. A handful of high school kids, guys and girls, were gathered around a bright red pickup truck with chrome trim in the middle. A couple of boys were seated on the hood of the truck; others were huddled around, leaning against the side of the truck, blowing on their hands between big gestures and loud shouts.

One of the girls broke free from the crowd and ran over to their station wagon. It was Jill Addison, Brooke's on-again off-again best buddy from school. She ran over to Brooke's side of the car.

Brooke cranked down the window, letting the warm air out in a rush. "Hey, Jill-pill."

"Girlfriend," Jill said excitedly. "Daddy let you out of your cage!"

All Leah could see were Jill's hands moving spastically outside the window.

"On my way home from Leah's dance class," Brooke said. "Can only stay a few minutes."

Jill squatted down and looked across to Leah.

Leah looked calmly at Brooke's friend then just as calmly looked away, gazing at the cars passing on the highway beyond the parking lot.

"She's so pretty," Jill said. "Will she ever talk?"

"Only to me." Brooke touched Leah's hand. "I'm going to go with Jill a minute," she said.

Leah nodded stiffly.

"You want me to turn on the heater?"

Leah shook her head.

Brooke leaned over and kissed Leah's cool cheek. "I'll just be over there," she whispered, pointing toward the group of kids.

Leah made no response. There was an odd smell to Brooke's breath.

Brooke rolled up her window then slid out of the car and into the night.

Leah slouched down on the seat to where her head was lower than the seat back. She could still see the group around the pick-up through the windows of the cars separating them, but they couldn't see her. If Brooke asked why she sat like that, she'd say it was to keep warm.

And from that position she watched her sister weave her way among the throng of big kids. At first she gravitated to the knot of girls around the back of the truck. A couple of the girls were smoking, others were laughing. They all stopped when Brooke came up behind Jill. Brooke said something and they all hooted then resumed their chatter. One of the girls offered Brooke a drag on her cigarette and she took it, then handed the glowing tip back.

After a few minutes Brooke left the cluster of girls and walked to the front of the truck where the guys were hanging out. One of the two that sat on the hood of the truck had a girl leaning back between his legs hanging over the grill, her head on his chest. Brooke went straight up to that pair and said something. The girl jumped forward and pushed Brooke. Brooke threw her hands up in mock surrender. The guys roared in laughter. The girls all watched from the back of the truck. Brooke leaned forward and gave the offended girl a light hug. The girl straightened her hair, turned and said something to the guy on the hood, then walked away to a car at the far end of the line. Brooke said something to the guy on the truck then came back toward their station wagon.

Leah quickly sat up and leaned back against the door, her back to the pick-up, and closed her eyes.

Brooke opened the door and slid into the car. She shook Leah's knee. "Wake up, Sleepyhead. Time to go home."

Leah opened her eyes and yawned.

Brooke cranked the car, switched on the radio, turned the volume dial hard to the right. She backed out of the parking space then coasted slowly past the other cars. The girls waved. The guy on the hood of the truck turned his head and looked but made no other gesture. Brooke smiled, rolled down her window, and stuck her free hand out. The girls laughed. The guy just shook his head and looked away.

Brooke rolled up the window and eased the car out onto the highway, pointed back into town, toward home. Halfway there, she touched Leah's shoulder and said, "I forgot your ice cream."

Leah nodded but clutched her arms to her chest—too cold for ice cream.

Brooke said, "Yeah, I guess" and returned her focus to driving.

The following spring they reserved the station wagon on a warm Saturday afternoon and took a ride to Compton Lake, the sprawling man-made reservoir for the city's drinking water. The lake was far out in the county at the end of a two-lane road that wound through rolling hills sprouting fresh green leaves and the occasional white farmhouse. A gravel parking lot and an A-framed boathouse at the end of a dock marked the lake's recreation area. Inside the boathouse a park ranger rented wooden rowboats and plastic two-seater paddleboats. Beyond the boathouse was a grassy field sloping down to water that was deep-blue and high this early in the season. A college-aged couple snuggled on a blanket spread out at the far edge of the field, where it merged into the woods. Brooke rolled her eyes at the sight then turned away from them and headed down toward the water with the big blanket under her arm and two bright beach towels over her shoulder. Leah followed carrying the picnic basket.

They ate their simple lunch—peanut butter and sliced banana sandwiches on white bread, chocolate-chip cookies that Leah had baked, cola drinks in warm cans—as they gazed out at the sparkling water and the green shoreline undulating on the far side. An older couple glided past in a dark-green rowboat, the man rowing with his back to the direction of movement, the woman in the stern seat saying something to the man, maybe telling him what was ahead—just more water. The boat and couple disappeared around a bend in the lake's near shoreline.

For Brooke the scene was dominated by an unsettling stillness. There was no sound out here—no motorboats hum, no cars passing by near or far away, not even the sound of a jet or prop plane in the sky above. She listened for voices or other animate sound and heard none—no humans talking, dogs barking, cattle lowing. She wished she could hear what the couple behind them were whispering, what the couple out on the lake had said as they passed. She missed the creak of the man's oars in the oarlocks, longed for the gentle splash of the paddleboats' paddles, the giggles of young kids squirming in the seats. She pulled her small transistor radio out of the basket and turned it on, the volume low. She felt calmed by the bass beat of a familiar rock song that resonated in her bones through the quiet of the day.

For Leah the day was as full of life as any she'd experienced in years, maybe ever. Seasonal springtime merged with her adolescent springtime to place all her senses in a kind of high alert, sensitive to an unprecedented degree. She was somehow intimately connected to the fluffy clouds drifting by, the diamonds of sunlight glittering on the water, the leaves in the trees unfurling before her eyes, the songbirds (singing in their movements) chasing one another through the bushes near the boathouse, the hawks gliding high above on the warm updrafts. The rowboats and paddleboats rocked back and forth in their slips, the pontoon dock drifted ever so slightly (though not slight to her) from side to side. And the smells—the fresh water, the mud of the bank, the grass mowed two days ago, the field plowed on the hillside opposite, the dogwoods and azaleas in bloom, the dust of the parking lot, not to mention the cola and peanut butter in their mouths and on the wrappers, the tarry shingles of the A-frame, the sun hitting the recently stained deck, the pine resin caulking of the rowboats, the oil on the two-lane blacktop from last fall's resurfacing, dog poop farther up the shore. And the touch—towel, blanket, grass, leaves, dirt, wicker, wax paper, metal cans, skin, hair. Her skin so smooth and soft, pale this early in the season, fine blond hairs growing on the top of her wrist, fine hair pulled tight to her head and over her soft temples, gathered into a ponytail that swept her back so wonderfully when she'd turn her head from side to side—slow turn, gentle sweep; fast turn, whip-like brush. In this moment of life bubbling up it was impossible for Leah to say where her body ended and the world began. It was all one—better than her fantasy world, better than anything she'd ever known or felt.

Brooke brushed her cheek from behind. She should've been startled but wasn't. She'd somehow known that touch was coming, but it didn't dislodge her from her world. It only brought Brooke into it. She turned to face her sister sitting cross-legged on the corner of the blanket. Brooke had the towel folded in her lap and patted it for Leah to lay her head there.

Leah smiled and did as told, lay back on the blanket so her head rested in the perfect cradle of Brooke's lap cushioned by the towel. Brooke's back was to the sun so her body shaded Leah's face. She gazed up at her sister smiling down on her, her face etched against the deep blue sky, all the clearer in every detail for that background and the shadow it projected.

"From a distance they might think we're boyfriend-girlfriend," Brooke said from above.

Leah laughed, not so much at the statement as at the fact that Brooke's face was upside-down, so her lips and words were upside-down. This didn't hinder her understanding—she could read Brooke's lips at any angle—but cast those words in a slightly different light, a surreal tone somehow in keeping with this glorious day. It all made Leah very happy to be exactly where she was.

Brooke followed her statement with a sly smile. "But no babies," she said.

Leah blushed.

Brooke pushed the allusion one step further. "We don't have the right parts."

Earlier in the week Leah had burst into Brooke's room waving a glossy magazine she'd found between the towels in their bath's linen cupboard. She thrust the magazine in front of Brooke who was reordering her chemistry notebook while sitting against the headboard of her bed. The magazine was open to a full page photograph of a chisel-featured, hunky guy sitting in a chaise by a pool. The man was naked and his legs were spread apart, exposing a thick patch of dark pubic hair and a long but limp penis lying atop twin pillows of testicles in their scrotal sack. Brooke leaned forward and gasped then threw her hand over her mouth to stifle any further shrieks. She grabbed the magazine from Leah and turned to its cover. It was a year-old issue of Playgirl with the corners of the pages rounded over from frequent thumbing.

"Oh my God!" Brooke had said. "Where did you find this?"

Leah told her.

Brooke hooted. "I knew Matt was doing more in there than flossing his teeth! You'd better put it back." She handed it back to Leah, holding it by the spine between thumb and forefinger as if handling something repugnant.

Leah took the magazine but held up the photo and pointed at the model's private parts.

Brooke nodded. "So?"

So what's that? Leah asked with a near desperate look.

Brooke suddenly realized just how naïve her sister was on matters of male sexuality. She'd known Leah was uninformed on the details of human reproduction, but had never stopped to consider just how uninformed. She felt a twinge of guilt at having let matters get to this point. She prided herself on being the bridge between Leah's world and the real world, and it was time to correct a severe oversight. "That's a penis," she said as she pointed to the pale tube of flesh. "And those are testicles."

Leah seemed perplexed.

Brooke grabbed the magazine back and leafed through its pages. There was a side view of the same model on another page. He had on an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt but was naked from the waist down, and his flaccid penis and sagging scrotum were more clearly defined in profile. "That's a penis," Brooke said. "And that's a scrotum. Inside the scrotum are two testicles."

Leah nodded slowly, her eyes wide with amazement.

Brooke thought no time like the present and continued. "The testicles produce the sperm. The sperm fertilize the woman's egg. The fertilized egg grows into a baby inside the woman."

Leah pointed to Brooke's stomach. She'd learned about the woman's side of this equation during her lessons on menstruation.

Brooke nodded. "Yes. Inside there, in the uterus."

And then Leah pointed first to the man's testicles then to Brooke's uterus.

"I figured you'd ask that," Brooke said with a sigh. Her finger drew a slow line from the model's scrotum up into the penis then down out its tip. She then made a "V" with her fingers to represent a woman's vulvae and continued the sperm's journey out of the man's penis and into the "V" of the vulvae and on through the air of an imaginary vagina and ended at her bellybutton beneath her pajamas.

Leah's face was clouded by confusion and misunderstanding. Brooke hated that look on her sister's face more than she hated anything in the world. It was an affront to her sensibilities and a sign of failure in her main purpose.

Brooke tossed the magazine on the mattress and jumped off the bed. She went over to her dresser and slid it off the wall and reached underneath its base at the back. She returned with a small white envelope. Standing on the far side of the bed, she raised her finger to her lips and looked intently at Leah in her standard expression of utmost confidence and secrecy.

Leah, though baffled, had managed her automatic response to Brooke's assertion—a simple "X" over her heart in silent vow of silence.

Brooke nodded solemnly then opened the envelope. She slid a thin stack of cards out of the envelope and fanned them before Leah above the bed. There were four cards and from the back they looked like normal playing cards with a red diamond pattern and a white border. Then she turned the cards over and laid them in a neat row in the middle of the bed. The symbols in the corners of the cards marked them all as jacks, in the four suits. But it wasn't the playing card symbols in the corners that riveted the gaze of both girls; it was the pictures in the middle of the symbols. Instead of the standard jack design of normal playing cards, these four cards had photographs of couples in sexual congress, a different couple and a different sexual act displayed on each card. Brooke pointed at the card showing a dark-haired man engaged in vaginal intercourse with a blond-haired and panting woman.

Leah looked from the card to her sister. And instead of showing shock or revulsion, she simply nodded. She pointed with her fingernail to the man's testicles, drew a slow line along his erect penis and on to where it disappeared inside the woman's vagina and onward to the woman's belly, flat now where she was lying on her back on the bed, and drew in an imaginary hump there—the baby that would result.

Brooke was the one baffled now. How could Leah grasp all that so quickly, and stoically? She asked Leah that, with her eyes rather than her mouth.

Leah could smile now. She made two four-legged dogs with her hands and brought them together in rapid humping. She laughed. She'd seen dogs doing it many times, she just couldn't translate it to humans—until now.

Brooke nodded—her sister, always and still the avid watcher and quick learner.

Leah now leaned over to study the other three cards, portraying fellatio, cunnilingus, and sodomy.

But before she could even fix the images in her mind, Brooke swept all the cards up and back into the envelope.

Leah frowned.

Brooke said, "One sex lesson at a time. You can figure the others out if or when you need to." She picked up the magazine. "Now put this back, exactly how you found it; while I hide these raunchy cards."

Leah looked at her. And Matt?

"Don't let him know you found it." She didn't add what she thought—unless one day we have reason to let him know.

Leah had raised her finger to her lips, slid the magazine under her T-shirt, and headed out the door for the bathroom down the hall, walking as naturally as she could manage with a magazine plastered to her stomach.

Leah looked up now at her sister's upside-down face against the blue sky and asked with her eyes and her hands—Where did you get those cards?

Brooke laughed. "I'll never tell!"

Leah gave a fake pout that looked especially phony in her serene and innocent face pillowed on the towel in Brooke's lap.

"O.K. I'll tell you—Joey gave them to me."

Joey Hanson was a short and studious kid from two streets over. All the girls had loved him in grade school for his mischievous smile and cute dimples. But then he'd stopped growing and donned thick glasses and the girls stopped fawning over him. But he still had a way of gaining their confidence, as a friend and spy from the other side, meaning the other gender—guys and guy thinking and needs. And Joey, no fool outside the books either, used this connection to his advantage. Leah was shocked—partly that Joey had such contraband, more so that he'd share it, but mostly that Brooke would even bother to talk to such a nerd, let alone make a secret and risky exchange with him. Why did he give them to you?

Now Brooke blushed, which was a rare occurrence. "We worked a trade."

Leah was uncertain what she meant but knew not to push. And the other cards?

"I think Joey made lots of trades." She laughed and shook her head. "That bookworm knows how to work the angles. He'll be a millionaire by the time he's thirty!"

Leah laughed.

Brooke said, "I wonder who got the aces?" She stared off in deep thought. "I bet it was Liz Carver!" she hooted. The other girls called Liz Milkmaid for her adult-sized mammaries and her willingness to share those assets. The guys called her lots of other names, but mainly called her a lot—in the halls and on the phone—and she never lacked for male attention. Joey might well have parted with his aces in return for a chance at Liz's favors.

Leah giggled to match Brooke's mirth, but truth was Brooke's cryptic allusions had moved beyond the scope of her imagination. There was no precedent for such teenage intrigue in her Victorian novels or at her special school, where everything was closely ordered and carefully watched. She'd wandered beyond her depth and had the good instinct to stop. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift.

Brooke stared down on her sister's face, suddenly glad for Leah's unspoiled innocence and passionate to preserve it. She lightly brushed her hair and the side of her face.

Leah's eyes flashed open. What's it like to be with a boy? she signed

"Whoa, Leah, I'm not that kind of a girl! You'll have to ask someone else."

At first Leah was confused then in an instant realized what Brooke had thought she meant. The image on that playing card, the Jack of Hearts, flashed through her mind but in no way attached itself to Brooke. She laughed, shook her head, then offered a clarification—hugging and snuggling and kissing an imaginary boy, right there in Brooke's lap.

"Oh, that," Brooke said, followed by a sigh that maybe she wasn't aware of. She took a deep breath and thought for a moment, staring off at the lake. When she looked back to Leah, her gaze was simultaneously penetrating and distant. "Most times it's incredibly awkward and clumsy, and you wish you had a manual you could give him to go home and study and try again later. But every once in a while, it's perfect, Heaven."

Leah stared up at her sister.

Brooke's gaze suddenly came back to earth, back to Leah's face in her lap. She sighed again. "There's no way I can describe that, Leah. You'll have to see for yourself." She grinned. "But wait a little while, please."

I'll check with you first.

Brooke laughed. "To get Momma Brooke's approval? I don't think so. You'll be on your own."

A moment's anxiety clouded Leah's stare.

Brooke lifted Leah into a seated position then jumped up. "I'm going to rent a paddleboat." She ran off to the ranger station, leaving Leah on the blanket.

Two minutes later she waved from the dock for Leah to join her, holding the key to a paddleboat's chain lock in her hand.

The water was cold and their clothes quickly soaked, but their laughter merged with the spray kicked up by the furiously churning paddles in this their newest shared experience, out there in the middle of an empty lake under spring sun.

Matt headed off to college in the late summer, where freshman were not allowed to have cars. This gave the girls greater flexibility with usage of the station wagon, especially on weekend evenings when Momma and Father were using the Buick if they were using any car at all. They often attended dinner parties with some of Father's business associates, or sometimes went out to dinner and a movie in what Brooke called an old-timers' date though Leah thought it was sweet and hoped if she ever married she and her husband would still want to go out when they were old (Momma and Father were in their late thirties at this time).

Early in the fall Brooke reserved the station wagon weeks in advance for them to go to the State Fair on the Friday night of its opening. At her request, made in an off-hand way at dinner one evening, Momma had looked to Father who had stared back for a few seconds of pregnant silence before nodding once. And Momma said, "O.K. But back by eleven and no other kids in the car." Brooke said, "Of course" in a way that suggested she was mildly offended they felt the need to verbalize such limits. Then she reached across and squeezed Leah's knee under the table.

The sisters had gone to the State Fair, the fairgrounds only a few miles away, at least once every year far back as they could remember. At first it was always with their parents and usually on the Sunday afternoon of the fair's closing. Then starting about five years ago, they were allowed to go alone together, but only on a weekend afternoon. Momma would drop them off at the pedestrian gate with instructions for them to be waiting at exactly that spot promptly at seven to be picked up. And Brooke and Leah said "Yes, ma'am" (each in her own way) and ran off to pay their youth fares (a dollar in those days) and immerse themselves in all the fun and excitement of that sprawling event. Brooke was partial to the rides and the games. Leah loved the exhibits and the farm animals. The two found common interest in the food (funnel cakes!), the more sedate rides (Leah wouldn't get on the wild rides, watched Brooke waving and mouthing screams from the safety of the ground), and the livestock competitions (Leah watching the animals, Brooke their handlers, who were usually teen-aged boys in tight jeans, rodeo shirts, and cowboy boots). They loved the fair for the same reasons all youth love the fair—so much to do, so much energy—but also because they were complementary equals there. Brooke of course heard sounds Leah couldn't (and did her best to mime them for Leah's pleasure and laughter—especially the voices of the carny hawkers) but Leah saw many things Brooke missed, pointing out everything from a weeping toddler with an ice-cream cone upside-down at his feet to a fat woman with one too many beers squatting to pee behind the Octoberfest tent. The State Fair had become for them a kind of private playground within the public realm. They had other such playgrounds but none as varied and unpredictable as the fair.

So when Brooke parked the station wagon amidst the rows of cars and pickups in the field between the fairgrounds and the football stadium, they both were giddy with excitement. It was a cool clear fall evening and the sun had just set, painting the western sky in pastel shades. To the east, the multi-colored lights of the fair illuminated the flashing and whirling rides, and dust stirred by the crowds mixed with the smoke from the fryers and hung over the scene in a dream-like haze. Brooke could hear the alluring mix of the crowd's murmur, the popping of .22 rifles and balloons pierced by darts, the shrieks of girls on the spinning rides. But she didn't have to mime this medley of sounds for her sister. Leah felt the same pull in the lights and motion and blend of smells—nothing smelled like the fair!

Leah locked her door and turned toward the fair entrance.

Brooke caught her by the wrist, looked quickly around them to be sure no one was watching, then showed her the car key before tucking it up under the driver's side front bumper. She took Leah's hand and guided it to where the key sat on the lip of chrome-plated steel.

Leah nodded but looked confused.

"In case we get separated," Brooke said. "Let yourself in, lock the car, and wait for me."

Leah couldn't imagine why they'd get separated but nodded to Brooke's instructions. Who knows what could happen at the fair on opening night? She marked the car's location, aligning a light pole with the flagpole on the nearby football stadium's upper deck.

And that was just the start of Brooke's peculiar behavior. Her giddiness exceeded that normally reserved for the fair as she skipped between the rows of cars on her way to the entrance, occasionally returning to urge her lagging sister along. Then once inside the gates, she bypassed the Gravitron, always her first stop ("Need to scramble my brains to get in the proper mood!"), as well as the other "vomit ventures" (Brooke's phrase, well-mimicked by Leah as long as others weren't watching) along Ride Row on her way to the livestock pavilion. That was Leah's favorite stop but never first, usually only after a ride for Brooke and a shared funnel cake with chocolate drizzled on Brooke's half, strawberry and confectioner's sugar on hers.

But not tonight. Brooke pulled Leah into the sprawling livestock building, one of the year-round buildings on the fairgrounds, used for trade and craft shows in the "off-season." The sawdust-coated show ring and the bleachers lining one side were empty at this hour. The competitions wouldn't start until tomorrow morning. Leah picked up a printed flyer listing the times for the first-rounds even though she wouldn't be here. She felt a twinge of regret at missing those stately displays—the animals so perfectly groomed and dignified, their trainers trying to appear relaxed and composed while watching their charges' every move, trying to anticipate any unscripted action and head it off before it was too late. To Leah the world inside that ring seemed the closest approach to proper order—humans (her own age, no less) watchful and caring of living creatures lovingly trained to behave in a certain way—even if that order was sometimes broken by a waterfall of yellow pee or outrageous brown plops the scent of which lingered long after the mess had been shoveled into a metal garbage can by the trainer's attentive father or sibling. That empty ring planted a sense of loss in Leah that she was barely conscious of.

"Come on!" Brooke urged, tugging at Leah's sweatshirt.

Leah followed to the livestock stalls.

They passed the Jersey and the Guernsey and the Brown Swiss aisles, most of those animals resting alone in the clean straw of their stalls, a few with sleeping or reading attendants beside them. They got to the Holstein section, much the largest; and Brooke slowed and started looking at the nametags taped or stapled at the head of the stalls—Poythress Farms, Meadowbrook Dairy, Robert H. Johnson Holstein. About two-thirds of the way down the long aisle, Brooke stopped at a block of stalls marked with a handsome wood-carved sign above the generic paper one—Ashford Farms. She peeked around the end of the first stall to discover only a small cow impassively chewing her cud (heifer not cow, Leah would've corrected her had she paused long enough to be informed). Brooke moved on to the next stall, then the next. At the fourth she paused, a big smile spreading across her face, and said something Leah couldn't catch.

When Leah caught up and looked around the end of the stall, she saw an older boy—young man, really—sitting on a bale of straw oiling a harness. She recognized him as the boy that had been sitting on the hood of the pickup truck at the Dairy Queen last year. By then Brooke had moved into the stall, was standing in the narrow space between the cow (this was a cow, her udder swollen with milk where it rested on her lower leg like a white pillow with four pink teats sticking out) and the plank divider to the next stall. She was blabbering to the boy on the bale, her lips moving so fast Leah couldn't understand what her sister was saying and realized suddenly she didn't want to know. She focused on the cow's unblinking brown eye gazing at her, so placid yet somehow familiar and knowing. She stared back at that eye.

A clump of straw fell across her face and broke the connection. She looked over at a frantically waving and animated Brooke.

"Earth to Leah," Brooke said with shouting accentuation straight at her eyes.

Leah blushed.

"This is Danny Ashford," Brooke said, gesturing toward the boy on the bale.

Danny Ashford stood up and extended his hand above the resting cow. Leah stepped forward far enough to grasp that hand lightly, staring at the boy's simple white T-shirt, cleaner than she would've expected, a brilliant white lingering on her retinas after she dropped his strong hand.

"Danny's farm is the biggest in the region," Brooke said.

Leah nodded. She already knew that. Her class had visited Ashford Dairy on a fieldtrip several years ago, far out in the county north of town.

"Danny's in charge of showing his father's herd this year."

Leah nodded.

"Leah loves the cows," Brooke said to Danny, speaking slower now.

Leah blushed.

"She's always telling me what kind they are and stroking their noses and talking to them with her touch and her eyes."

Leah could kill her. She could just kill her sister!

Danny didn't respond to Brooke but gazed at Leah across the cow and waited for her to look up.

Leah finally did glance at Danny, wondering what the stillness was about.

And Danny said to her, in a natural way she could understand but without exaggeration, as if speaking to a hearing person, "I talk to them with my touch all the time. It's the only way they can hear me."

Leah looked away quickly, not so much embarrassed as something worse—grateful for his kindness and understanding, and maybe embarrassed by her gratitude.

When she glanced up again, Danny was gesturing for her to approach the cow. "Her name is Annabelle. She could use some consoling after the trip here."

Leah nodded, moved forward, and knelt by Annabelle's head. Leah needed calming more than Annabelle did; and she was glad to brush the incredibly soft side of the cow's face to the moist nubbly flesh of her nose, consolation being exchanged in one direction or another. The cow's ear twitched. Leah itched behind it. The cow chewed its cud. Leah swallowed in a big gulp. Annabelle's breath was strong and exotic, tinged with the scent of fermenting grain.

By the time Leah stood back up, Brooke was seated on the bale very close to Danny. She leaned forward, looking at the detailing of the harness he was holding, the shiny brass fittings against the supple brown leather. Danny smiled to Leah above Brooke's head then winked. Leah blushed and looked away. She walked back out to the open aisle and on to view some of the other Holsteins that were part of the Ashford Farms herd. They were all beautiful animals.

A few minutes later Brooke hugged her from behind, then jumped in front. "Isn't he dreamy!" she mouthed.

Leah knew she was mouthing the words so Danny couldn't hear. Her lip-reading was very useful at times. She smiled and nodded agreement.

"He has to finish 'feeding and bedding' the cows," Brooke said. She quoted Danny's use of the verb "bedding" with a not so subtle glint in her eyes. "But I told him we'd stop by later."

Leah nodded but was already trying to figure out what form stopping by would take with her deaf sister tagging along.

The next few hours unfolded in a manner defined by those wild rides. Brooke rode those rides almost nonstop, starting at one end of the row and riding each one in succession, then starting all over again. Leah watched from the ground with a heightened level of vicarious participation. Perhaps it was the unprecedented nighttime setting—those spinning lights backed by nothing except darkness seemed to take up residence in her head and stomach. She felt dizzy and queasy by turns. Brooke on the other hand seemed unfazed by her marathon of tumbling and whirling and inversion, each ride only increasing her enthusiasm for the next.

Finally she stopped, exhaled a long sigh, and shook herself off like a dog. Then she nodded at the Ferris wheel, its lofty ring of white lights starting and stopping at the center of the fair as it loaded a new set of riders. The Ferris wheel was the most adventurous ride Leah would consent to board, and each year riding it together marked the crowning moment of their Fair experience. Leah's stomach was still churning from watching the whirling rides, and she'd secretly hoped Brooke would forget about their tradition this year.

But no—Brooke's eyes were alive with fire and insistence. "You've got to ride at least one ride, Leah." She tugged on Leah's arm.

Leah held her ground, her body taller and stronger.

"Come on, Sis." Brooke only used that name when she was annoyed or in a hurry. "It's getting late."

Leah saw Brooke wouldn't give in so finally accepted her fate and let her sister drag her through the crowds to the line waiting to board the Ferris wheel. It was long but not as long as on weekend afternoons, and it seemed to move more quickly. Maybe nighttime rides were shorter than daytime ones.

And when they were finally in the cushioned seat with the safety rail latched (Leah always wondered what good that single square bar would do if they had a sudden jolt or broken hinge) and moving backwards in measured intervals as the operator loaded more passengers—first level through the ride's framing and over the motor and belts and pulleys then gradually upward into the sky—Leah felt a startling new calm as her mind—both inside her body in that swinging creaking seat but also somehow separate, safely watching from a distance in the dark—knew that she'd be O.K., that someone or something greater than any threat or peril, greater than all threats and perils, was watching her as she watched the world, was safeguarding her against all harm. And this sense of reassuring calm persisted, more or less intact, even as they paused at the pinnacle of the wheel's circle and Brooke did her requisite rocking back and forth, persisted largely intact through the full-speed descent and ascent, descent and ascent when the operator completed his loading and threw his metal lever forward and locked it in place. Up and down, up and down—the whirl of those other rides became the whirl within herself, the flashing and spinning and blurred lights out there became the blur in here, inside herself: the thrill, the giddiness, the stomach lifted into her chest, her throat. Yet it was all O.K. Something out there in the night was watching over her. At one point she grabbed Brooke's knee in excitement and wonder. Brooke grinned at her sister, nodded in understanding, laid a hand atop hers.

At the end of the Holstein row, Leah grabbed Brooke's hand to pause her in mid-stride.

Brooke turned and glared at her impatiently. "What?"

Leah smiled at her sister's single-mindedness. Had she even thought about the awkwardness she was rushing toward? Leah pointed to herself then made a single sweep with her arm, taking in the whole building, the fair beyond.

Brooke said, "You sure?" She'd never left Leah alone at the fair.

Again Leah smiled, recalling Brooke's in case we get separated warning at the car. It was impossible for her to imagine how Brooke could simultaneously be so thoughtful and thoughtless. She pointed to her watch. It was five past ten. She made an emphatic circle with a vertical slash through it, then pointed to the concrete floor—ten-thirty here!

Brooke nodded, though with some distraction. She kept looking over her shoulder toward the stalls.

Leah put her hands on either side of Brooke's face the way Brooke did to her when she was making an important point. She nodded to the floor, then toward Brooke's watch on her left wrist.

"Ten-thirty, Lee! I hear you!"

Leah released her sister's face and smiled. She brought her hands together then released them, palms open, up into the air, to the steel trusses and corrugated ceiling of the pavilion. It was a gesture they both used that meant either freedom or joy—or joy in freedom.

Brooke smiled her thanks then turned and rushed off down the aisle.

Leah herself turned, trying to figure out what she would do with the next twenty-five minutes.

But before she could begin her contemplations, Brooke grabbed her from behind and spun her around. She said, "Thank you," then stood on her tiptoes and kissed Leah's forehead.

Leah nodded and watched her sister run down the Holstein aisle toward the distant Ashford Farms block. Someone emerged from those stalls, but Leah turned before Brooke reached him.

To no surprise, Leah left the livestock pavilion. She had no idea where Danny and Brooke would be headed and was loath to cross their path somewhere in the dim and cavernous building, perhaps be mistaken for spying. But once outside in the bustle of the midway, she was uncertain what to do; and the many strangers meandering past—mostly young, mostly couples snuggling—only accentuated her aloneness, both in fact and in her condition. She spotted the Ferris wheel (it was hard to miss) and recalled how secure and safe she'd felt on it just minutes earlier. She marked it as her destination and purpose for the next twenty-five minutes, something tangible to hold on to.

And that resolve held through the brief walk to the ticket booth, paying her fare, and the short wait in the dwindling line. It held through walking up the wooden ramp and giving the operator—a wild-eyed, gap-toothed old man with weathered skin and an unsettling dent in his forehead all too near the wheel's moving frame—a pleading smile that persuaded him to let her ride alone (all the others in line were couples anyway).

But her confidence faltered as the rocking seat slowly rose into the dark in starts and stops, and evaporated altogether as too soon the operator threw his lever forward and the wheel started spinning, and spinning, and spinning. With each circuit she grew more terrified. She clutched the guardrail so tightly her fingers ached. She looked out into the night in hopes of finding some semblance of the calm she'd felt earlier but found there only more spinning lights, more confusion, more aloneness. That was the worst part—she was alone in her terror. There was no one there to watch over her, guide her safely home.

She closed her eyes, and felt her body falling earthward in an absolute stillness, accelerating earthward, bound to crash. But it didn't. Her body leveled off, gravity withdrew, and she was rising, flying, out into what was no longer darkness but light, brilliant white. She was flying! She released the rail, extended her arms, felt the full force of the cold wind on her face. She was flying!

And the voice said Did you ever doubt it?

Leah said Yes, I did. She pulled her arms back as her flight slowed then reached a perch atop the white world.

No more.

And just as quickly she began to fall. But she wasn't scared this time. Her arms stayed in her lap, waited the inevitable rising.

When the operator released the safety latch and pushed the guardrail out of the way and rocked the seat forward to ease her departure, he was transfixed by the glow that radiated from her. She stood a moment before him, patiently bore his gaze. Then she touched her forehead, touched her heart, before walking down the ramp and out into the milling crowd, past the paired lovers waiting their turn on the wheel.

She was back at the head of the Holstein aisle at ten twenty-eight. She'd passed a dozing guard at the entrance, but otherwise the building appeared empty of humans. The rows of resting animals seemed so peaceful, so sure of their place in God's order. Leah waited there five minutes, then ten—no Brooke. She walked quickly down the aisle to the Ashford Farms block. Annabelle was there, same as before—head up, eyes watching, chewing her cud. The other beautiful Holsteins were there, all awake and watching. But no Brooke, no Danny, no human anywhere in sight.

She raced up and down all the aisles. Most of the stalls were occupied but only with animals—all dairy breeds for the first three days of competition. She looked out the wide doors at the rear of the building into the back parking lot. There were many trailers and pickups with camper tops parked out there, and some had lights glowing through their tiny curtained windows. But no sign of Brooke, and she'd not start knocking on camper doors at this hour.

In one of the stalls near those doors, there was a young boy—he couldn't have been ten—sleeping with his head on an Ayrshire calf's flank. She paused and stared at the sight. Who was guarding whom, she wondered? She'd not wake him. How could he help anyway? How could she explain her situation without words, to him or anyone? The full depth of her plight only just now descended on her. Might as well tell it to the cows, she thought; at least they could understand and respond with compassion and reassurance.

She closed her eyes, took three deep breaths, then opened them again. She checked her watch—ten to eleven. She walked calmly back down the Holstein aisle to the Ashford Farms stalls—still no humans present. She spotted a pad with a local feed supplier's logo and a nub of pencil amongst the supplies at the head of Annabelle's stall, and wrote Gone to the car—Leah on the top sheet and propped the pad against a small transistor radio. As she walked past Annabelle, she leaned over and gave the cow a hug around the neck and said in words she knew the animal would hear—Good luck tomorrow. Then she left the stall, the aisle, the building, the fair, walking quickly but calmly out into the sprawling parking lot.

It was a lot darker out there than earlier, with many open spaces among the smattering of remaining cars. She gave a wide berth to a group of drunken boys arguing and tried to ignore the steamed up windows in a few of the cars she passed. She spotted their station wagon from far off, an island of steel and rubber amidst the sea of darkness, and immediately knew it was empty. She retrieved the key from the frigid bumper, opened the passenger door, and slid into the car. In the dome light's glow she checked her watch—ten past eleven. She pulled the door shut and depressed the lock.

Inside the stark isolation of that car off alone in a far corner of the parking lot only barely lit by a weak light atop a wooden pole in the distance, Leah felt neither isolated nor frightened. But she was cold; so she slid over into the driver's seat, inserted the key, and started the car. It took a few minutes for the heater to warm, but then tepid air followed by warm air followed by hot flowed out over her feet and legs. She switched the heater to defrost to clear the condensation on the windshield.

She turned on the dome light and checked her watch—eleven twenty. She turned off the dome light, switched on the headlights, put the car in gear, and eased off the parking brake. Then she drove out of the parking lot and onto the highway toward home.

Because she was so watchful and attentive, and not distracted by voices or the radio or random noise, she had long been an accomplished driver in her mind's eye, not only knowing the local roads by heart and all the stop signs and streetlights but also envisioning likely surprises and her calculated response—slowing into a curve, sudden braking at the milk van backing out of a blind drive. She was in these skills already a better driver than Brooke (which wasn't saying much), better than Matt, better even than Momma. She modelled her driving after Father's, who was the best driver she'd ever ridden with—and she'd watched them all closely, even the bus drivers, even the church van drivers.

Lately she'd supplemented her mental visioning with actual time behind the wheel, in the driveway while waiting for Brooke to emerge from the house and take her to school. She'd start the car to warm it up (at Brooke's request). Then one day she tried putting it in gear—backing up a few feet, then pulling forward again. She'd be eligible for her learner's permit in a few months, why not try it out now? So confident was she in her driving ability that she didn't consider this action reckless or even inappropriate.

Nor did she consider the drive home from the fair reckless. She knew the way. The roads were well-lit and lightly travelled this time of night. She drove with a relaxed ease that didn't surprise her, but beneath that calm she was secretly thrilled—that is, until a police cruiser pulled up in the lane beside her at a stoplight three blocks from their street. She froze then, staring hard at the circle of red glaring down on her, feeling the twin eyes staring at her right profile. Would she be able to move when the red circle turned green? What would happen if she didn't? But then from someplace unknown inside herself, she found the courage to turn her face toward the police cruiser. Its driver was a middle-aged patrolman with jowly cheeks and a receding hairline, his hat hung on the passenger-side headrest to fool other drivers into thinking he had a partner in the car. And he was indeed staring at her. But then she saw his look was not one of suspicion. She exhaled a sigh of relief and offered him her best charming smile and a short nod. He smiled and nodded back. Just then the light turned green. She let him start forward first, but followed shortly, her feet and legs working the pedals just fine.

Back at the house she eased the station wagon into its normal spot at the side of the drive, under the basketball goal. The windows in her parents' bedroom were dark, which she took as a positive sign. Maybe she could get into the house and up to her bedroom without Momma confronting her. Then she looked at her watch—eleven thirty. There was no way Momma would let such tardiness go unaddressed. She braced for the worst, and had no idea what she would say when Momma asked where Brooke was and how she got home.

But Momma wasn't waiting for her in the kitchen. And she knew the minute she stepped inside the door that the house was empty, felt it in the utterly still air. She confirmed the fact by looking down the hall and seeing that her parents' bedroom door was open, then checking the garage and seeing that the Buick wasn't there. She recalled her parents planned to go to see The Godfather after dinner, and quietly thanked God for that long gangster film Father wouldn't walk out on. She pranced up the stairs (like one of the stallions in her white world or tomorrow at the fair) then quickly brushed her teeth and peed. As she scurried down the hall, she paused to pull Brooke's door shut then rushed into her bedroom, closed the door, put on her pajamas, jumped in bed, and turned out the light. A few minutes later she saw the lights of the Buick turn into their drive and felt the vibrations as the garage door rose on its tracks. She pulled the covers up over her head and prayed for Brooke—to be spared her parents' wrath. Oddly, she never worried about Brooke with Danny—rather the opposite, if one really wanted to know. And she didn't fret for one second over what punishment she might receive.

By the time Momma cracked her door open ten minutes later, she was sound asleep, lost in Annabelle's eyes, or were they Danny's?

She woke with Brooke's arms draped around her, and her sister's head resting on her shoulder beneath the covers. She immediately attributed the wonderful soothing dream she'd had to Brooke's presence, forgetting in her daze all that had happened the night before.

Then her door swung open halfway. Momma, her face visible in the morning light sneaking in around the curtains, mouthed clearly Where's Brooke?

Leah giggled and pulled the covers back far enough for Momma to see her sleeping sister's face stir at the sudden light and chill.

Momma's frown turned to a smile at the sight. She always knew Leah would end up taking care of her older sister. She pulled the door shut, would let them sleep late as they wanted on this Saturday morning.

Leah rolled onto her back, wide awake by then but still a little hazy on all that had happened the night before. But there was one thing she suddenly knew with instinctive certainty—she could take care of herself. Then she looked at Brooke's head resting on her chest. Along with her sister? She wasn't near so sure about that.

Brooke's eyes flashed open then, fully awake and directed squarely at hers. "I'm sorry, Lee. You must hate me."

Leah's eyes and smile spoke the exact opposite.

"I'll never do that again."

Leah thought Don't make vows you can't keep but simply nodded acceptance of the apology.

Brooke hugged her and buried her face in her neck, mouthing some words there in a passionate whisper.

In the sum total of that set of actions, Leah heard Brooke's words as much as she'd ever hear anything, felt them all the way to her center. When her sister looked up, Leah said I love you too.

Brooke nodded, lay her head on Leah's chest, and closed her eyes.

But before she could fall back asleep, Leah jostled her slightly then asked Was it worth it?

Brooke considered the question a minute then raised her finger to her lips—my secret. But her glowing eyes betrayed her answer.

Leah smiled and nodded, had guessed the answer but just wanted to get it from her sister.

Brooke had a question of her own. "How did you get home?"

Leah laughed then raised a finger to her lips.

Brooke shook her head and said, "I won't even ask about the car" before laying her head back on her sister's chest and drifting off into blissful sleep as Leah watched from above.

In this way the sisters began to keep secrets from each other, even though they didn't.

Debutante Ball

Leah had seen it coming for months, but Brooke was either clueless or in denial.

On returning home that afternoon—dropped off by Mrs. Noonan, Friday being her pick-up day—Leah had seen the invitation on its fancy paper with the ornate typeface. It is with great pleasure that we extend to you this invitation to present your daughter, Brooke Renee, at the Ninety-sixth Annual Debutante Ball of the Central Carolinas. Leah lightly rubbed the textured paper, ran her finger across the embossed seal, and repeated the formal phrasing in her mind, though she did note that Brooke's name was in a different typeface and slightly out of alignment with the rest of the line.

She needed to warn Brooke but never had the chance as her sister arrived home from tennis practice just as they were sitting down for dinner.

So when Momma decided to break the news late in the meal, Brooke dropped her fork loaded with peas she didn't want to eat anyway and shouted, "No!"

Momma's face assumed the expression of patient resolve that had become quite common of late, learned over years of practice. "Yes," she said firmly but quietly.

"No!" Brooke screamed and threw her napkin down, sending more peas flying. She stood and ran out of the room, leaving her chair askew and the table in tense stillness.

Leah stared at her plate, clean of food but with her hands still holding her fork and knife paused just above. She glanced at Momma out of the corner of her eye. Momma's lips pursed tightly as she looked across to Father. Leah snuck a glance at Father. The muscles in his neck were taut and his jaw rigidly set. Leah rarely saw Father look like that. She turned back to Momma, faced her directly this time.

Momma's gaze held on Father for another instant; then she exhaled slowly, closed her eyes for a fraction of a second before looking to Leah. Though her lips never parted, she nodded her head ever so slightly.

Leah crossed her fork and knife on the plate, folded her napkin and set it to one side, rose from her seat, slid the chair back under the table, picked up her plate and glass and carried them into the kitchen, set those utensils in the sink, then ran upstairs fast as she could.

Leah tapped on Brooke's door with her identifying sequence—one long beat, three short beats, one long beat meant to represent **L** -eah- **F** but to Brooke always and only meant here comes my sister, ready or not. Then she opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.

Brooke was lying diagonally across her bed. Her face was buried in the pillow, her long brown hair fanned across the pillowcase. Her tanned legs and arms contrasted strongly the white of her tennis shorts and T-shirt. Leah was momentarily struck by an improbable association between the varied texture of the invitation—paper, type, seal, crease—with the texture of this protest it had caused—skin, clothing, hair, quilt. There was a chasm between those two vivid realities, and she was now not only witness but bridge.

Brooke rolled over. "I hate those snobby girls!"

Leah nodded and walked over to the bed. Brooke raised her legs high enough for Leah to slide under and sit then lowered her legs, her thighs crossing Leah's.

"All they do is look down on me."

Leah nodded.

"They told Danny I was a slut."

Leah knew she should feign shock but figured they were well beyond such posturing. She fully grasped the resistance Brooke encountered, and caused, with her forthright manner, the unwritten rules she willfully broke, the feathers she ruffled. She'd been watching these reactions for years, perceived the tension more clearly than Brooke could, being in the ring—or the classroom, the cafeteria, the shopping mall—slugging away. One on one, she was a formidable opponent, as Susie Davenport well knew, and Mindy Tate and Victoria Pierce. But the Debutante Ball wasn't one on one. It was the whole army assembled against little old Brooke--not only all the snobby girls together but their parents and their society and the world they represented, the world of unwritten rules and calculated thoughts and actions. What chance did Brooke have against that?

"I'm not a slut, Leah!"

Leah held her sister's gaze a second, wanted to offer sober affirmation of her assertion, but suddenly burst out laughing. She couldn't help herself.

Brooke jumped up. "I'm going to kill you!" She grabbed Leah, threw her down on the bed, and jumped on her stomach. "I'm not a slut! I'm not a slut! I'm not a slut!" She shook Leah's shoulders and head with each claim.

Leah was laughing hysterically. She thought she'd pee in her pants. She finally managed to get her hands around Brooke's wrists and freeze them in midair.

Broke stared intently down on her sister. "Am I?"

Leah waited for the tears of laughter to clear so she could focus her eyes then shook her head.

The tension went out of Brooke's arms and her head drooped.

Leah released Brooke's wrists then caught her sister's eyes and made the sign of a heart with both hands, then bent one hand down with the other—You are a slave to your heart.

"And that's not a slut?"

Leah shook her head on the pillow.

Brooke nodded acceptance but suddenly tensed. "Then why didn't you say so right away?" She started tickling Leah mercilessly. She hissed again, "Why didn't you say so right away?"

But Leah didn't catch the words, her vision blurred by fresh tears and convulsive laughter.

Later that night they were in the station wagon at their new favorite secret hangout, an abandoned hosiery mill north of town. The former main entrance to the mill was blocked by a fence and a gate with a padlocked chain, but the old deliveries entrance had only a cable across the overgrown drive, and the cable had fallen down. They were parked now in the lurking shadow of the former loading dock, the high divided-lite windows of the main building in the background reflecting back glints of moonlight interrupted by dark holes where the panes had been broken by rocks or bullets.

Brooke had first brought her sister here two months ago, on a cold night in the last weeks of winter, to introduce Leah to one of the two ways to keep warm on such nights in such settings (the other way being evidenced by the few unlit cars scattered around the clearing, the heads of the occupants ducking out of sight when the station wagon's lights swept past). After turning off the car, Brooke had reached under the seat and pulled out a small bottle. She unscrewed the cap and took a long drink, gasping then coughing quietly as she lowered the bottle from her lips. She offered the bottle to Leah across the seat. In the dark Leah could only see her sister's profile in silhouette, but that was enough to tell that it was taut in a wince of discomfort when she swallowed. Nonetheless, Leah grasped the bottle, raised it to her lips, and took a long swig—too long a swig. Her mouth was suddenly on fire. Somewhere beneath the fire there was a sweet, peppermint flavor; but that was little comfort or defense against the flames enveloping her mouth and consuming her tongue. Bright lights flashed in front of her eyes and something like a storm raged inside her skull. Brooke saw or sensed her sister's distress and quickly leaned over and opened the passenger door. Leah leaned out and spat the liquid fire on the broken asphalt then gasped for breath, still felt the flames, spat some more.

That was Leah's first, and last, sampling of peppermint schnapps. Brooke apologized for not better preparing her by suggesting a small sip—"I didn't think you'd drink half the bottle!" she said in the dome light's glow after Leah had somewhat recovered—but seemed to find no end to the humor prompted by her sister's volcanic, and uncharacteristic, reaction. Leah had scowled and moped for a few minutes but recovered when Brooke suggested she drive home. Leah was still on her learner's permit (which she carried at all times in her wallet in the back pocket of her jeans) and Brooke was too young to be her accompanying instructor; but in typical fashion Brooke shrugged off that prohibition with the comment, "If we get stopped, I'll sweet talk the cop" and Leah proudly drove home while Brooke disposed of the rest of the schnapps along with the bottle out the window then played with the radio, singing along in songs Leah heard through her sister's effusive gestures. And they weren't stopped, didn't see a single patrol car.

They didn't need the warmth of peppermint schnapps this night. Spring had arrived a few weeks earlier and the air was warm and thick and fragrant beyond their open windows. It was early in the night and they were the only car in the lot. Leah switched on the battery-powered camp lantern they'd borrowed from the garage to save draining the car's battery by using the dome light (didn't want to get stranded with a dead battery out here!). Leah set the lantern on the hump in the floor at the middle of the seat then leaned back against the passenger door (Brooke had driven out here, but promised Leah she could drive back—in the full dark). She leaned her head out the window and closed her eyes and took in a long breath of spring. She hated winter and all parts of her basked in this pregnant warmth and the promise of summer it intimated. She only reluctantly opened her eyes and pulled her head back inside the car.

Brooke smiled at her. "I wish you could hear how loud the night is."

Then show me, Leah signed, pointing at her eyes then gesturing toward the massive night beyond the broad windshield.

Brooke shrugged. "O.K." She puffed out her cheeks then spread out her arms, opened her hands wide, and slowly pulsed arms and hands in and out around her head, the sounds of the night. Then she grabbed Leah's near hand, pulled forward her index finger, and rubbed the fingernail against the stippled metal of the dash in rhythmic beats—scrape, scrape, scrape. The grating hurt her ears but she hoped it somehow duplicated for Leah the tree frogs' resonant chirp.

Leah looked confused.

Brooke leaned forward, pressed her mouth against Leah's ear, and forced her breath into that cavern, mixed those pulsing breaths with the clucking of her tongue against the top of her mouth and lighter bursts of air constrained into a shrill whistle.

Leah pushed Brooke away, her eyes flashing a sharp rebuke. O.K., I get it—lots of noise.

Brooke nodded sadly. "Lots of noise."

They rested in that noise a little while, each in her own way.

"They're going to make me go, aren't they?" Brooke said.

Leah nodded. Short of running away from home or locking herself in an underground bunker, Brooke was going to the ball. The only question was how much pain she and everyone around her would suffer in the process.

Brooke sighed. "It's hard enough to get Danny to put on a clean T-shirt. I'll never get him in a tux."

Leah grasped the full meaning of this remark. Brooke had never brought Danny to the house, never introduced him to Momma and Father. She was pretty sure they knew of Danny's existence, as a rural friend of Brooke's somewhere out there on the periphery. Momma might've sensed more, with her feminine intuition. But clearly Brooke had no desire to make this rogue relationship official. She knew if she did that would be the end of it. Leah raised her eyebrows—Anyone else?

Brooke frowned. "I'm not going to two-time Danny. What kind of girl you think I am?"

Leah laughed. She understood that what Brooke really meant is that any boy willing to escort her or anyone to the deb ball was a dork, not worth the trouble or association. Leah raised a single finger then made it disappear in a burst of both hands—One night; it's only one night.

"It's the Debutante Ball, Lee! Rehearsals, pre-parties, dinner, after-parties. Might as well get married!"

Leah shook her head then played her trump card, rolling her eyes in a familiar gesture—Matt?

At first Brooke was shocked but then took a moment to consider her sister's suggestion. Matt was away at school but would be home for the summer by the time of the ball. And there was precedent for it—she'd heard of other girls using their brothers as escorts. Flo Robinson did it just last year with her brother Steve, though that was because he was a lieutenant in the Army and headed to Vietnam—a gesture of loving farewell for the whole family and their insular community. To get Matt to agree, she'd have to use every favor she'd ever earned and about a decade's worth into the future. Still, it was a possibility. "What about those lame classes?"

Leah pondered this. The ball organizers offered eight weekly classes to prepare the debs, giving instruction in how to walk, how to curtsy, how to smile, and of course how to dance the signature waltz. The escorts were expected to attend the last several classes, focused on the waltz; but only the debs attended the early classes. It was rumored that those classes also included instruction about birth control, but Leah figured that was a modern legend. In the old days (till three years ago) attending all classes was a prerequisite for inclusion in the ball. But now the debs could opt out of the dance classes if they also opted out of the waltz itself, and that chance to shine before the assembled society. Do you want to dance? Leah signed.

"Hell no! Why would I want to learn to waltz?"

Leah held up four fingers—Then it's only four classes to placate Momma and Father.

Brooke shook her head. It wasn't near as simple as Leah was making it seem. She looked up, stubbornness setting her jaw.

Leah responded with a slight tilt of her head and gentle uplifting of her eyes, hinting but not exactly asking—For me?

Brooke heard the request and at some level buried deep inside understood it as coming not only from Leah but on behalf of the whole family, peace in the household at all cost—in this case at her cost. She grit her teeth and wanted to scream a curse—at the ball, its high society sponsors, her parents for buying into that farce, Leah most of all for her patient good sense. Damn Leah! O.K.—so she did curse, but not out loud. "Can I listen to the radio?" she asked finally.

Leah nodded a ready acquiescence.

Brooke started the car then turned on the radio and immediately joined in the lyrics of the pop song pouring forth.

Leah watched Brooke, knew her sister had turned the radio's volume to the max, her shrill response to the pulsing dark, knew it through the bass notes throbbing from the car's tiny speaker, those notes backed by the steady purr of the car's engine reverberating through the station wagon's frame, their shelter this spring night.

So Brooke agreed to go to the ball, telling Momma the next day, "I'm expecting an MG convertible as payment for pain and suffering!" She left it for her parents to persuade Matt, figuring they had more leverage over him than she ever would. And she said in no uncertain terms, "I'm not dancing!" knowing that her parents would have to pay for all the classes whether she attended the dance sessions or not. She realized this stipulation wouldn't be a deal-breaker but wanted Momma to know she wasn't going to be the only one paying a hefty price for this descent into mindless pretense. Momma nodded acceptance of these terms with a simple "Thank you, Brooke" accompanied by a grateful glance over Brooke's shoulder to Leah, to which Brooke muttered in disgust, "Leah's not the one going to the stupid ball!" and stormed out of the kitchen.

The classes began two weeks later, held at the same studio where Leah took her dance classes and taught by her dance teacher, Mrs. Stafford, a former deb herself (May we present Jacqueline Raquel Williams, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Walter Williams!) and well-ingratiated to and in that society. Brooke grumbled all week prior about having her Saturday "totally destroyed" by the obligation to attend; and afterwards when asked "How'd it go?" growled "How do you think!" to no one in particular but to everyone in general, at least everyone in her parents' world of social obligation and sacrifice, she being this moment's sacrifice (and don't you forget it!).

But later that evening, while dressing for a night out "with friends" (meaning, Danny, but don't tell Momma and Father), she suddenly placed her Calculus I text on top of her head and started marching slowly around her room dressed only in her bell-bottom jeans and a bra. At first she moved with slow and self-conscious reverence, as if in a processional that gradually slowed to a funereal pace then pause, pace then pause. To emphasize her point, she gradually bent her knees as she walked, steadily lowering her body toward the floor, as if into the gates of Hades, or the Wicked Witch's meltdown at the end of Oz. From where Leah watched lying on the bed, all but Brooke's head disappeared from her line of sight, but the calculus text never tilted or wavered. Then suddenly Brooke leapt up like the clown of a jack-in-the-box and the book went sailing through the air. Leah deflected it just before it would've crashed into her stomach, and it landed on the side of the bed then fell to the floor. Leah glared at her sister who gave an "I'm sorry" pout then disappeared below the side of the bed. When she reemerged, the book was again atop her head. This time she hopped around on one leg, then the other, her arms extended straight out to the sides. The book bounced up and down in unison with her brown hair but somehow remained balanced atop her head. Then she suddenly tilted her head toward Leah on the bed. The book fell forward. Leah threw out her hands to catch it but Brooke threw her body forward and caught the book like a ball player extending her body to catch an errant throw. She pulled the book safely to her chest and let he body continue its fall till it crashed onto the bed alongside Leah. She smiled up at her annoyed sister, presented the text open to the chapter on fractals, and said "It's all your fault for making me go." She tilted her head, gave a self-satisfied smile, then jumped up to finish getting dressed for her night out.

After returning from her fourth ("And last—alleluia!") class, Brooke came out onto the back deck where Leah was reading in the chaise in the warm spring sun. Momma was off doing the weekly grocery shopping and Father had been gone all day, picked up early for a golf outing with his boss and some prospective clients; so they were alone in the house. Leah noted Brooke's arrival by the slamming of the side door and her heavy-footed stride down the hall and across the kitchen and out onto the deck. She immediately knew something was up from the glint in Brooke's eyes as she came around in front of the lounge, one hand tucked behind her back.

"Mrs. Stafford sent you a present," Brooke said with a sly smile. "Now close your eyes."

Leah hated this childish ploy—closing her eyes took away her main access to the world—and she refused it of everyone except Brooke, and most times with her too. She frowned back to Brooke's waiting stare.

"Come on, Leah," Brooke said. "It's from the deb class." She didn't have to say the implied "You know, the one you made me attend."

Leah sighed and closed her eyes. She saw Brooke's shadow cross in front of the sun through her eyelids and braced for something unpleasant. But all that happened was Brooke placed something light and dry and smooth on her nose. It had the slight fragrance of baby oil along with the smell of Brooke's sweat. The shadow stepped back, leaving her face again in full sun.

Brooke shook the flip-flop dangling from Leah's right foot—you can open your eyes now!

Leah kept her eyes closed a little longer, partly to try to guess what was resting on her nose but mainly to annoy her insistent sister.

Brooke waited a few seconds then lightly tickled the bottom of Leah's foot.

Leah opened her eyes, sat up quickly, and pulled her foot back under her left leg. The surprise that was on her nose landed in her lap. She picked it up. It was a small flat square of blue foil with many words in white print, most of them too small to read at arm's length. The only ones she could read spelled Trojan-enz. She looked closer at the package and saw the words one lubricated latex condom and a dotted line accompanied by the words tear here. Leah looked up at Brooke.

"It's a condom!"

A what?

"A condom—for a penis. Mrs. Stafford asked me to give it to you!" Brooke waited for the full effect of her joke to settle around her sister.

Leah looked from Brooke to the square of foil then back again, adamant consternation clouding her hazel eyes.

Brooke roared in laughter. She delighted to still have a few pieces of knowledge on her sister. Then she looked about suddenly, worried that maybe someone had overheard her. But there was no one there. Momma still wasn't home; and Mrs. Bentley, the only neighbor visible from the deck, wasn't in her backyard. Still, Brooke wasn't going to take any chances. She waved for Leah to follow her into the kitchen, then closed and locked the patio door behind them.

She took the condom from Leah's hand and held it up between them, a few inches from Leah's face. "This is a condom. It's a form of birth control," she said deliberately straight at Leah's eyes. "You slide it over the man's erect penis and it catches the sperm and keeps it from entering the woman's vagina."

Leah understood the words but had no idea what they meant.

"If the sperm doesn't get into the vagina, the woman can't get pregnant. Understand?"

Leah shook her head.

"The sperm!" Brooke said, her voice rising in volume and her tone in frustration. "The condom catches the sperm!"

Leah stared at her uncomprehending. She played catch with a baseball (was actually quite accomplished at that game, her hand-to-eye coordination uncanny), but how could whatever was inside this foil wrapper "catch" sperm, which she understood as the males component of reproduction but had never seen and didn't know what it looked like or exactly how it was delivered from the penis.

Brooke huffed. With her joke past, it was now time to inform her sister further on the details of human reproduction using this surprise benefit of deb class—Mrs. Stafford had handed them out at the end of class without a word of explanation, leading to numerous giggles and guffaws and a surprising number of blank stares not unlike Leah's just now—as a teaching tool and prop.

Her eyes lit up. Prop! That's it! She ran over to the fruit bowl, but there were no bananas remaining (this being shopping day), just an orange and an overripe peach. She frowned then remembered the display of hand-painted wooden fruit in the lead-crystal bowl on the dining room table. She ran and grabbed the wooden banana out of the bowl (it and all the fruit in there looked so realistic Uncle Bob had actually grabbed an apple and tried to polish it on his shirt sleeve before discovering the mistake—in the family legend it was said he actually tried to take a bite and almost broke a tooth, but that wasn't true as Brooke herself could attest, having seen the incident when she was eight).

Back in the kitchen Leah was seated at the breakfast table trying to find the spot in her book—Fancy Strut, a new novel by a local writer—where she'd been interrupted.

Brooke sat down opposite her holding the wooden banana in one hand and the foil packet in the other. She held out the banana. "This is an erect penis."

Leah looked at her with wide eyes. She'd about concluded that the deb classes had succeeded in driving her sister insane. How could a banana, a wooden one at that, be an erect penis?

"Think, Lee!" Brooke said impatiently. "Like on the Jack of Hearts—the man's penis gets big and hard, like a banana. That's how come it can go into the vagina."

Leah recalled the photo on the playing card in her mind. It was the color that had thrown her—the penis wasn't yellow. But it was shaped like a banana.

"The condom goes on the penis when it gets hard, like this." She set the banana on the table and tore the foil of the packet. She pulled a pale white ring of what looked to be rubber out of the foil. "This is a condom," Brooke said, holding the ring up.

Leah could see that there was a thin sheath of rubber between the thicker rim.

"The condom slips over the penis like this." She placed the ring over the bottom end of the banana then slowly unrolled it till the rubber sheath covered the banana almost to the stem. She held the sheathed banana across the table for Leah's closer inspection.

Leah looked at the rubber sheath. It looked like a large deflated balloon except that it was cloudy not clear and glistened and had a small pucker at the end.

"Go ahead. It won't bite." She laughed as Leah took the banana and added, "At least this one won't."

Leah held the wooden banana by its wooden stem and looked more closely. She ran the index finger of her other hand over the rubber sheath. It was slippery but not greasy.

"Lubricant," Brooke said. "So it doesn't hurt when it goes in."

Leah wasn't looking at Brooke and didn't see what she said. While the rubber sheath and its non-greasy coating intrigued her, it made no sense placed over the banana, a wooden one at that. She couldn't imagine something that hard protruding from a boy or where it would go if it did get that hard or how the cloudy balloon helped prevent pregnancy. All she saw was a yellow piece of wood coated in snug rubber, like a wrapper on one of father's cigars.

Brooke pinched the pucker of rubber at the end. "That's where the sperm goes."

Leah was more confused than ever. But to placate Brooke and not seem stupid, she nodded and handed the banana back.

Brooke looked at the clock on the wall over the door. "We'd better clean this up before Momma gets home." She slipped the condom off the banana and dropped it on the table. She took the banana to the sink and lightly rinsed it, then wiped it off with the dish towel. She said, "Glad for K-Y" over her shoulder but knew Leah couldn't see the words and wouldn't understand them if she could. She ran to put the banana back in the bowl, positioned exactly as before.

When she returned to the kitchen, Leah had carefully rerolled the condom and was sliding it back into the foil package. "What are you doing, Lee?" Brooke cried.

Leah held the foil pack toward her sister, one corner of the lopsided condom sticking out from the torn wrapper. For you, she gestured.

Brooke burst into laughter. "That one's no good anymore, Lee. Probably got a splinter from that wooden banana!" She laughed at her joke—imagine getting pregnant due to a splinter hole! "We'd better deep six this gross thing." She entombed the condom and its wrapper in several layers of paper towels then stuffed the wad deep into the trash. When she looked up from closing the trash can, Leah was staring at her. "What?"

No condom for you, Leah asked, designating "condom" by making a ring with her thumb and forefinger.

"I'm taking Matt, remember?"

And Danny?

"Oh," Brooke said, startled by the question. "Don't you worry," she said as she glanced away. "I've got that under control."

Leah never worried about Brooke except when she didn't face her directly. Then she worried.

"You want a peanut-butter sandwich?" Brooke asked, looking up quickly before turning to hunt for the bread and hoping the peanut butter wasn't gone like the bananas.

Later that week, Leah asked Momma who called Mrs. Stafford to see if Leah could attend the waltz classes in Brooke's place, since they were already paid for. Mrs. Stafford expressed reservations, not for Leah or the unusual situation but because Leah's natural grace and dance training would show up the older girls and either intimidate them or incur their envy. But if Leah wanted to come by on Saturday, she'd ask the girls and see what they said.

Well, the girls—only fourteen stayed for the waltz classes, less than half—"said" about what she'd expected: Hell, no! only not in so many words, using facial gestures and comments like "she can't hear the music" or "she'll slow us down" to convey their disapproval.

But when Mrs. Stafford entered the waiting room to break the bad news to Leah, who was patiently waiting in the chair, alert and in perfect straight-backed posture and gazing calmly out the window, she was again struck by how beautiful and graceful this girl was, already a poised young woman. And in that moment, just before Leah sensed her presence (probably by the change in the room's air pressure or the residual odors of sweat and exertion emanating from the studio) and turned, Mrs. Stafford hit on a compromise.

Leah looked up at her in a perfect deb pose—eyes steady but not insistent, hands folded in her lap, shoulders square, neck straight. Some skills can't be taught Mrs. Stafford thought with a mix of admiration and self-defeat.

"Leah, I think it best that you participate from the observation hall," she said, referring to the hall to the office behind the one-way mirror. "There you can follow at your own pace, and rest if you tire."

At first Leah was puzzled by the suggestion. She would have no trouble keeping up with these girls and felt she'd need the space of the studio to fully practice the waltz. But just as fast, and intuitively more than consciously, she sensed the reasons behind the suggestion. She nodded acceptance and offered a small smile of thanks for the opportunity and special consideration.

Mrs. Stafford nodded. "Very good, Leah. I'm so pleased to include you." She turned but paused in mid-stride then came back. "If you can stay after class, I'll be glad to work with you in the studio and refine your technique. And I can take you home after we're done. It's not far out of my way."

Leah's face burst into a broad and shining smile that more than compensated the instructor for her time and special attention.

Mrs. Stafford smiled. "Good. Now get ready. We'll be starting in five minutes." She disappeared inside the studio.

Before Leah slipped off her shoes and sweatpants, she ran out to the parking lot to tell Brooke.

"And she'll bring you home?" Brooke asked.

Leah nodded with excitement.

Brooke laughed. "Now if only you could go to the ball in my place." She started the car as Leah ran back into the building.

Deb Day arrived hot and oppressively humid. Brooke had to get fully assembled at home, as Memorial Hall, the ball venue downtown, had no dressing rooms and ancient and cramped bathrooms with poor lighting and tiny mirrors. Leah raised the full skirted satin gown over Brooke's head as she stood in the middle of her bedroom dressed in underwear, a strapless bra and white slip, and frost-colored pantyhose. She raised her arms over her head and closed her eyes in a gesture intentionally balanced between surrender and compliance, neither one a natural pose for Brooke. Leah paused for the briefest moment to burn that portrait into memory, acknowledging all it had cost her sister to get here, would cost over the next few hours. Then she lowered the gown, burying Brooke in yards of white fabric, no sign of her sister's skin anywhere.

Then ever so slowly Brooke emerged—first her hands then her arms then her brown hair still in the big curlers then her face. And that face was no longer compliant. It was in fact highly vexed. "No, no, no, no, Leah!"

Leah tried hard to hide her patient indulgence but was sure she failed.

"You didn't let me get my hands into the sleeves!"

The gown had puffed lace short sleeves with an elastic hem, designed to sit over the shoulder. In all this fabric, the sleeve holes were about impossible to find.

Brooke jerked the gown's bodice below her armpits for dramatic effect. "See!" She planted her hands on her hips in a saucy pose.

Except for the gown's color and the curlers in her hair, Brooke looked like a waitress in a colonial tavern, a natural look for the fire now in her eyes. Leah stifled her laugh.

Brooke sighed. "Can you try again, more slowly please?"

Leah nodded and raised the gown as Brooke raised her arms.

Her sister stayed hidden awhile longer this time, sending forth muffled curses as her hands tried to find the sleeve holes. Eventually she succeeded, first her right hand popping out of the white then her left.

Leah finished pulling the gown over arms and head, then spent several minutes trying to straighten all that satin and lace.

"They can keep their condoms," Brooke hissed. "Those dorks couldn't find their way to home base in this mess even if they had the balls to try."

Leah wouldn't have understood Brooke's derisive comments, but didn't have to try. She'd tuned Brooke out and was focused on getting her sister ready. She smoothed and ordered the full skirt's pleats, first from the front then from the back. She slid the edge of Brooke's strapless bra just below the line of the lace bodice from behind then pulled the puffy sleeves a little lower on Brooke's forearms till they sat without bunching. She came back around front and smoothed the satin-backed lace midriff over Brooke's flat and skinny stomach. It kept wanting to bunch, giving her the look of a small potbelly till Leah tucked a small fold of fabric under the bodice and another fold behind the waist where the gown transitioned to only satin. She stepped back and surveyed the dress. It wasn't a perfect fit, maybe a size too big in the bust and the torso. Brooke had been impatient in picking it out at the local formalwear shop, called the second one she tried on "good enough" and would only stay long enough to have the hem marked then threw off the dress like it was a sweatshirt and scurried out of the shop with the Leah left to nod an apology to the salesclerk and the tailor.

Leah met Brooke's eyes for the first time since getting the gown off its wide hanger and offered an approving nod. The dress looked lovely.

Brooke answered with a scowl of slump-shouldered resignation, which caused the sleeves to rise up again.

Leah pulled the sleeves down quickly and in the same motion grabbed Brooke's hands and led her to the chair in front of her dressing table and gently pushed her to sit down. With Brooke making faces in the mirror, Leah quickly removed the curlers and brushed out Brooke's hair. Those curlers combined with the natural body of her hair created beautiful flowing curls that shimmered as they cascaded over her tanned shoulders. Leah set the brush down and lightly caressed those curls as she distributed them around her neck and shoulders.

By then Brooke had stopped making funny faces and said into the mirror, "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

Leah signed into the mirror—I enjoy making you beautiful.

A smile flashed across Brooke's face.

But it didn't last long as Leah dropped her make-up kit on the dressing table and pulled out her compact.

"Get that out of here, Lee!" She pushed first Leah's hand then the entire make-up bag away from her.

Brooke! Leah said with her flashing eyes.

"No way. It's the real Brooke or no Brooke."

Neither girl wore make-up regularly. They both had clear, fair skin that tanned to a fine honey color in the summer and didn't require augmentation or correction. But Leah had taught herself how to use make-up sparingly for special occasions, saw it more as an indicator of respect than an attempt at artifice. She'd been trying to impress this attitude on Brooke, but without success. Please, Leah asked. It's the debutante ball!

"I know where I'm going, Lee. Believe me, I know. And I'll wear this stupid dress and these boiling pantyhose and let you curl my hair into Scarlett O'Hara's vapid ringlets, but I'm not going to coat my skin with powder and lipstick!"

Leah could've withstood this tirade reflected in the mirror except she recognized that Brooke's final words were not audibly spoken but were mouthed with special visual emphasis and anger, a silent shout designed just for her, only for her. She grabbed her make-up kit and rushed out of the room.

A little later Leah was applying a little light blush to her cheeks when the overhead light flashed once to signal Brooke's entrance. She didn't turn but waited till Brooke's face appeared above her shoulder in the mirror.

"I'm sorry," Brooke said then lightly hugged Leah from behind, pressing her face to Leah silken blond hair just above where it had been gathered together in a gold barrette.

Leah nodded acceptance then caught Brooke's eye and pursed her lips—which were, and would remain, unadorned—to draw attention to Brooke's, which had a clear, and tasteful sheen to them.

Brooke laughed into the mirror. "Lip gloss!" she said. "It's not near as thick as lipstick and it actually tastes good!"

Leah smiled approval then signed, Matt will love it!

Brooke's face contorted. "Ewwww!" both girls cried before dissolving into paroxysms of laughter.

Leah sat in the middle of the backseat of the Buick. She had on a sleeveless, thigh-length powder-blue linen dress that fit her emerging curves perfectly and struck a tasteful balance between her precocious grace and self-possession and her chronological age, just a few months shy of sixteen. Normally she hated sitting in the middle seat as it was impossible to follow two speakers simultaneously. She was left with the unappealing choice of facing one and ignoring the other or staring straight ahead and ignoring both. But tonight such a difficult choice wasn't necessary—neither of her companions was speaking or showing any inclination to do so. She'd glance at Matt, behind Father, sitting stiffly upright in his tux and staring out the window, his long dark hair neatly combed over his ears and revealing some dim shadows that were meant to be sideburns. She recognized his insolence in the stiff set of his shoulders and confirmed that observation in the line of tightly pressed lips reflected in the door's window. Then she'd glance at Brooke, slouched down on the seat so that the dress slid up and covered most of her chest, lightly toying with her hair and gazing off into space or at the back of Momma's head.

A thunderstorm broke just as they pulled into the parking lot of Memorial Hall, clearly preempting the mandatory photo ops in the accompanying gardens and giving rise to groans and growls that Leah didn't have to look at to hear. They waited several minutes in the car for the worst of the torrent to pass, without anyone speaking and with the windows slowly fogging up in the thick and close air.

Then suddenly Brooke screamed and threw open the door and ran across the flooded parking lot to the hall's service entrance.

Momma turned quickly and looked at Leah and nodded. Leah grabbed the tote bag holding Brooke's accessories, including her platform heels (she was in sneakers now—bright red Chuck Taylors), and slid out the door into the cold rain. As she turned to close the door, she saw Matt laughing hysterically on the far side of the seat. She slammed the door with vehemence.

She found Brooke sitting on a bench in the hallway leading to the men's room. It was a desolate setting—a concrete floor, painted block walls, and fluorescent lights above—and empty at the moment. She'd seen a beehive of activity, all in white gowns, at the far end of the backstage area, where the ladies room and lounge was. But apparently all the guys were either waiting out the rain in their cars or fully assembled and patiently awaiting their dates in the gathering queue beside the stage. Damn those guys Leah thought, recalling Matt's derisive laughter.

Brooke sat slumped on the bench, her head down, looking all the world like a soggy wedding cake. Her hair hung damp about her shoulders and forward around her face, Leah's careful curls all washed out. Her red sneakers were soaked, but far as Leah could tell the gown was not stained or damaged. She walked up and squatted in front of Brooke.

Her sister looked up with a weariness Leah had never seen before. "Sorry, Lee. I thought my head would implode. I had to get out of there."

Leah nodded then got to work. She opened the tote bag and grabbed some tissues, used them to wipe away the rain, first from Brooke's face then from her neck and shoulders. Then she found the comb, rather than the now useless brush, and combed out her wet brown hair, leaving it perfectly straight and giving her a "wet" look that was currently in style though mismatched for the occasion and the attire. Then she knelt and untied Brooke's sneakers and slid them off her feet. The pantyhose were soaked but that wasn't a problem—they'd dry quickly. The problem was that Brooke's hose had a small pull at one ankle, a pull that would surely turn into an embarrassing run during the presentation.

Brooke leaned over. "Aw, shit, Lee—I ruined your pretty hose!"

Leah frowned then remembered that she had some fingernail polish—clear, the only color Momma would let her use—in her make-up kit. She sat on the bench and pulled the kit out of the tote bag, and found the nail polish in the bottom.

But before she could stoop to daub the polish on the pull, Brooke picked at it. And the pull instantly transformed into an ugly run from her ankle up to her calf. Leah angrily held out the nail polish. You couldn't wait just ten seconds? her eyes admonished.

"Oh the hell with it, Lee." Brooke stood up and reached up under the billowing gown and pulled the tight hose down to her feet in a single deft and furious motion. She then calmly stepped out of the hose, leaving a puddle of transparent white on the concrete floor, then grabbed her open-toed platform shoes out of the bag and slid them on her feet, buckling the white leather straps before Leah could interrupt or protest.

Leah stared at Brooke's natural colored feet in the white shoes. At least her feet were clean (unlike in the old days when they ran around barefoot during the summer, staining their feet with everything from grass to tar) and her toenails neatly trimmed. She glanced up at her sister.

Brooke gave a self-satisfied nod. "The real Brooke or no Brooke."

Leah resigned herself to that inevitability—almost. She stood, gestured for Brooke to sit, then knelt before her sister, opened the nail polish, and—despite the dim light and dirty conditions—perfectly painted all ten of Brooke's toenails in less than two minutes. She capped the polish, stood, and gestured toward Brooke then herself—the real Brooke, plus a little bit of Leah. She signed a little bit with her thumb and forefinger so close they seemed to be touching.

Brooke nodded then looked over her dress at her shiny toenails. "How long to dry?"

Five minutes, tops, Leah signed, then touched Brooke's damp head—a lot quicker than your hair!

They found Matt amongst the other escorts in the curtained off assembly area to the side of the stage.

"Graceful exit, Cinderella," Matt said as they approached.

Brooke took a deep breath to return her brother's wisecrack. But Leah gently squeezed her hand to halt her outburst, reminding her that she needed a more or less cooperative Matt for another half-hour or so, through the presentation, the march down the garland bordered stairs, and the line up across the dance floor. Brooke swallowed her insult unspoken and offered an exaggerated demure smile and curtsy instead.

Matt gave a smug nod in response and said, "I could get used to this."

Brooke started to raise her corsage wrist to smack him but Leah forced it back down. Then she brought the two of them together and signed—this is for Momma and Father. Her implication was clear: Don't you dare embarrass our parents in front of the whole town! Then she turned and left without looking back, exiting around the end of the curtains to the dance floor and dining room beyond.

She found Momma and Father standing beside the round table labeled as theirs about halfway back amongst the fifty or so reserved tables. They were talking to Dr. and Mrs. Houston, the men laughing and making big gestures, the women standing quite still and talking while barely moving their mouths. When Leah walked up Mrs. Houston said something she didn't catch and squeezed her cheek. Dr. Houston put his big arm over her shoulder (he was well over six feet tall) and gave her a hug that was a tad too familiar. She nodded a polite thanks then slipped sideways to take her seat at the table, at the setting marked with her place card.

The hall was set up much as it had been for graduation a few weeks before (a distant cousin had graduated from a local private school and their family had dutifully attended) only with the rows of folding chairs removed and replaced by tables and a dance floor. There was a raised stage at one end of the hall, with the wings curtained off (Matt and Brooke and all the other nervous couples were behind the left-side curtains, the ball's hosts and presenters to the right). They'd added some curved steps, ornately decorated with ropes of white roses tied to the railings, leading from the stage to the floor level—the locally famous Presentation Stairs. At the base of the stairs was a large open area for the Debutante Line-up and Parade and, later, the Debutante Waltz. Surrounding the open floor were dining tables in a horseshoe-shaped arrangement—seating for the presentation and the formal dinner and dancing to follow.

Leah hated these moments alone in large open and bustling public places. She never knew which way to look—there were so many small and large dramas unfolding in the large room. Worse, the chances of someone sneaking up behind her or ignorantly calling to her and growing increasingly annoyed at her rude lack of response loomed large. To ward off both these insecurities, she assumed her most dignified, and surprisingly natural, public posture and focused her attention on the night's program set at her place, scanning the order of events then the listing of debutantes and their escorts. She hoped her demure focus on the program would excuse her from any social obligation, even to the Houstons and her parents talking a few feet away, all the while watching, sensing, the full range of human theater being played out around her.

The lights on the main floor dimmed and the parents and guests took their seats at the tables. Momma sat next to her and Father just beyond, all three facing the stage and the empty seats where Brooke and Matt would eventually join them. The lights came up on the stage, the string quartet took their seats to one side, the presenters and the Deb Ball Committee to the other; and the night's festivities began.

Freed of auditory distraction and misdirection, Leah saw and perceived and inferred details and nuances of behavior everyone else missed or failed to register. And what she saw during the presentations was just how nervous the girls were, as they strained to cover that nervousness with artificial actions and stances as stiff and unnatural as the thick make up plastered on their faces, and how generally oblivious their escorts, even the older ones, were—ill-at-ease in their rented tuxes, unfamiliar with the spotlight of attention, unprepared to evaluate let alone react to the queer behavior of their dates. Yet despite all this artifice, maybe because of it, the proceedings quickly assumed a staid and almost dignified identity—a ponderous presumption of place and purpose, Leah thought, priding herself on the appropriately stiff alliterative phrase. As much as she could chuckle at the thought, the phrase wasn't derogatory.

Then, a little more than a third of the way down the list, Brooke was announced (Leah had counted the names plus felt Momma's leg tense alongside hers under the table) and she and Matt emerged from behind the curtain and walked across the stage. Brooke moved a little faster than her brother, so she had to pause a half-beat at the top of the stairs for him to catch up. Then she took his elbow, he covered her hand with his opposite, and they walked down the stairs, greeted by clapping hands. To Leah's certainly biased gaze, each cut a striking figure though in divergent styles. Brooke with her tan shoulders, makeup-free face, and bare legs peeking out from below the gown (Leah swore she could see her toenails shining), and straight long hair just starting to frizz as it dried, seemed the free spirit she was, just momentarily and scarcely restrained by the requirements of this stuffy tradition. Matt on the other hand appeared bookish and introverted though quite presentable, a budding author or artist recording the proceedings for future dramatization or satire, a glint of detached condescension in his eyes. Given their opposing styles, it seemed amazing that they not only were together but that they managed to hang together, not kill each other or fly apart, through the presentation, the long line up (as the rest of the debs were presented) and the Debutante Parade, as the entire group slowly marched around the dance floor to the applause and few tears of the observers.

And that was it. The march ended, the entire line of debs curtsied—nowhere near in unison, despite having practiced the moment countless times (Leah winced in sympathy with Mrs. Stafford, who sat stone-faced on the stage with the rest of the Ball Committee)—and the debs and their escorts were released to join their families at the tables for the serving of dinner. Brooke had made it!

Leah ran forward and hugged her as she wove her way between the tables, pressing the wide gown against her legs.

Brooke pretended to lose her balance at Leah's embrace, but then steadied herself. She pressed her forehead against Leah's, leaving their eyes just a fraction of an inch apart. This was their most intimate of public greetings, as each stared directly into the irises—Brooke's gray, Leah's deep brown—of the other. "Looking into your soul," Brooke called it. Leah signed it as two links of a chain formed by thumbs and forefingers, locked together forever.

Then they parted. Brooke continued on to their table where she got a tearful and prolonged hug from Momma and a kiss on her forehead from Father (and were his eyes wet too?). Matt followed then Leah, and the five arrayed themselves all smiling around the table. They were for that moment one big happy family.

And they managed to preserve that impression through most of the dinner. Leah kept checking on her sister seated across the table next to Father. He was often speaking to her in words Leah couldn't see, his face slightly turned away and speaking low. And Brooke was generally nodding in agreement or polite indulgence, as if to say "Sure, sure, anything you say."

But then Matt said something that made Brooke grimace. Father was still smiling, so either he hadn't heard or whatever Matt said hadn't offended him. But from that moment Leah could practically count off the seconds till Brooke either lashed out or bolted.

Turned out to be bolted. Brooke picked at her meal—chicken, rice pilaf, peas and carrots—for a while, leaving most of it uneaten. Toward the end she stood and said she was going to the restroom. Leah started to rise to accompany her, but a quick glance from Brooke and a near invisible shake of her head kept Leah in her seat. Father nodded, still smiling; and Brooke sauntered off toward the restrooms behind the stage.

They cleared the dinner then served the Debutante Cake—fat wedges of dry and rather bland white cake piled high with lots of equally tasteless fluffy white frosting (don't even get Brooke started on the apt metaphor of the cake) that was supposedly made from an antebellum recipe. The cake would be followed by the Waltz, the presentation of individual awards and recognitions, then open dancing "for the old timers" Momma joked as she made eyes at Father. The four dug into their cake—Matt seemed especially happy for the dose of sugar—while trying to ignore the fifth piece sitting in front of an empty chair. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Momma finally caught Leah's eye at a moment when Father was looking away and made a very subtle nod toward the restrooms. Leah folded her napkin and set it beside her barely nibbled cake before rising from her seat. Father may not have noticed Momma's gesture but Matt had, and Leah noted his snicker just before she turned from the table.

She got out of sight beyond the stage curtains before a hunch made her turn toward the door to the parking lot rather than continuing on to the ladies room. Once outside she walked toward the back of the lot. Sure enough, there was Danny's red pickup with gleaming chrome trim, almost exactly where she'd guessed it would be—off by itself at the far end, backed by woods of tall pines just turning to slate gray in the new dusk. Leah marched across the wide expanse of asphalt in the dim glow of a distant streetlight, not sure what she'd find or what she'd do once she found it.

She saw Brooke's brown hair plastered against the passenger-side window of the truck. She rapped hard on that window.

Brooke turned quickly and a big smile spread across her face as she cranked down the window. "Leah, we were just talking about you!" she said, her words mumbled between giggles. Even in the dim light, Brooke's eyes looked funny—all squinty and evasive.

Then the smell struck Leah like a slap. It was the first time she'd ever smelled marijuana smoke, but she immediately knew what it was and why Brooke was acting so foolish. She signed for Brooke to come back to the Ball, that Momma and Father were worried.

Brooke said, "What?" Then her face convulsed into a series of uncontrolled giggles.

Leah walked up to the window. The strong smoke was almost more than she could stand. She saw Danny's shadowed face and body leaning against the driver's side door. The glowing ember at his lips moved up and down in her direction.

Brooke said, "Come on in, Leah. Join the party!" Brooke's door swung open.

But instead of sliding toward the center to let Leah in, Brooke fell out into the parking lot! Leah caught her sister under the armpits to keep her from slamming into the pavement, but her dress caught on the door handle and tore.

Brooke finally managed to get her feet under her and stood beside Leah. But then she started swaying from side to side and finally gave up her losing battle with gravity, pushed Leah away, and sat on the pavement. She leaned back against the truck's sideboards and looked up at Leah with a determined gaze. "I'll be fine in a minute," she said, then started giggling again.

With the door open, the truck's dome light was on and Danny's face was clearly lit. Leah glared at him across the wide seat. He gazed calmly at her, placid and inscrutable, those dark eyes seeing through her, down into her soul. Whatever the pronounced effects of the marijuana on Brooke, he seemed unfazed.

How could you? Leah signed, emphasizing her point, and blame, by slapping the back of one hand against her other.

Danny didn't sign but knew exactly what she meant. He responded without speaking, just shifting his eyes slightly and tilting his head—Brooke is Brooke; her choice.

Somehow Leah knew exactly what Danny was thinking, but how was that possible? Somehow she was exactly in tune with his every move and gesture, even when he wasn't moving. She wondered what it would be like to sit on the truck seat beside him. Then she remembered Brooke, her sister collapsed at her feet on the asphalt.

Brooke was now raising the wide hem of her gown and waving it up and down like a sheet, exposing her bare legs all the way up to her panties then hiding them then exposing them. "Look, Leah. I'm doing the Deb Waltz!" she said from her seat, waving her gown and kicking up her feet.

Leah took a deep breath, then another. After the second she bent over, picked Brooke up under the armpits, and set her back on the truck seat. Before Brooke could fall back out into the parking lot, she slammed the door. She leaned in through the open window and, despite the new darkness, caught Danny's eyes and held them. Don't leave! she said with her hands and her eyes.

Danny gave a single short nod, his impassive expression never changing.

Leah then turned to Brooke and gave her a light kiss on the forehead.

Brooke said, "I'm not Danny!" and pushed her away.

Leah ignored the gesture, stood back from the truck's open window, and locked the door in hopes of keeping Brooke where she was, and far from any other witnesses.

As she returned across the parking lot, her mind was racing. How was she going to keep this from Momma and Father? She was so preoccupied that she bumped into Judy Ingram as she bent to unlock her car door in the middle of the lot. Judy was a sweet girl in Brooke's class who came from a blue-collar family that lived across town. Despite their different backgrounds—indeed, probably because of them—Brooke had befriended Judy and helped defend her against the snide remarks and abuse from some of the other preppy girls at school. She had neither the connections nor the money to attend the Ball as a participant, but Brooke had helped get her a place on the decorations committee so she could attend for free. Now she was headed off to her weekend job at the ice-cream parlor. "What's the matter, Leah?"

Leah stared at her with uncharacteristic desperation, then suddenly calmed as she struck on a plan, a scheme that required Judy as a participant. She twice tried to sign her plan, but Judy failed to understand. Leah again grew desperate. Time was running out.

Judy raised one finger then leaned into the car and pulled out a sheet of paper—the Deb Ball program—that was blank on the back. She handed it and a pencil to Leah.

Leah set it on the hood of the car and quickly wrote—Tell anyone who asks that you drove me and Brooke home.

Judy looked at her with surprise. "You need a ride home?"

Leah shook her head, then wrote—Just tell them you did. Brooke will explain.

Judy was still confused but eventually nodded. "Say I drove you and Brooke home from the Ball."

Leah nodded emphatically.

Judy said, "O.K. That's easy."

Leah gave her a big smile.

"Nothing else?" Judy asked.

Leah thought for a second then wrote—Tell them you had to stop twice for Brooke to throw up by the side of the road.

Now Judy's eyes got big. "Oh!" she said.

Leah nodded and shaped her mouth into an O like Judy's. Then she turned and rushed back into the hall through the service door.

The lights had dimmed in the dining area and brightened around the stage and dance floor in anticipation of the start of the Waltz. Leah was glad for this as she hoped it might help hide the lies she was about to spin. She was also relieved that the Waltz hadn't yet started and that guests and waitresses were still moving about, finishing dessert. She was a couple strides from their table and taking a deep breath to calm her nerves when she detected the odor of marijuana mixed with the more potent cigarette smoke and the occasional cigar. For just a second she wondered if someone was smoking pot inside the hall. Then she realized the smell was coming off of her—her dress and hair and skin! She considered racing to the restroom to scrub the parts of her body that were scrubbable, but too late—Momma spotted her and raised her eyes in concern. She'd have to go on and hope Momma and Father couldn't smell the strange odor amidst the other many odors in the hall, or if they did would not know what it was or where it came from.

She signed to Momma that Brooke was sick in the restroom.

Momma started to rise to help.

Leah stopped her with a single hand adamantly outstretched like a traffic cop, then indicated that Brooke was O.K. but embarrassed. Someone else would take them home.

"Who?" Momma asked.

She signed Judy Ingram by her round face and ice-cream dipper (early in the summer, Leah had asked Momma if she could get a job at the ice cream parlor with Judy, and received a quick and firm "No" without discussion).

By then Momma had passed the information about Brooke to Father, who had trouble reading Leah's signing in the dimly lit public space. He said, "Then we should take her home." He set his napkin on the table and stood.

Leah looked at Momma with desperation, her hands limp at her sides. Either Momma would get the message from her eyes, or she wouldn't. No signing would help now.

Momma stared at Leah for several seconds then raised her hand and took hold of Father's near wrist. "Leah says Brooke's O.K., just not feeling well. Leah will take care of it."

Leah turned to Father. He seemed uncertain. She looked back at Momma.

"Dear, we should stay for the awards. I hear Ted Jenkins daughter is in line for Most Congenial." Ted Jenkins was Father's boss, and a stickler for social protocols. He was the biggest reason behind their parents' insistence Brooke participate in the Deb Ball. Then Momma added the coup de grace—"And maybe we can take a turn or two around the dance floor after the awards." They both loved ballroom dancing—it was how they had met, at a formal back in college.

Father looked from Momma to Leah. "You're sure Brooke's O.K.?"

Leah nodded and crossed her heart.

Even in the dim light, Father got that sign. He nodded and sat back down.

Leah signed to Momma—Enjoy the rest of the Ball. I'll take good care of Brooke.

Momma nodded around a wry grin that said all that needed to be said without words—I don't know what Brooke has gotten into, but I'm sure you'll make it right.

Leah smiled thanks, for her leniency and her confidence. She then turned toward the door. The whole time she'd been standing beside the table, she'd avoided looking at Matt. But as she turned she couldn't help glancing at him. In that fraction of a second, he gave her a smug shake of his head, a snicker, and a wink. She expected the first two gestures but not the last—one more favor Brooke would have to find the means of returning.

By the time she climbed into the truck beside Brooke, most of the acrid smell had dissipated, replaced now by the sour scent of hops and beer breath. Leah fired a glance at Danny. A hard and admonishing glare had become her default look for him, which in fact was O.K. by her as it helped hide, or so she hoped, what he seemed able to see inside her.

He shrugged, sardonic and unflappable as ever, and gestured that the beer helped bring Brooke down from the marijuana.

Evidence of that was clear from Brooke's snoring. Her head lolled against Danny's shoulder. Her mouth was open and a bit of drool ran across her unmade-up chin. Leah shook her head, disgusted by the behavior of both the truck's occupants. Just get us home she signed before slamming the door and turning her eyes directly ahead, where they remained for the duration of the fifteen minute drive as she sat straight-backed and rigid on the truck's lofty perch, riding shotgun with the damp and fecund summer night rushing past her face, caressing her blond hair.

Brooke was staring down on her when she opened her eyes in new morning light. "How was the Waltz?"

Leah managed a nod—it was good. Then she added—Chloe Bennington was the best. Chloe Bennington was a long-term snotty nemesis of Brooke's. Leah signed her name with batting eyes and a big-toothed smile.

"Should've guessed," Brooke said. She waited for her sister to finish waking then asked, "How bad did I mess up?"

Leah let her sweat for a long pause before answering. Not too bad.

"Am I grounded forever?"

Leah shook her head. Momma and Father don't know.

Brooke was confused. How was that possible?

Leah pointed to the pink plastic dishpan on the nightstand, their standard issue "vomit bucket" dating back to early childhood. She'd pulled it out from under the bathroom sink to enforce the ruse. I told them you were sick and that Judy Ingram would take us home.

"Judy Ingram?"

Leah nodded. You need to thank her.

"Did she bring us home?"

Leah grinned—my secret.

"And how'd I get up here?" Brooke gestured to the room. "And in your pajamas?" She was in Leah's lemon-colored two-piece summer PJs. They fit her fine, maybe a tad big; but panties and a T-shirt were more her norm.

Leah sat up against the headboard. My bed, my rules.

"And your secret," Brooke said.

Leah nodded—for now.

"If I humiliated myself in front of anybody, you'd let me know, right?"

Only Danny.

Brooke thought about that. "He's used to it by now."

Leah nodded.

Brooke leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Leah's, stared into her fully awake pupils from a fraction of an inch away. "Thank you, sister."

Leah's eyes offered concrete affirmation without any part of her body moving.

Brooke sat upright and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

Leah caught her by the forearm to get her to look. What did Matt say to make you angry?

Brooke laughed. "Which time?"

At dinner.

"Oh, he said, 'Your farm boy isn't good enough for us.'"

Leah frowned. At least Father didn't hear.

"But he did," Brooke said, her anger rising again. "He heard and smiled and nodded. That's what pissed me off, not Matt." She turned and stood, headed for the bathroom to brush her teeth and pop a couple aspirin.

Sisters' Weekend

They lay on their backs gazing up at the stars, just like when they were kids. Well, it wasn't exactly like when they were kids. Back then, they would've been out in the middle of the lawn, not on the deck safely raised a few feet above the ground; and they would've been lying directly on the grass and dirt, not atop clean and plush beach towels. Still, the stars were the same, so high and lofty yet also close and intimate. And the heavy late-summer air was the same or seemed so, lying atop them like a vast blanket, close and warm and fragrant, full of both history and promise.

In the dome of stars Brooke had an instinctive intimation of her sister's reality, the void of stillness that was nonetheless so full of sparkling diamonds of detail and nuance and revelation. And in the press of night air Leah perceived Brooke's world, could all but hear the chatter of life, the irresistible call to engage and explore. Yet neither was aware of this exchange of perceptions, this unconscious role reversal. It was part of who they were—Brooke-Leah, Leah-Brooke—part of whom they'd always been.

Tomorrow Brooke was off to college at the state university an hour's drive away. Momma and Father and Leah would deliver her and help her carry a carload of boxes filled with clothes and linens and books and stereo equipment and records across the plaza and into the elevator and up to her four-girl suite in the high-rise dorm. Matt was already there, set up in an off-campus apartment with three other guys, beginning his junior year at the same university. He'd made it clear even before she'd applied that she shouldn't count on any help or guidance from him, and Brooke had replied then and since with just one word—Good!—though they had quietly agreed that she would catch a ride home with him (he'd bought a car, a sporty two-seater) on the rare weekends he went, but only if she paid for the gas.

When Brooke had decided to attend the main campus of the state university rather than the local branch in town, where she could've lived at home, Leah had accepted the decision as Brooke being Brooke, always looking for new challenge. Knowing this, she had even gently encouraged that choice, never considering what it might mean for her life. Brooke's absence was not something she'd ever known, nor something she could or would contemplate in advance.

And on Monday, Leah would begin her junior year at the public high school, transferring from the small private school she'd attended since she was five. This change came about at Leah's initiative, but was quickly picked up by Momma as a well-timed transition. Though the school had no provisions for handicapped students, the principal, Jackson Porter, was from Momma's small hometown and had known Leah all her life. He was well aware of her academic gifts and advancement and felt sure that with but a few adjustments she could thrive in his school. They met with her teachers earlier in the week and advised them of her condition. Principal Porter made it clear that she was to be treated as any other student, asked only that she be allowed to sit in the front row of the class and that the teachers make a conscious effort to face the class when lecturing and to annunciate clearly—"which I'm sure you already do" he said confidently. A few of her teachers seemed skeptical at first, but were quickly won over by Leah herself—her poise and attentiveness and winning smile. They all agreed that Leah would use a writing tablet to communicate with the teachers and staff until such time as some of them learned the rudiments of sign language, if they ever did. Leah was already used to doing this with other casual acquaintances and saw it as no burden.

At first Brooke was shocked and hurt by Leah's request. "Why didn't you transfer this year, when I could've helped you?"

Leah had simply gazed calmly at her.

"Well, the girls will all talk behind your back and the guys will tell you anything just to get you alone."

Leah laughed.

"What?" Brooke shouted, all worked into a tizzy.

The girls don't have to talk behind my back and the guys can't give me a line if they don't sign.

Brooke stared at her a moment then shook her head and laughed. "They really aren't going to know what to make of you."

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

"Your choice."

Leah had nodded—let's hope good.

But now under the stars they both had their doubts, but each for the other. Leah wondered how Brooke would respond to such a large and diverse group of peers, where her rebellious nature would be largely lost, or at least diluted, by the wide range of people and personalities surrounding her. Brooke really didn't know what it was like to not have something to push against. And Brooke feared for Leah's isolation. It was difficult enough being a newcomer. At least that was a choice. But Leah could never set aside her difference, her separateness. And what if that loneliness made her question herself, her innate self-confidence?

The stars and the night offered no answer to their divergent concerns, just lay atop them like a blanket, covering both.

August 28

Dear Brooke,

So how is college life treating you? How are your roommates, your classes, the food? Have you started to figure your way around? Is it hard to get from one class to the other? The campus seemed so big and so crowded on Saturday I could not imagine ever knowing how to get from one place to the other. But I guess that is the way with all new things.

The calendar on the wall says it has been only five days since I last saw you, but I feel like it has been five years! I think I have written about three books and several shorter essays to you in my head. Every free minute I have I find myself telling Brooke another story about my day or my thoughts or this funny thing that happened. Was I like that when you were here? Could you ever turn me off? I do not recall monopolizing your time, yet somehow I always got it out, unloaded on poor old Brooke! Now there's nobody to unload to. It is all stuck inside.

I will try unloading here, in written form, but not get too carried away. You after all have lots of other things to do than read your sister's boring accounts, and I can only write so late into the night before Momma will flash the hall light to tell me it is time to go to sleep. "Eight hours of sleep paints a cheery face!"

My first day of high school was interesting. The bus driver got lost and we were a half-hour late. I knew where he made the wrong turn and hoped somebody would tell him, but all the other riders were either sophomores too caught up in telling each other about their summer or freshman too scared to make a move or a peep. As we got more and more lost, I think everyone, even some of the sophomores, was looking to me to straighten the guy out. But all I could do was sit there and smile. I felt so helpless.

We finally made it, though. But by then homeroom was over. None of us had our locker assignments or combinations, so they had us put our stuff in the office conference room with a nametag stuck to it. Then they had to find the schedule for each one of us. That took forever. We were from all different grades and homerooms and the secretary had to pull the file for each and jot out the class schedule and room numbers. I showed the secretary that I already had mine, but I think she thought I was putting one over on her and waved me back to sit with the others. Only when she finally pulled my file and saw who I was did she understand. "Oh, you're the deaf girl!" she shouted for all the rest to hear. Then everybody looked at me funny. I smiled and tried to look composed but it was hard. So I looked out the office window to avoid their stares. It looked so peaceful out there—busses parked and empty with their doors open and windows down to let the heat out, and parents dropping kids off late. Some of those late kids looked really sad and scared, so I didn't feel so alone.

By the time I got to my first class, it was three-quarters over. It was American History and the teacher, Miss Peacock, a wizen-faced old woman with a bird-like nature but more sparrow than peacock, interrupted her lecture to greet me with great formality and pomp, shaking my hand and introducing me to the class as "hearing-impaired" (that is a new one on me) and showing me to my chair at the front she had marked "reserved." I thanked her and sat down and unpacked my history notebook and pen and prayed the other sixty eyes in the classroom would soon have somewhere else to look. But it seemed to take Miss Peacock forever to leave my side. She just stood there beside my chair. I finally had to look up. She had the strangest expression on her face, something between curiosity and sympathy, as if she thought she knew me better than she did. I like Miss Peacock and think she will be a good teacher, but at that moment I wanted her to leave me alone and get back to what she was doing before I knocked on the door. But she seemed frozen in place beside me. So I smiled and nodded thanks again. That released her. She turned, clapped her hands twice, and resumed lecturing with a fast-paced energy I could not begin to keep up with. Fortunately after class she handed me an outline of the day's lesson that helped me fill in all the blank spaces in my notes. She said she would have outlines for me before each class, "our secret." I did not know why a class outline should be a secret, but I again thanked her and then asked for directions to my next class, marked English with Mr. Stanford, Room 212, on my schedule sheet. Without a word, she stood and took my hand and guided me to Mr. Stanford's room, two halls away. We must have made quite the pair as everyone stepped aside to let the Peacock and the Hearing Impaired pass. Truth be told, I was glad for the guide and the companion if a little uncomfortable with the delicate fingers holding my hand and all the eyes staring. I guess I'll have to get used to the staring. Miss Peacock's fingers may take a little longer.

The rest of the classes were less eventful. Mr. Stanford kept staring at me while he talked, as if he could make me hear with his eyes. I guess he thinks I can only read his lips if he's looking at me. Mrs. Erskine in Earth Science is a hoot. I keep thinking all that energy is going to burst forth in some kind of wild dance, or launch her into outer space. She's a little hard to follow, moving around so much and talking so fast; but she draws great pictures on the chalkboard. Mr. Dixon in Chemistry had us put on our eye protection at the start of class and keep them on the whole forty-five minutes. We must've looked hilarious, all those kids staring ahead with goggles like an audience at a three-D movie. Some of the boys' goggles fogged up! And all of us had red-banded raccoon faces when we headed for the door.

Speaking of Mr. Dixon, after class today he came up as I was packing my book bag and asked if I had a minute. Lunch period was next and I did not exactly have a hot date waiting, so I nodded. He took me to the lab at the back of the room and asked if I had ever heard water boiling. I must have made a funny face as I shook my head. He laughed and handed me an asbestos glove (and of course those stupid goggles—he wears safety glasses all the time) then lit a Bunsen burner and slid it under a beaker of water. When I had the goggles and glove on and the water was boiling, he took my gloved hand and gently pressed it against the side of the beaker. Once I got over the fear of being burned, I could feel the water bubbling through the glass. He asked "Do you hear that?" And, in an odd way, I did hear it—at least a version of what it might be like to hear something. So I nodded. He got a big smile on his face, like he had introduced a whole new world to me. I quickly slid off the glove and goggles, thanked him for the demonstration, and headed to lunch.

Speaking of lunch, I have my designated seat at the table in the farthest corner between the side wall and the windows. Nobody else sits at that table, which is fine by me. I have a full view of the cafeteria, or I can look out the window at the soccer field if I catch someone looking back and get flustered. I have started playing this game, striking poses as if someone might be watching me—pretending to be the studious girl immersed in her math lesson or the serene girl raptly gazing on nature or the sociologist documenting the cafeteria culture or, my default pose, the lonely wallflower simultaneously hoping to disappear and be noticed.

I guess I have done a little of both these first few days—disappear and be noticed. I can only hope that one day someone might notice me as something other than "the deaf girl." Only time will tell.

Speaking of time, Momma just flashed the lights for the third time, so I had better end this letter and turn out my light (even if I don't immediately fall asleep).

I hope you are happy. I miss you. Please write soon.

Love from your sister,

Leah XXOOXXOOXX

September 2

Dear Leah,

I love this place! Sometime last week we got our schedules and picked up our books and went to class and heard about all the hard stuff we were supposed to learn and do and read and write, but so far the assignments have been EASY! And that leaves lots of time for all the other stuff, which is mostly lying out on the quad and meeting guys and going to parties. There are always lots of parties! On the weekend, the parties were huge and spilled outdoors. There was one on the main quad with live music, some local group called Flash in the Pan I'd never heard of but they sounded good. Other parties had speakers in the windows blasting the music outdoors. And I mean blasting! Could you hear it back home?

During the week, the parties are smaller and mainly in the dorm rooms. We call them floor parties because they include the four suites of a dorm floor with the suite doors open and people moving back and forth between rooms and hanging out in the common room outside the bathrooms and the elevators. We've had two parties on our floor already and the word's gone out that ours is a party floor. I guess that makes us party animals though I don't know what kind of animal we are.

Today classes were cancelled for the holiday and lots of kids went home. But there were enough of us still here to have a good time. This guy Brad I met last week is from here and had some local-yokel friends with a big pick-up and we all piled in and went to this old quarry on the edge of town. It's filled up with water now and the local kids hang out there and swim during the summer months. There are No Trespassing signs everywhere but Brad and his buddy Tim said don't worry about it, the quarry owners just put those up so if someone gets hurt they don't have to pay damages. They said a drunk high school kid drowned there a few years back and for a while the police patrolled the place and threw people out. But now the police have better things to do and the kids are using the quarry for a swimming hole again. They all jump from this high ledge. At first I was a little scared till Brad said "I'll hold your hand" and that made me mad enough to forget my fear and I just jumped! What a rush—the air whistling past then the jolt of cold water! And I mean COLD! I guess the water comes from the ground and never warms up, but it felt good on the hot day. We hung out there all afternoon and had a blast.

Sounds like your first day didn't go so hot. No locker! That must've been a bitch! I wish you'd started a year ago. I would've taken care of you. You could've ridden with me and Jackie and skipped that stupid bus and not be late but oh well. Peacock's a weird one. Some people think she's a dyke but I think she's just lonely. She lives for her students that's for sure, especially the girls. I know for a fact she got Ashley Johnson into rehab and maybe helped pay for it and some people say she got Jennifer Bailey in touch with one of the new abortion clinics. As for Stanford, he isn't looking at you to help you read lips. Make sure and keep your legs together or crossed or better yet quit wearing dresses and skirts and start wearing jeans like everyone else. Then you don't have to worry about keeping your legs crossed though you might want to still keep them together so that D.O.M. (that's short for Dirty Old Man) doesn't get the wrong idea. And make sure Dixon doesn't blow you up! They say he exploded a volcano demonstration a few years ago and shot the top right through a window! I think he's still stuck in his childhood play with fire and blow things up phase, only now he gets paid and has an audience.

Maybe you've figured out the rest by now or will soon enough. I'm sure you'll fit in fine at dear old Horton High. I wish I could help you more. But I guess I said that already. You have any trouble with mean girls or horny guys, hunt down Becky Barker and tell her Brooke sent you. She's a senior. She used to be in our class but stayed back a few years ago. She'll fix any problems you have, mark my words.

Shoot! Some jerk just squirted shaving cream under our door. At least I hope it's shaving cream! I better clean it up then go to bed. It's 1:30 AM. They say I have class tomorrow morning. Imagine that!

Hugs and kisses from your

Big Sis

September 4

Dear Brooke,

Your letter arrived today and I was so happy to receive it. I got off the bus and ran over to the mailbox and looked through all the junk mail and the bills and there it was! I think I must've jumped for joy but nobody was there to see so I don't know for sure. What I do know is that I ran inside and dropped my book bag and tore open the envelope and read the letter right there in the entry hall. I've read it twice since and it's here on the desk beside me as I write these words. It's not the same as having you here beside me but it's the best I can do right now.

I miss you so much. Father and especially Momma have tried their best to spend extra time with me and do stuff together. On Labor Day we all three went to the pool. Can you believe that! When was the last time you saw Father in a bathing suit not at the beach? But there he was sitting on the lounger talking to Ed Carver about golf. I think they both wished they were golfing but this was a family holiday and family duty calls! Besides, Father had been golfing on Saturday with the gang from work and Momma laid down the law a long time ago—one round per week max! But you knew that already. So we hung out at the pool and Father even dragged me in for a swim before we came home. Then we went to the Richardsons' for a cookout. I bet you can guess how much fun I had with Billy and Joe Richardson sitting there looking at me like I was some kind of freak, not sure what I was good for and afraid to ask. Momma took pity on me and had me help Mrs. Richardson and her set the picnic table and cut up the vegetables for the salad. Mrs. Richardson has a new appliance called a food processor that will chop or slice vegetables very quickly. She showed me how but the thing scared me. So she gave me a paring knife and a cutting board and let me do it the old-fashioned way. It took longer but kept me occupied and away from the boys. In the meantime Mr. Richardson and Father got the grill lit and cooked the hotdogs and hamburgers. They were mostly alright but a few got a little charred. My salad was the best part, if I do say so myself! After dinner we all played badminton, our family against theirs. Even though we were short a player, we still beat them the first game. Then they beat us. Then it got too dark to see the birdie before we were able to finish the rubber match. Billy said they won but I knew it was a tie when we finally called it. I wanted Momma to speak up for us but she just kept quiet. You wouldn't have let him get away with that.

Then it was back to school on Tuesday. It was almost like having to start all over again after the long weekend. At least I know my way around now and am getting to know the teachers' different habits and mannerisms. And the homework isn't that difficult. I'm having a little trouble with the algebra, but I know Father will help me out if I get stuck. The problem isn't the teachers or the schoolwork, it's the students. I'm not sure what I expected, but I definitely didn't expect to be treated like some sort of precious roaming exhibit! You said to watch out for girls talking behind my back or boys trying to get me alone but there's been none of that. I'd die for a little of that kind of attention! In the beginning they stared, now they hardly notice me anymore. I'll look up and smile and try to catch their eyes but they always either look away or look past me to someone else. I don't know if they're afraid of me or puzzled by what to do but the overall effect is they can't be bothered with the deaf girl. I knew it would be hard to make friends, but I didn't know it would be this hard.

There is one boy, though. His name is Paul and he's a junior too and a transfer from Virginia. I found that out from Mrs. Ferguson in the guidance office where I go for study hall. She's become my friend and has records on all the kids. She's not supposed to share that information, of course, but she let me know Paul's father is an executive in the tobacco company and was transferred here over the summer. Paul's really smart and thinking of going to an Ivy League school. Anyway, he's not in any of my classes but we have the same lunch period and I see him sitting on the other side of the cafeteria and sometimes catch him looking my way. He sits with some of the other smart kids, you know the ones always carrying around the bulging book bags and staring off in space like they're trying to solve some complicated equation or assemble a new organic compound. But Paul isn't like that. He looks at people and acknowledges their presence and tries to help them out. One day I saw him help a freshman who dropped her books while trying to carry some sort of exhibit. He picked up her books and carried them all the way to her classroom. Isn't that sweet?

Still, he hasn't ever directly acknowledged me or tried to speak to me. I don't know if he's shy or intimidated or busy with other stuff. Probably he doesn't even know I exist and is just looking out the window or to someone behind me when I think he's looking my way. You always said I had an active imagination. Maybe now it's just pointed toward this boy named Paul. But my imagination can only go so far. My wishing can only go so far. I'm ready for someone to walk up and actually say "hello." That would be nice.

Speaking of someone saying "hello," I saw Danny drive by the other day. He was picking up his younger brother Joshua who I think usually takes a bus but must've had an appointment or something. Anyway, Danny saw me and waved. And I waved back even though I knew you wouldn't want me to. It was nice to have someone other than a teacher acknowledge my existence. But then he drove on and I haven't seen him since.

It sounds like you're having a great time at college. I'm glad you're making friends so quickly and have so much fun stuff to do. I can't believe you jumped off a ledge into the quarry! What if you'd hit a rock? But then that's my sister—never afraid to try anything!

Be careful and take care of yourself. You're the only sister I have!

With love

Leah

September 8

Dear Leah,

Don't tell anyone but my head is pounding like the bass woofer at the party last night. I took some aspirin but promptly threw those up along with some other glop you don't want to hear described. So I guess I just need to tough this one out without meds. I owe you a letter and am hoping writing to you might distract me from the racket going on inside my head. You always were so good at making me feel better. I wish you were here now.

It's Sunday morning around noon and guess what—I'm not at church. I'm in my bed with the blinds closed. My jerk roommate Bethany (don't call her Beth!) was up at the crack of dawn clamoring around to get ready for swimming practice. Somewhere in that commotion she raised the blinds. I felt like I was in the middle of a hundred spotlights. Even with the covers pulled over and my head under the pillows it was still glaring. I screamed at her to please put the blinds down and she did but only after grumbling some nonsense about needing to share the room. Now I have another pissed person to make up to. So what else is new?

Yesterday was wild. They had this "brunch" at a frat house before the game—pizza and kegs. I don't know where they found a pizza parlor open that early or maybe it was left over from Friday night. I didn't eat any of it but I might've had a sip or two of beer. Then we went to the game. The student section is on the sunny side and boy did we bake. It was a blast. I even tried crowd surfing, the only freshman to do it. And we clobbered the other team, some losers from Tennessee or Kentucky or somewhere, but you probably already read that in the paper. Then after the game we went back to Frat Row and hopped from house to house. I've never seen so many drunk kids in all my life. Everybody was happy though, with the victory and all, and I only saw a few fights—townies trying to bust in I think. Then it started raining so we headed back to campus where there were more parties. I ended up at one on the seventh floor of West Dorm where a bunch of football players were celebrating. They were showing off on the balcony, picking up chairs and tables and stuff and pretending to throw it over the railing on the people walking below then pulling it in at the last second. Some big guy, I think he said he played linebacker, picked me up and held me out over the edge. He swung me back in after a minute. I just laughed and said "Anytime." He shook his head and said "You're crazy" in a slow drawl. Must've been from Georgia or Alabama or somewhere, or maybe he was just slurring his words because he was drunk. A little later I found MaryJo, one of my suitemates, at another party and we paired up and did some trolling for drunk guys. That's when you spot a good fishing hole full of cute guys and get them to follow you around like little puppy dogs with just a look or the way you stand. They think they have a chance but you know they don't and it's all just for fun. The main thing is to not let it get out of hand unless you want it to, and to make sure you never lose track of your partner. MaryJo is good about that. She can hold her booze and won't let herself get distracted or dragged away. We caught some real hunks and had fun then threw them back in the pond. The last thing either me or MaryJo wants right now is a serious boyfriend. So we kept an eye on each other and eventually headed back to the suite—alone. Some loser followed us and kept knocking at our door and begging to come in. MaryJo talked to him through the door for a little while then finally got tired of the game and told him—I think his name was Brent—to go away or we'd call the police. I think he left after that or maybe he passed out in the common room. There were several guys sleeping on the couches out there when I went to the bathroom. Maybe he was one of them. Needless to say I didn't look too closely.

So that was yesterday. Talking about it now, it's a wonder I don't feel worse than I do. I guess I'm building up a tolerance for partying. But don't you worry. I'm also going to all my classes and keeping up with my homework and even got an "A" on my first Calc quiz. Who says you can't have fun and still get your studies in?

Speaking of having fun, you are now officially invited to the first ever Sister's Weekend here on campus. It's the last weekend in September and comes before Parents' Weekend and Homecoming and all that other stupid stuff. I've already talked to Momma and she'll bring you over on Saturday morning and come get you Sunday afternoon. You'll get your very own sample of college life, compliments of Brooke. And don't think for a minute this is just for you. Momma says she'll take my dirty laundry home and bring it back so that I can have something other than sink washed panties and balcony-railing dried T-shirts to wear to class. She keeps telling me to try the local Laundromat but have you seen those places? My clothes wouldn't get caught dead in one of those dryers!

Guess what? My headache is gone! You really are a miracle worker, Leah. You can heal your poor old sis from fifty miles away! Maybe I should report you to the Miracle Worker Board for nomination to sainthood or something.

Then again, maybe I should just keep you as my personal saint. Chances are this isn't the last time I'll need you.

With love from--

Your Awake and Perky and Ready to Go Play Frisbee Tag

Sis

P.S. I don't care if you wave to Danny. Hope it reminds him of what he's missing.

September 18

Dear Brooke,

It sounds like you are having a great time. You always said "University Center was Party Central" and I guess that is true. I am surprised we did not get more stories from Matt about the wild happenings, but he never was one to share his experiences. Do you ever see him around campus? Is he at any of your parties? You probably hope not. You do not want a spy reporting back to Momma and Father.

I am glad you got an "A" on your first quiz. I hope you are keeping up with your classwork. Do they still send mid-term grades to parents? That seems an outdated policy. I recall when Father got Matt's first grades and complained about two "Bs" and a "C." Didn't he say something like, "I'm not sending my son to Center just to flunk out and humiliate our family!" Do you know if he ever said anything to Matt?

Sister's Weekend? I do not believe I saw that listed on the University Calendar I picked up when we dropped you off. You sure you do not mind dragging around your boring and bland little sister? I do not want to cramp your style or spoil your weekend. I will bring my homework in case you have someplace to go and cannot bring me along. I do not mind spending time alone in your room. At least it will be a change of pace from here.

Unlike you, my classes are the highlight of my life. I do not have a social life and certainly no parties to go to. But I love my teachers and for the most part the classes are really interesting and stimulating. In American History Miss Peacock shared some of her personal library on the Jamestown settlement and the lives of John Smith and Pocahontas, and gave me the name and address of someone involved in the current excavations up there. I wrote to him and he sent me copies of some of his notes and field drawings. I feel like I am right there digging with him! Miss Peacock said she would like to take me up there over Thanksgiving break, to see the excavations and meet her former student (and get a behind the scenes guided tour!). But I have not gotten up the courage to ask Momma yet. I do not know how it would fit in with our trip to Gramp and Gram's.

My other classes are good too. We are reading Romeo and Juliet in English! I cannot help but see Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting every time I read their lines. I guess everyone, or almost everyone, in the class thinks the same way. Mr. Stanford says we will watch the movie after we finish the play and critique Hollywood's adaptation. That sounds interesting but I am guessing that most of the students think it is Shakespeare not Hollywood that needs the improvement. Speaking of the movie, Mr. Stanford was quite excited to tell me that the closed circuit feed they get includes the option for sub-titles, "so you'll be able to follow the dialogue!" I nodded thanks but thought to myself "now everyone will have to watch the words just for the poor little deaf girl." Sometimes my teachers try too hard to help me out.

My science classes are going fine but not as interesting as English and History. In two weeks we will be going on a fieldtrip in Earth Science to document pollution along Hornsby Creek. In Chemistry my lab partner is Sarah Ashford. She is very nice and told me she is learning to sign during her spare time. I appreciate her good intentions but cannot for the life of me interpret half of the new signs she tries out each day. I do not know if it is her bad form or my out of date system. I suggested we practice together someday after school. She thought that was a great idea but she has cross-country practice every day and asked if we could get together on the weekend. We are going to try for Saturday afternoon, if Momma will let me have the car. Sarah still does not have her license and lives south of town, way too far to walk and beyond bus service.

The only fly in the ointment is, of course, Algebra. Everyone says deaf people are supposed to be really good with numbers. Well, God left me out of that side benefit. I can understand simple math and was always good in geometry. Maybe that's my special math gift, with shapes and lines and visualizing three dimensions. But multiple variables and progressive equations? I'm lost. The good news is Mr. Ferrell hardly ever speaks, just writes everything on the chalkboard. So I can copy it all exactly then take it home for Father to help decipher. He is getting a little impatient with me though. I think he misses you mainly because you were my math tutor which left him free to read his paper in the evenings.

I said Algebra was the fly in the ointment but that is only for my classes. My interactions with students are another matter altogether, and would that they were as easy to untangle as an Algebra equation. A few girls, like Sarah, are trying to be friends and I am grateful for that. To my dismay I have discovered that teenagers do not look you in the eye and speak to your face. They are always looking away and speaking down. This makes it impossible to read their lips. Even when somebody tells them to look at me when they speak (always a teacher or Principal Porter; I would never ask them to do that) after just a few words they start looking away. I have gotten around that problem by passing notes to girls in some of my classes. They think this great fun, a throwback to grade school or junior high. But they always end up talking about boys. That is O.K. by me, to a point. But sometimes I would like to talk about something else, like a book or current events.

And the note passing does not work for meeting people not in my class. Sometimes I wish we had mailboxes like in the old days at Susan Sartor. Then I could drop a note off in anybody's box I wanted to meet and they could mail me back. But imagine if I tried that here, slipping a note in someone's locker. They would either think I was a brazen hussy or even weirder that they already think I am. So I guess all I can do is smile in their direction and hope they get the telepathic message and maybe one day approach me. But then what would I do? Write a note on my pad? I am the deaf girl. I can read lips if you talk slowly. Please look at me when you speak and annunciate clearly. That would get our friendship off to a great start!

Regarding smiling in a certain someone's direction, that boy Paul I told you about seems interested in me. I catch him looking my way at lunch more and more often. He seems to be making his way across the cafeteria toward me, sitting at a different table each day but steadily getting closer. If I was not so scared I would find his slow approach amusing. As it is, I am terrified he will finally arrive, maybe tomorrow, maybe Friday. He was only a couple tables away today, sitting with some Math Team nerds. Just my luck, right? I wish you were here to tell me what to do if he sits at my table. But I wanted to make the high school switch on my own. Can I rescind that wish for just a day or two? Guess it does not work that way, does it? I have to figure it out on my own.

Your Brooke-less sis,

Leah

September 20

Dear Leah,

If he sits at your table, DON'T make him "look at you when he speaks and annunciate clearly." He'll get all weirded out (might not even know what "annunciate" means) and run away, never to return. Use the writing notes on your pad approach. If he's at all smart and romantic (and if you have eyes for him, he's probably both) he'll love it! And if he's a dummy who can't spell, he can still draw pictures, maybe even some dirty ones. Now that I think about it, maybe I should try the communicate-via-pad approach on guys. It could produce some interesting results.

It's Friday evening and I just picked up your letter. Oh, how I wish I could see you or at least talk to you on the phone. I want to know what happened. Did Paul sit at your table? Was either one of you able to do anything more than make goo-goo eyes at each other? Did he ask you out? Set up a study date? I bet he could help you with your algebra. How I wish I could be there to talk to you. What good's a big sister if she can't give you advice on boys? No good at all. No good that she's off at college and you're all on your own. I'm sorry.

A bunch of girls just headed out to try a new restaurant in town, some soup and salad place that's supposed to be cheap and healthy. Us girls got to watch our waistlines! I told them to go on, I'd catch up later. For some reason I'm not in the mood for socializing right now.

It's all your fault, you know. I didn't realize how much I needed you until this long time apart. Oh, I knew that we liked spending time together. But I'd always thought that was just normal sister stuff and that we'd grow up and get over it. What I didn't know was that you were my rock. You ARE my rock! When I started at college and everything was a whirlwind with so many people and things to do I figured the confusion was just part of the experience. You throw about a million kids together and stir them all up with a big spoon and you're going to get some craziness. Boy, are you going to get some craziness. But then when the dust clears you wonder who it is that's looking back at you in the mirror. Is she that girl with the bloodshot eyes who can't remember where she slept last night? Is that who she's become or wants to be?

And then I saw you behind me with that stupid knowing and patient smile that always drove me crazy but I then realized was my backstop. All my life I could do foolish and impulsive things and you'd be there to catch me and pick me up and dust me off and tell me it was O.K. even when sometimes it wasn't. And where were you now, when I needed to be picked up and dusted off? I'd even let you put some make-up on me. Do you have anything that will hide the shadows under my eyes?

I wish I could bum a ride home and we could get in the station wagon and go out to the mill and just sit and talk the way we used to. I'd drink my peppermint schnapps or sweet red wine and you'd politely decline each time I offered it to you. And we'd get it all figured out.

Well, isn't that a fine how do you do—tears making this stupid ink run! But don't worry. You know old Brooke—if there's one thing she's good at doing, it's picking herself up and getting on with life!

I can't wait to see you—just one week from tomorrow! We'll have a great time! If it's sunny, bring a bathing suit. We'll lie out on the Quad and make all the guys drool!

Hope everything went well with Paul. Can't wait to hear about it. And let's talk about that Jamestown trip. I have some ideas on how to break it to Momma.

Your spend-Friday-night-in-her-room

Brooke (and happy for the peace and quiet)

September 25

Dear Brooke,

I am sorry I was not there with you Friday. I cannot believe you would have let me put make-up on! If I had known that, I would have walked to Center.

I will not ask what happened Thursday night, but it sounds like it got a little wild. I hope things have calmed down since then. Have you made any friends you can talk to? Letters are good, but the response time is a little slow. Should we try smoke signals? That might work faster. (Guess you can see I am thinking a lot about my Pocahontas paper!)

Paul did finally sit at my table—on Monday (he was not in school Friday). What a fiasco! He approached with his lunch tray and looked to me for permission to sit, as if I owned the table (come to think of it, maybe I do—squatter's rights!) I did my best to keep from blushing (though I'm afraid I probably turned bright red) and nodded. He sat down and glanced up for just a second then started jabbering away in rapid-fire words and got a little flustered and looked down at his food but kept on talking. I think he knows I am deaf and knows he is supposed to talk slowly and at my eyes but like every other kid in the school he cannot make himself do it. I was doing my very best to follow what he was saying but maybe got every fifth word and of course nothing made sense. He looked up briefly a couple times and my attentive expression must have made him think I was really interested and following so he promptly looked down again and continued his monologue. At some point I caught the words Mr. Jensen—you know, the gym teacher—and then I swear he said "farted." Even though I knew I must have been mistaken, I could not get the word out of my mind and had this picture of Mr. Jensen leading gym class farting! And that image set me to giggling and I could not stop no matter how many sad things I tried to think of. I attempted to keep the giggles down in my throat, but then they would accumulate and burst out even worse. At some point Paul looked up again. He had gone on quite a while after I started giggling, so I guess I suppressed the sounds fairly well or he was truly oblivious. When he saw me laughing, he assumed I was laughing at him and got confused and hurt and clammed right up. I shook my head and tried to explain, first with eye contact, then with signs but neither got through. So I leaned over to get my pad and pen from the book bag; but when I looked up he was gone, headed for the dirty dishes window then out the door. Poor boy did not even get to eat his lunch. I thought about chasing after him, but what would I do? How could I explain that a word I thought he said but probably did not say had launched me into a giggle fit? That would have really made a good impression! And then of course I would have to tell him the word. How do you sign "farted?" (Do not answer that—it is a rhetorical question!)

Telling you now it all sounds pretty funny. Nothing seems as bad after I tell good old Brooke. I saw him at lunch and in the halls a few times the last two days. Each time he avoided my eyes, but I think it was more in embarrassment than in anger. I could be wrong, but nothing I have ever seen about Paul suggests anger or coldness. I think now he feels I am not worth the effort—after those weeks of building up the courage to have it end so badly.

And maybe he is right. I am not worth the effort. I do not say that out of self-pity but in simple acknowledgement of the complex demands of human relationships. I had never thought much about friendships while I was at Susan Sartor. We were all in the same boat, shared so much in common before we even met that we immediately had something to build on. And of course I had you. From my earliest memories we had each other. We did not have to try or think about it.

But now in a big public school with such a wide variety of people each with their own background and hopes and needs, I realize how complicated relationships are. And of course no one there has my particular set of conditions. But what I also know is that my deafness does not make me as different as everyone assumes. I am not a different species! (No comment, Brooke! On second thought, comment requested—am I different species? If so, what am I?)

At least I do not think of myself as a different species. I always fit in with you. I know I'm different, but only as different as everyone else is different. Those differences could be fun. They could be interesting. They do not have to be awkward or embarrassing. But the chasm seems so wide now, and part of it is my fault. I have not yet learned how to approach people and break through those initial differences to get to the common ground. And here Paul makes the effort to bridge that gap and I have a giggle fit! Maybe it is as bad as I first thought. Maybe it is worse.

I cannot wait to see you this weekend. Knowing the next time we communicate will be in person (FINALLY!) will help me get through the next two days. I am counting down the hours, the minutes, and the seconds.

With her eye on the clock, your forlorn sister,

Leah

Brooke was waiting in the shade of the portico when Momma dropped Leah off in front of the dorm promptly at ten on Saturday morning. As she emerged from that shade into the bright sun and strode quickly to the loading/unloading curb where they'd parked, she looked to Leah so much older and more confident that she didn't seem her sister—or, more accurately, seemed to be someone else in her sister's body. From the letters, and given the time of day and day of the week, Leah expected a bleary-eyed sister at the least, more likely a tardy one needing to be roused by a suitemate to tend to the weird deaf girl standing in their doorway that she'd reached only through handwritten pleas to sympathetic undergrads—I'm deaf. Please help me find my sister who lives in this dorm.

Leah knew this imagined scenario was just that—imaginary. Brooke would be there, however disheveled or rumpled; and if she weren't, Momma would make sure and find her before leaving Leah. Still, the waif scenario was telling of how insecure Leah had grown in the month since they'd given Brooke farewell hugs at just this spot. At the time, everyone, Leah included, had fretted over how Brooke would adjust to her new environs and demands and freedoms. No one, not even Leah, had worried about the other Fulcher sister and the big changes facing her.

No one, that is, except Brooke. She knew Leah better than Leah knew herself. And she knew Leah's confidence and self-possession, well-groomed over many years, was largely dependent on familiarity with her surroundings and situations. To be sure, she could extend that grace and calm into unexpected challenges, as she had many times—with Brooke as the most frequent benefactor. But these were always short-term trials, where Leah's determination and composure were more than adequate to the task. But her sister was not of infinite self-confidence, and the big challenge for her would come in the slow ebbing of this resource, as in the daily turned into weekly benign neglect of her public school classmates, neglect that would eventually come to feel like rejection. Leah, boosted and affirmed by her family and friends since birth, had never experienced such grinding indifference and isolation, and would have to figure out on her own how to deal with it.

Well, not entirely on her own. She still had a big sister who cared about her more than anything in the world. Brooke reached the car just as Leah opened the door. She bent at the waist and all but lifted her sister out of the car. Though Leah was taller, Brooke was standing on the sidewalk a step above. She pulled Leah's face into her chest, patted her sister's blond hair pulled into a ponytail and kissed the top of her head. Leah, usually uncomfortable with such public shows of affection, didn't move for what seemed minutes, kept her face buried in Brooke's sweatshirt. When they finally parted, dry-eyed both, they were different people—or maybe the same, from some earlier attachment, or maybe both different and the same: in any case, new.

By then Momma was beside them with the back door open. She handed Brooke the small overnight case and Leah's book bag and Leah her pillow, gave each a chaste hug, then rounded toward the driver's door.

"Wait!" Brooke yelled. She dropped her cargo on the sidewalk and ran to the wall by the dorm entry. She returned dragging three duffel bags bulging with dirty laundry. "You promised!" she grunted as she slung the first then the second duffel onto the backseat.

Leah laughed as she grabbed the last bag and swung it to Brooke while tucking her pillow under her other arm, careful not to let it fall to the dirty pavement.

They waved good-bye to Momma then rode the elevator up to Brooke's floor and entered her unlocked suite. The common room was an only slightly disordered mix of ratty dorm room furniture—two well-used couches, an upholstered chair with frayed arms, an eating-study table with three mismatched wooden chairs—and the randomly arrayed detritus of undergraduate life—book bags and umbrellas to one side of the door, a girl's bike leaning against the far wall, some empty wine bottles behind a small T.V. on an end table. Leah absorbed the scene in an instant, marveled at the relaxed sense of community built so quickly with former strangers. She couldn't help but contrast that with the fact she had built no friendship and only a few acquaintances in the same time period.

Leah started toward Brooke's room, where they'd deposited all her stuff last month, but Brooke grabbed her and redirected her toward the open door to the other bedroom. "We'll be staying in MaryJo and Julie's room."

Leah tilted her head.

"Julie goes home every weekend and MaryJo wanted an excuse to shack up with Brad, her latest flame; so they offered us the use of their room for the weekend. That way we don't have to sleep together in a twin bed—I love you, but not that much—and I don't have to ask Bethany for any favors."

Where is Bethany?

"She's at a trial meet in Virginia, but said she'll be back tonight."

Leah followed her sister into the far bedroom. Unlike the common room, which had no windows, the bedroom was brightly lit by sunlight streaming through a large south-facing window. The room was long and narrow with a university provided bed and desk and chair along each wall, and small closets to each side of the door. Neither MaryJo nor Julie had done much to personalize the room, though there was a large poster of a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in a blue vase taped to the right-side wall, over the bed.

Brooke dropped Leah's overnight case on the bed beneath the poster. "You take Julie's bed. I don't know if you could handle the memories stored in MaryJo's mattress!"

They both looked at MaryJo's bed, could almost see the steel springs bouncing. Brooke flopped down on it and mimed a writhing embrace, kissing the pillow as her imagined paramour.

Leah shook her head and sat on Julie's bed. Brooke sat up suddenly and stared at her sister across the few feet of sun-bathed floor between them. There was in that shared look simultaneously an intimacy and an awkwardness—the intimacy of all they shared till a month ago, an awkwardness at needing to make that intimacy current.

Brooke sighed. "I'm so glad you're here."

Leah signed, I wish we had never parted.

"We never did. We never will."

Leah nodded. She'd try to believe that.

Brooke had the weekend all planned out. First, they'd get schoolwork out of the way. "Aren't you so proud of me?" she asked. (A few minutes later, Leah discovered why she was being so conscientious—she had an English paper due on Monday morning and had not even chosen a topic.) Then they'd don their bathing suits beneath their shorts and grab a couple beach towels, some snacks, and her newly acquired boombox and go lie out on the main quad. Then they'd make dinner in the dorm kitchen in the basement and share it with a few of her new friends. Then they'd go to a party or two—"No drinking!" Tomorrow morning she'd arranged to go to a farm outside of town for "a special surprise." She'd be sure to have Leah back by three o'clock for Momma's pick up.

"What do you think?" Brooke asked after her rapid-fire summary of their schedule.

Leah nodded enthusiastically. Sounds great! Then she thought a minute and added I have not done that much in the month since I saw you.

"I know. Your seclusion ends today."

Brooke's English paper was on "The Heart of Darkness." She'd read the novella (maybe) but claimed she had no clue how to write a ten-page paper on "the stupid old story."

Leah had read the story a year ago, from a collection of long stories her teacher at the private school had given her, to "stretch your legs." It wasn't an assignment, and she'd never discussed the story with anyone. But she'd read it with fascination, both amazed and appalled by its portrayal of the dark underbelly of nineteenth century colonialism—a drop-jaw reaction that was, of course, exactly Conrad's intent. But, being Leah, she was most intrigued by those on the fringes of this world, especially the women of this male-dominated system gone awry and the slaves that powered its excesses. So when Brooke lamented over not being able to think of a topic for her paper, Leah suggested comparing and contrasting women and slaves—their treatment and their techniques for survival (or demise).

Now Brooke's jaw dropped. "You've read it?"

Leah nodded.

"And know it well enough to come up with a topic off the top of your head?"

Leah laughed and patted the top of her head then let her hand jump off toward Brooke.

Brooke shook her head. "I always wondered what you did during all that time alone."

Leah shrugged. Now you know.

Brooke considered the proposed topic for about five seconds then said, "Sounds good. I'm sure no one else in the whole class will write about women and slaves. And my teacher is a Women's Libber who comes to class with no bra and unshaved legs—she's bound to love it!"

Leah smiled then pulled her Algebra text out of the side pocket of her travel case. I will trade you, she signed. I will write the outline to your paper if you will prepare some sample equations for my Algebra test on Tuesday.

Brooke grabbed the Algebra book. "Done!"

Just the outline! Leah signed emphatically, slapping her open hand with the loosely clenched fist of the opposite.

Brooke donned a sheepish look. "And a few appropriate quotes from the story?"

Leah looked at her sternly for a few seconds then smiled broadly and nodded. For you—O.K.

And so they spent the rest of the morning delving deeply into the studies of the other. Leah wrote the basic outline for Brooke's paper from memory, then trolled through the dog-eared copy of the story for examples to back up her points. It was in the same collection Leah's teacher had given her, though that copy at home was all but pristine compared with Brooke's. The supporting quotes were easy for Leah to find, as the accounts of women and slaves were relatively rare and all the more memorable for their paucity. In the meantime, Brooke reviewed the two chapters in the Algebra book Leah would be tested on, then came up with some representative equations for Leah to solve. She flipped the piece of notebook paper over and solved each equation on the back, showing intuitive shortcuts wherever they occurred to her.

At the end of the session, they traded papers. Leah's ran on several pages written in neat sloping script; Brooke's numbers and symbols were scribbled in rapid-fire format, and trailing downward left to right. Each summarized her efforts for the other. Brooke looked at Leah's detailed outline with something akin to awe, then leaned across the gap between them and kissed her on the forehead. "You're a lifesaver, Leah! Can you imagine what Father would say if he saw a mid-term 'F' in English? If he groused over Matt's 'C' what would he say to an 'F'?"

Leah laughed. Then don't get one!

"With you, I won't." She tossed the outline on MaryJo's desk. "Enough studying. Time to find some guys." She did a little butt shimmy. "You can put your suit on in here, I'll get changed in my room." She scurried out the door.

They spread their blanket in one corner of the main quad, a few feet from the encroaching shade of a massive maple, its leaves just starting to turn from green to orange. They topped the brown blanket with some brightly colored beach towels, set Brooke's boombox and their picnic basket full of snacks and a couple canned soft drinks at the head of the towels.

Brooke quickly stripped off her T-shirt and khaki shorts and plopped down on her towel in her orange print bikini. "What are you waiting for?" she said looking up at Leah. Then she turned to slide a tape of the latest Fleetwood Mac album into the boombox.

Leah glanced around the quad. It was bordered by three-story Georgian brick buildings with regularly spaced divided-lite windows. There were only a handful of people strolling on the sidewalk that bordered the lawn and nobody else lying out in the sun. She felt very much on display and not at all comfortable with the feeling. Though the people walking by showed little obvious interest in the sisters on their blanket, there was no telling how many people might be watching from behind those innumerable windows. She looked down at Brooke, now lying on her back with her head propped on a folded towel and sunglasses over her closed eyes. Her lips were moving quickly, no doubt accompanying whatever was playing on the stereo (and who knows how loudly!). Brooke's skin was beautifully tanned and toned; and there was a lot of it showing, the bikini top barely covering her small breasts and the bottoms tied in bow knots at the sides and exposing more than several inches of skin below her navel. This all would've been normal at the beach, amidst hundreds of other sun worshippers; but alone on this quad in the middle of a college campus?

Brooke sat up suddenly and tugged at the hem of Leah's shorts. "It will be dark before you lie down," she said from behind her sunglasses.

Leah looked at her doubtfully.

"Take off your shirt and lie on your stomach. I'll rub some oil on your back."

Brooke knew which buttons to push. Leah loved having tanning oil rubbed on her shoulders in the sun more than anything in the world, dating back to her childhood. She pulled her T-shirt over her head, tossed it to one side, lay down on her stomach, and closed her eyes. As Brooke drizzled oil on her shoulders and back, Leah swore she could smell salt in the air, feel sand beneath the two layers of cloth. Those imagined sensations combined with the real and heady aroma of the tanning oil and the gentle pressure of Brooke's fingers and hands on her shoulders and back quickly slid Leah into a trance. She freely dismissed her inhibitions and slid into the dream, wholly trusting Brooke to safeguard her.

With Leah dozing, Brooke felt free to subtly, or not so subtly, entice the occasional passing male with her long legs and alluring body. A few that she knew from class or parties diverted from the sidewalk and walked over to talk with her. They seemed especially interested in the gorgeous blond lying beside her on the blanket. Brooke would put her finger to her lips and whisper, "Keep it down so we don't wake her—rough night last night. She's my sister and too young for you anyway."

The guys would say something like, "Doesn't look too young" but then go on to talk about the coming night's parties or the football team's chances in their road game at Virginia. Brooke was glad for the sunbathing companion but also glad she didn't have to explain Leah's condition.

Leah for her part sensed people—males, she knew, from their mix of body odors—coming and going from slight movements in the air and vibrations on the ground but was more than happy to leave the entertaining to Brooke while she rested within her fantasy. For most of the two hours they were out there she was either dozing or halfway there. But near the end of that period, White Horse asked from his white world, "Have not seen you much lately."

Leah replied, "I hardly noticed."

"You knew," White Horse said.

Leah laughed. "How come you know me so well?"

"Because I am inside you. You cannot hide anything from me."

"I do not want to."

"The why did you say you did not know?"

Leah paused at that. "I do not know. It was just something to say. Really, I have missed you."

"Then come around more often. I am always here. They are always here." White horse gestured to the pod of white dolphins cresting out of the white sea reaching to the white horizon.

"I lost you for a while. I am sorry."

"We are sorry for you. We have missed you. This is your home."

Leah nodded. "I know. But sometimes I forget how to get home. Sometimes I get lost out there."

White Horse nodded. Something sparkled around his neck. Did he have a harness with bells? "You need your sister to feel safe."

Leah nodded then asked, "Always?"

White Horse nodded again. "But you can take her with you even when you leave her."

"How do I do that?" Leah laughed. She thought the idea humorous—Brooke in a suitcase, the little travel case that Momma had helped her pack this morning, accompanying her wherever she went.

White Horse said. "You will figure it out. We will help you."

Leah looked past him. There were the dolphins, standing on their tail fins, and ponies, elephants, zebras without stripes, gazelles—all white, arrayed around her in legions, watching only her, caring for her, at the ready. She felt profound assurance in those attentive companions. She hoped she wouldn't stay away so long next time.

Once the sun slid below the tall maple and left them in afternoon shade, they folded up their towels and blanket and headed back up to the dorm suite. The dorm tower, like the Quad and most of the campus, remained thinly populated, with most of the students either away for the weekend or engaged in off-campus activities. This was a far cry from the jammed sidewalks and general bustle of the move-in weekend, where the sheer chaos unsettled Leah and left her wondering if she could ever attend college. But in this calm, and escorted by the confident and savvy Brooke, college life appeared not only manageable but attractive. Why wouldn't she want to partake of all these opportunities if the demands and lifestyle weren't overwhelming? Then she recalled that she'd been stymied in making friends at high school. How could she ever hope to survive, let alone thrive, on a college campus?

The suite was still empty though there was a note on the door from MaryJo, saying she'd stopped by to pick up some clean clothes and that there was a cookout at her boyfriend's frat house. Brooke pulled the note off the door and tossed it in the trash. "We've got other plans," she said.

She gave Leah a spare robe and flip-flops for getting to and from the showers, then led her to the floor's bathroom with its toilet stalls and sinks along one long wall and its showers opposite. Leah looked at the arrangement doubtfully, wondering again if she were cut out for college life.

Brooke laughed. "I cleared out the spiders and snakes just this morning. It's safe now!" She pushed open a shower door to show Leah the anteroom with its bench and clothes hooks, with the shower stall beyond separated by a plastic curtain. "See? Clean enough!"

Leah shook her head but trudged into the niche and closed the door behind her.

Brooke thought, Be careful of the hot water! But she realized it was too late and wouldn't force open the door to tell her. Leah would have to figure that one out for herself.

After they'd showered and combed out their hair while standing side by side at adjacent sinks, then dressed in what was standard-issue campus wear for the season—jeans and bold-colored flannel shirts and clogs with socks—they took the elevator to the dorm's courtesy kitchen in the basement. The day before Brooke had brought in all the ingredients and supplies needed for them to make their signature Fulcher-sister dinner—lasagna, tossed salad, garlic bread, and brownies with vanilla ice cream. The kitchen had plates and silverware and mixing bowls and utensils. Brooke had bought aluminum baking pans for the lasagna and brownies.

She pointed out their supplies, labeled with her name, in the fridge and on the counter. Then she looked at her watch. "We've got an hour till company arrives," she said. "Time to hop to it!"

Leah marveled for just a second at this wonderful facility at their complete disposal, then quite literally "hopped" to it, moving to the fridge with a couple of short two-footed jumps that made her sister laugh.

Brooke, having elder's choice, always prepared the meat sauce, boiled the noodles, and mixed up the brownies—the dangerous "hot" tasks. Leah, the junior, was given the "cold" jobs—slicing the block mozzarella (she was very careful with sharp implements), mixing the ricotta filling, assembling the lasagna, tossing the salad and mixing the homemade vinaigrette dressing.

Leah had always been happy with her assignments, as they all required attention to detail and final presentation. Between assembling the lasagna and preparing the salad, she took time to set the dining table—a simple plywood table with metal legs and eight folding chairs—for five people, putting the sisters on the side nearest the kitchen and their three guests opposite. She found a fairly clean white cotton tablecloth and five red cloth napkins in a closet of randomly mixed supplies, and managed to put together five settings of matching plates and stainless from a mish-mash of dinnerware in the cupboard. At the last minute she put together a centerpiece that combined a pretty dark blue pottery bowl, four half-burned white candles in a tin holder that sat inside the bowl, and some early turning yellow poplar leaves from the tree beside the dorm's entry.

Brooke finished mixing the brownies and poured them into the pan, to go in the oven once the lasagna and bread came out. "Don't need garlic flavored brownies," she said to herself before turning to look at Leah's table. She inhaled a small gasp. "Leah, where'd you find all this stuff? It's beautiful!"

Leah grinned. She'd always enjoyed decorating the table for their family's dinner parties, but that had always been with Momma's elegant accessories and close oversight. This quick and informal assembly of available supplies had given her even more pleasure, and she was both surprised and proud of the final product.

"You've got a career in restaurant management," Brooke said. "If your career in writing English papers dwindles."

Leah signed, Not much money in either.

"You'll find your way."

Just then Brooke heard the elevator door open in the vestibule and their three dinner guests entered the kitchen. Brooke introduced Anna, a tall blond with a short-cropped hair and a long face and a big smile that stretched from ear to ear, Nancy, a shorter round-faced brunette with long straight hair, and Morgan, a muscular gymnast with bright red hair in cascading curls. They were all freshman living in this dorm though on different floors. Each approached Leah with a big smile and handshake and offered simple but clearly expressed greetings like "Pleased to meet you" or "Welcome to Center."

Leah felt surprisingly at ease with these newcomers and, without thinking, signed at the end of the introductions, We need someone with black hair!

There was a momentary pause before Anna spoke up, "I'll do it! I'm tired of this dirty blond hair!"

All the girls laughed. Brooke said, "I'll do the honors if you provide the dye."

"Deal." No one, not even Anna, was quite sure if she was serious.

"After dinner?" Brooke said with a glint in her eye.

Anna thought a minute then said, "Sure, but you'll have to get me drunk!"

Brooke said, "We can do that" and went to the fridge to get the wine and onion-dip appetizer.

Anna looked at Leah and said with a serious expression, "Now look what you've started."

Leah paled.

Anna laughed. "I love it. You already think like one of us!" She leaned over and gave Leah a quick hug, touching her long chin to the top of Leah's head.

The meal unfolded in a similar mix of joking and casual chatter, including much gossip about who was sleeping with whom, who had just broken up or connected. Both before and during the meal, their guests were all careful to face Leah and make eye contact before speaking. Leah caught most of their words and was able to fill in the ones she missed with probable meanings. And she responded to all their comments, sometimes with a simple nod or shake of her head or shrug or raising of her eyes in question—a rudimentary and universal sign language. But she also occasionally utilized her most basic version of the many layers of sign language she'd learned over the years, an ad hoc combination of charades-inspired miming and the most basic of hand signs. In all of these communications, the expression in her active eyes was central to understanding; and the girls all watched those eyes, seemed almost mesmerized by them. On the rare occasion when someone missed her meaning, Brooke subtly mouthed a clarification, usually from behind Leah or beside her at the table, so that Leah didn't know or, if she did, didn't let on. By the end of the large and much praised feast—capped off with huge portions of warm brownies and cold ice cream—Leah felt completely at home with the group.

And all of this was accomplished with neither sister drinking the wine which flowed freely to their guests. They each had wine glasses filled with grape juice, to keep the others at ease. But before the company had arrived, Brooke said without prodding, "Don't you worry—I am not drinking tonight." And she kept to that promise.

After they'd polished off the pan of brownies and the tub of ice cream, Brooke suggested the girls go into town—it was only a short walk through campus—and buy Anna's hair dye while she and Leah cleaned up the kitchen. Then they'd all meet in Brooke's suite "for Hair-dying 101—and I'll bring another bottle of wine!"

They kept to these plans and dyed Anna's hair coal black behind the locked bathroom door with Anna seated in a folding chair and leaning back with her head on the edge of the sink, Brooke working the dye into her hair with gloved hands, Nancy reading the detailed instructions while standing to one side, Morgan kneeling on the tile floor and holding Anna's hand and refilling her wine glass regularly, and Leah managing Bethany's lap-split stopwatch ("Don't mention we borrowed it!" Brooke warned) to pace the numerous steps. Twice Leah saw Morgan rise quickly with a frown and go to the door, apparently shooing away irritated or inquisitive outsiders; but otherwise the whole episode unfolded as a private ceremony, almost a secret rite (or so Leah imagined) in this tiled version of a treehouse, black hair dye replacing pin pricks of red blood or wax seals on signed vows as outward signs of inward sharing. And at the end, Anna had black hair—"A taller Liza Minnelli!"—and this informal sorority had all the major hair colors represented.

Leah, the instigator of this madness, was given the honor of blow-drying the final product, which she did with initial care that quickly turned into a dance routine joined by the others with Anna in the middle eventually donning a fluffed crown of black. They all nodded approvingly at the result, even Anna staring at her new self in the mirror. They unlocked the door—two girls were waiting outside, just to see, and greeted Anna with applause—and returned borrowed supplies to Brooke's suite.

Then this new and intimate sorority disbanded as quickly as it had formed, as the three other girls headed off to an open house at a real sorority they hoped to pledge (Anna asked, "Do you think black hair improves my chances?" and everyone agreed it did, since there were already "way too many blond coeds on campus!"). And Brooke and Leah, after a quick freshen-up at the same sink where they'd enacted Anna's transformation, headed out into the cool night with a murky half-moon coming and going from behind clouds.

As they walked across campus, Leah signed I cannot believe we dyed Anna's hair black!

Brooke laughed. "That's nothing. Two weeks ago we pierced Julie's ears."

Both?

Brooke nodded.

How?

"With ice and a sewing needle."

A sewing needle?

"We sterilized it with a match but her left ear still got infected."

Leah's eyes got wide.

"But some antibiotics from the infirmary cleared it up."

Leah shook her head then asked where they were going.

Brooke responded with the cryptic phrase, "A private party." She eventually led Leah down a deserted side street and around to the poorly lit back of an old house and down a short flight of steps to a dark basement door. She rapped on the door in a distinct three-beat sequence, and it was promptly opened by a tall man in a dark blue or black sweat suit with the hood pulled over his head. He shined a small flashlight in their faces. "Who calls?" the doorman asked in a deep spooky voice.

Brooke laughed. "Halloween is next month, Barry!"

Barry shrugged. "Thought I'd do a test run."

"Try fangs and white-face next time. You'll be killer."

"Great idea. Thanks." He stepped aside to let them pass.

They entered a large, low-ceilinged game room with a bar complete with neon beer signs along the back wall, a pool table in the center of the room, a roulette wheel and some poker tables off to one side, a pinball machine and a Foosball table in the back corner, and some salvaged restaurant booths to the right of the door. Though it wasn't Halloween, the room was lit almost entirely by red-tinted bulbs, with the only exception being the pool table lit by a bright white bulb with a metal canopy. It took a minute for Leah's eyes to adjust to the garish light and see that the room was fairly full of a mix of guys and girls scattered throughout the space and engaged at the various game tables.

Someone tapped Leah on the shoulder and she practically jumped out of her skin before turning.

Barry smiled an apology, then scribbled something on a pad before turning it to her. It read Sorry for the scare, Leah. Here's your pad. He gave her a pad with her name handwritten in the blank space on its top edge.

It took Leah a minute to identify the pad as one of those dime-store children's favorites with a sheet of gray cellophane laid atop a tacky black backing. The pad had a pointed stick clipped to a holder, for writing on it. Words written on the gray sheet appeared in dark black print that could be instantly cleared by simply peeling the gray cellophane off the black backing, providing a literal "clean slate" on which to write a new message. At first she frowned for being singled out for this special treatment. Then Barry handed Brooke an identical pad with her name at the top. Then she realized that Barry had the same pad. She quickly looked around the room and saw that the students not actively playing games were either writing on pads or looking at messages written to them on pads held up by others. Everyone had a pad, and everyone was using them. A moment's additional observation indicated that no one was moving their lips or swaying to music. This was a red-tinted silent party, all participants locked now in her silent world.

She grabbed Brooke roughly. Why did you do this? she signed with angry, sharp-edged gestures and flashing eyes.

Brooke was startled by the ferocity of her sister's response. She'd never seen Leah so angry. Brooke took her pad, glad for the excuse to look away, and wrote I did not plan this. Dean did. She underlined not three times before turning the pad to Leah.

Dean?

Brooke lifted the front sheet of her pad then wrote The cute guy at the bar. He has a deaf cousin who he adores.

Leah laughed, grabbed Brooke's stick and added an "m" to the "who" on her pad. She handed the stick back to her sister with a satisfied nod.

Brooke wrote Hah-hah. Then she cleared her pad before writing Dean's cousin is getting a doctorate in psychotherapy at Duke. Maybe she could analyze you!

Leah signed A deaf shrink?

Brooke cleared her pad and wrote A deaf shrink for deaf patients, Dummy!

Leah was, pardon the pun to herself, dumb-founded. She'd never considered the idea of deaf doctors treating deaf patients. She started to sign a response.

Brooke stopped her and pointed to the pad tucked under her arm. "Write!" she mouthed.

Leah sighed and pulled out the pad. I never thought of deaf doctors she wrote in surprisingly neat script, given the setting and the medium.

Brooke wrote Start thinking of it, Lee! The sky is the limit, same for you as everyone else. She smiled at her sister then added I want to introduce you to Dean. She extended her hand to Leah and led her through the red world to the bar at the back.

The only one at the bar was a short guy seated on a tall stool gazing munificently across the red room like a king surveying his kingdom. He had short raven black hair set off by pale skin. He had a wide mouth and fine features. Once Leah got closer, she saw that his eyes were as dark as his hair and piercing.

Brooke strode forward, scribbling on her pad through her last few steps. She stopped directly in front of the guy and held up her pad. This is Leah.

Dean smiled and extended his hand.

Leah took the hand and shook it lightly. His skin was very soft. After she released his hand Leah signed, I'm told this is your doing.

Dean signed in response, using the latest and most refined sign language. I hope you think that's a good thing.

And the pads?

Dean smiled and nodded.

Brooke scribbled furiously on her pad then held it between the two, first to Dean then to Leah. You have to use the pad!!!!

Dean shrugged then signed, Not if you can sign.

Brooke cleared her pad and wrote NO FAIR!

Dean took her pad and pointed stick and wrote My party, my rules.

Brooke grabbed back the pad. She wrote I'm going to go find someone who will talk to me. She crossed out talk and wrote write over it. After showing both her protest, she turned in a feigned huff. But Leah caught a mischievous glint in her eye just before she headed off toward three cute guys gathered around the pool table.

Leah turned back to Dean. The pads are your idea?

He nodded. I have a deaf cousin. I always wanted to know what her world was like.

Leah smiled. Quiet.

Dean laughed. Yes, but how quiet?

Real quiet.

I would go to the bottom of the pool and think "This is what Mary's world is like." Then I would run out of air.

Bubbles. Sound.

Dean nodded. So when Brooke said you were coming to Center, I decided to try something I had always wanted to do.

The pads.

More than that. A silent party—no voices, no music.

Leah looked across the room then turned back. Pool cues striking the balls. Pinball machine adding points. Leah loved playing pinball, feeling the "sounds" through the hum and purr and flashing lights. Brooke called her the Pinball Wizardess and printed out the words of the Who song.

Dean shrugged. I did the best I could.

Leah nodded then suddenly leaned over and lightly kissed his pale cheek. The skin there was as soft as his hands. She stood back upright, sure she was blushing but hoping the red lights masked the condition.

Dean gazed steadily into her eyes then signed I will take that as approval.

Leah nodded happily.

Dean suddenly looked beyond Leah to what must have been a sharp sound.

Leah turned to see Brooke holding a pool cue on the far side of the table, her hand over her mouth and an apologetic look on her face. The white cue ball was still bouncing across the room's concrete floor, stopped finally at the base of Dean's stool. Leah looked from the ball to Brooke and laughed loud and long, sure her uncommon laughter sounded odd in the otherwise silent room but, at just that moment, not caring.

The next morning bright and early (Brooke was glad she hadn't had anything to drink last night) they were picked up in front of the dorm by Billy and Joe, two townies Brooke had met while swimming at the quarry. They rode four abreast across the wide front seat of Billy's beat-up truck with the two girls in the middle, Brooke pressed tight to Billy's side and straddling the long shift lever. They drove far out into the countryside west of campus, through fields and mixed woods to Billy's family farm. They piled out of the truck next to a weathered barn with a corral in back and four horses milling about in the dusty soil. Billy and Joe worked together to retrieve the horses one at a time—they were calm animals and didn't resist or shy away—and lead them into the barn by the halters. There they swapped the halter for bridle and bit, and fitted each horse with a saddle from the half dozen perched on a wide shelf along the back wall. The sisters watched in rapt silence while standing to one side. The four were going horseback riding.

While Brooke had ridden occasionally over the years and had taken a couple months' of lessons while she was in junior high, Leah had never been on a horse. She'd always admired the animal's powerful physique and independent spirit, but those same qualities made her afraid to mount one. What if they sensed her fear or misunderstood her gestures and took off? How would she stop them without a voice to enforce her wishes? There were a handful of activities she'd gladly consigned to the world of the hearing, and horseback riding was such an activity—until apparently, thanks to her sister, today.

Standing beside Brooke, she made no sound or gesture but gazed on the saddling of the four mounts with something bordering on total panic. But this panic was ever so gradually diluted by her amazement at how efficiently the two boys worked together in preparing the horses, and at the subtle and unconscious actions they took to keep each horse calm and reassured—the gentle brushing of the broad flat plain of a neck, the smoothing of the hair on the horse's rump, the adjustment of the saddle strap when it became twisted.

As if reading her mind, Joe turned to her and said, "Horses are the only animals I know of that understand touch more than words." He did well to maintain eye contact until the word touch, then blushed and looked down.

Brooke turned to Leah to translate.

Leah shook her head. She got the gist even if she didn't see the last.

Brooke smiled then turned back to Joe and said, "Except humans."

Leah could've killed her.

Joe blushed again but wouldn't look up. He went out to get the last horse, one named Carrot for his love of that vegetable not his color, which was deep chestnut.

When the horses were all saddled, the two boys led them out into the drive. Billy handed Brooke the reins of the other three while he held the reins of Carrot, the calmest of the four. Joe showed Leah how to put her left foot in the stirrup and swing her right leg up and over the saddle.

Leah hesitated, standing on firm ground a few feet away.

Joe walked over and took hold of her hand.

Leah nodded thanks but withdrew her hand. Following a deep breath, she strode forward on her own, reached up to the saddle horn with both hands, slipped her foot into the stirrup, and launched the rest of her body up and over Carrot's back. She'd lifted off the ground with nearly too much energy and determination and almost flew over the horse's back to the far side. But her hands held onto the saddle horn and the saddle didn't shift. Thank you, Carrot, she thought in a flash—she'd heard stories of how horses would intentionally shrink their chests at vulnerable moments to let the saddle slide sideways, dumping the rider on the ground. Leah landed on the saddle with a slightly painful thump. She stared at the horse's stringy mane as she caught her breath, then glanced at the others.

Brooke smiled broadly. "Steer clear of Leah when she decides to do something!"

Leah smiled back. Her eyes said Wonder whom I got that from? as her hands were still holding the saddle horn firmly.

Billy nodded and said, "So I can see" then handed up the reins.

Leah hesitated just a second before pulling her right hand from the horn and taking the reins.

And for the next two hours they rode trails through the surrounding freshly mowed fields and dry fall woods. At a meadow atop a far hill, Joe and Billy left the trail and headed across the field at a gallop, racing toward the far tree line.

Brooke glanced at Leah with a tilt of her head.

Leah nodded in response.

And Brooke headed off after the guys, not in a full gallop but in a quick cantor.

Leah sat and watched from astride Carrot, loosening the reins just enough to let the horse stray to the side of the trail to nibble on some late-season greenery.

It wasn't till late that night as Leah unpacked her book bag that she discovered her pad from last night with the message Talk to him! in Brooke's scraggly print. Behind that pad was a second, this one blank except for the name Paul written in pen across the top in a neat but unfamiliar hand. Leah smiled to herself in affirmation, having already resolved to act on that sisterly advice. She lifted the cellophane face to clear her pad, then returned both pads to her book bag, safely sandwiched between Algebra and History.

Debutante Ball, Again

March 2

Dear Brooke,

You are not going to believe this: I have been invited to the Debutante Ball!!!!!! Momma showed me the invitation yesterday and I was on Cloud Nine all day.

Then reality set in as I lay in bed and thought about it. It had to be a mistake, some clerical error at the Heritage Foundation. Or if it was not a mistake, it was simply intended as a kind gesture, to be noted and politely declined—Leah Marie Fulcher was invited to the 98th Annual Debutante Ball of the Central Carolinas. She thanked the Foundation for the invitation but respectfully declined for personal reasons. That had to be it, right? You don't invite a deaf girl to a hearing persons ball, do you? Or do you?

So I asked Momma about it this morning after church. Rather than answer my question, she asked one of her own—"Do you want to attend?" So what do you think old (or young) staid and calm and deliberate and reflective Leah answered? I jumped out of my chair—we were reading the paper at the breakfast table after Father left to brave the cold and try to get in a round of golf on the brown grass of the Country Club—and screamed "Yes!" or at least what I meant to be a "yes" though Lord knows what it sounded like. And Momma said "Then you shall attend" and I ran over and gave her a big hug.

So much for the sappy mother-daughter bonding scene. I know you hate that stuff. And the flush of that joy lasted only as long as it took me to walk upstairs to get out of my church dress when I imagined you sitting on my bed asking "O.K. Just how are you going to make that happen?" Old (or young) practical Brooke, talking to me across the miles. How was I going to make this unprecedented arrangement happen—a deaf girl at the Debutante Ball?

Any suggestions?

I have not had a chance to tell Paul, but I am sure he will help in any way he can. Being from the North, I do not think he has any experience with debutante balls; and I doubt he has any clue how to waltz. He could be my escort. We could skip the waltz like you did. More girls are doing that each year. Momma says they will have to either cancel the waltz or make it mandatory again. I hope they do not cancel it. It is such a beautiful display, like a dream from a bygone era. You think the entire ball is a vestige from a dead era, long past its relevance if it ever had any. But I think its history and tradition are still important, maybe more important than ever when so much is changing and being lost. The waltz is not just a dance. It is our heritage.

"You can get down off your soapbox now, Leah" I can imagine you thinking (and no, your ghost is not here saying the words)! But how do we know where we are headed if we do not know where we come from?

Mid-terms went fine, even Algebra. Tennis practice started last week. We were indoors every day except Thursday. Wasn't that a beautiful afternoon? Then it snowed on Friday, at least over here. Did you get any snow or only rain? They let us out of school early, just as the snow switched over to rain and started melting. Momma picked me up rather than taking a chance on the bus. The main roads were fine but the side streets were a little slick. We slid sideways on that curve on Derby and Momma stopped the car in the middle of the road and walked around to my side and handed me the keys and told me to drive. You know how she hates driving in the snow! I got us home safe and sound but next time I hope she lets the bus bring me home. The stupid bus is better than giving her a heart attack!

Debate Club won our last match and we are practicing for the state meet in April. Ms. Atkins is pushing to add a sign language translator to all matches, but I know that will never happen. How many deaf people attend debate contests? Still, I am appreciative and thanked her for her efforts. She said (or, actually, signed—she's the only one in school that signs everything to me) "I want our sharpest thinker actually doing the debating!" I was grateful for the compliment but am not holding my breath. Besides, I do not know how I would react if I had to stand in front of judges and actually debate. I am probably better off right where I am—organizing the arguments and tracking down the facts.

How did your midterms go (or should I ask)? Did you finish your paper on Byron? I know you hate his poetry (so do I) but looking at his life and times and calling him the first international rock star makes for an interesting paper. I bet you get an "A"!

And I'm so glad you decided to skip Fort Lauderdale and split your break between here and Myrtle Beach. I know Momma and Father are relieved; and I'm so glad to have a chance to see you, even if I will be in school part of the time. You want to come with me as a guest? Just kidding—I recall you saying after graduation "I'll never set foot in that dungeon again!" and I will not make you break that vow. But we will have Sunday and a few evenings together before you head off to Myrtle Beach. Maybe we can sneak off to the Mill if it is not too cold. I cannot wait.

Your debutante invitee designate sister,

Leah

March 5

Dear Leah,

The Debutante Ball, huh? You know how that went last time. You want to give it another try?

Just kidding! You'll be killer—I mean, great, The Belle of the Ball! And I'm with Momma. We'll make it work. If you want to dance the Waltz, then you should dance the Waltz! Those old fuddy-duds can bend the rules for my sister. Have you talked to Paul? What does he think? Can he dance a lick or is he like every boy I know, running for cover soon as you mention dancing? We'll figure it out. If you can get this girl to the Ball, then this girl sure as heck will get you there, with bells on (that's just a figure of speech—don't want to push the fuddy-duds too far!).

Mid-terms went fine. I may not be Phi Beta Kappa material but they aren't going to throw me out. And I turned in my Byron paper. I haven't got it back yet. Ms. Teach—that's what we call Allie Creech, our writing class TA—says she'll be slaving away grading papers while we're all sunning ourselves by the seashore. I told her not to give us so many papers and she just smiled this silly little smile as if to say "There goes Brooke again!" Well, don't give us so many papers if you don't want to grade them!

Besides, I don't know how much sunning I'll be doing by the seashore, unless you're talking about in a snowsuit. What's with this weather, anyway? Dean's been teasing me no end about bailing on Florida. "Want me to leave you my scarf and mittens?" he says. I told him my hands are too big for his mittens. He has the smallest hands I've ever seen on a guy. By the way, he says "Hi!" He showed me some elaborate hand gesture for "hi" but I just raised my hand and waved. He said, "You're no fun!" I said, "You spend so much time gesturing you don't have any time for communicating." He said, "I communicate just fine, thank you very much. And let me communicate this--I'm going to sunny Florida and you're staying in the snowy Carolinas!" Thank you for that reminder, Dean.

Truth is, I'm glad to be staying here, so I have a chance to spend time with you. You might think it's because I broke up with Barry but that had nothing to do with it. Well, maybe just a little bit. If Barry wants to be led on a leash held by Miss-pris Jennifer Sampson all around Fort Lauderdale, then go right ahead. Brooke is spending time with her sis and best buddy, sunny Florida be damned! (But if you hold sway with the man upstairs, how about asking him to send torrential rain to Florida and sunny spring-like days to the Carolinas—that'll show him!)

Counting the hours, your sun-deprived (or is it depraved?) sis—

Brooke

Sunday was a gorgeous spring-like day without a cloud in the sky and the bright sun warming temperatures into the 70s. So after church (Matt, also home for the day, wondered aloud "How many sins does Brooke have to confess?" to which Brooke had deftly replied "Let he who is without sin . . ." which prompted a scowl from Matt and a low-five congratulatory hand slap from Leah with the three of them lined up across the backseat of the Buick) and Sunday dinner (a stuffed crown roast of pork with mashed potatoes and baked apples and collards and biscuits and gravy, with caramel cake for dessert), Brooke and Leah stripped out of their Sunday dresses and donned shorts and T-shirts and headed for Kenley Park, a twenty-minute walk through side streets to the edge of downtown. Though the park's lawns were still brown and the broad-canopied willow oaks still bare of leaves, the daffodils along the paths were in full bloom, the buds on the Bradford pears starting to open up, and the ducks on the pond splashing and chasing each other in what looked like play but almost certainly derived of a more adamant motive.

They stopped by the asphalt-paved playground near the park's entrance and joined with the many youngsters in riding the seesaw, swinging from the swings, and whirling on the foot-powered pipe merry-go-round. In these activities Leah would frequently pause to help a young child climb on a swing or step onto the moving merry-go-round. The children all trusted Leah and freely accepted her help, yet somehow knew she couldn't hear and didn't try to talk to her. They communicated through eye and touch and facial gestures. One little girl did cry when Leah turned to join Brooke headed off toward the pond, and Leah somehow knew of this girl's distress and went back to console the child. She made a quick bracelet of dandelions blooming in a sunny spot along the playground border and placed it around the girl's wrist. The girl stopped crying and gazed at the gift in silent wonder. Just then an older man (her father?) came up and took the little girl's hand, casting a wary eye toward Leah. Leah disarmed his suspicion with a broad smile, then knelt and nodded good-bye to the girl. She leaned over and kissed Leah's forehead then waved with her dandelion-ringed arm as Leah slowly retreated, the girl's recent tears sparkling in the afternoon sun.

Brooke sat on a bench overlooking the pond. Three ducks—hens, by their mottled feathering—broke from the small flock swimming in the middle to cruise past in hopes of garnering a treat of bread scraps or popcorn. With no such offerings coming their way and a couple black retriever dogs splashing in the shallows close by, those inquisitive ducks slowly circled back toward the center of the pond, each trailing a silver V in the wake of their effortless paddling. To Leah as she approached, the calm wake of those receding ducks on the otherwise mirror-glass surface had a startling beauty that seemed almost what she thought of as sound, a distinct yet subtle vibration like what she would feel in grade school when her teacher struck a tuning fork and laid it against her wrist, her heart, her forehead. She suddenly felt sound everywhere she looked—the azure blue sky, the ridged gray bark of the trees, the sere grass to the pond edge, the ducks' parallel Vs that eventually crossed.

Brooke seated on the bench also watched the ducks' retreat but saw only opportunistic ducks' seeking a free meal, and she with her hands empty. "Done being St. Francis?" she asked as Leah sat beside her.

He cared for animals, Leah responded.

"Then Joan of Arc."

She burned at the stake.

"Mr. Rodgers, then. Or Captain Kangaroo."

Leah smiled. Mr. Greenjeans! She signed to the green of the bench paired with imagined jean pants.

Brooke shook her head. "No, Big Bird!"

Leah at first objected then nodded and pointed to her hair—yellow at least, and accepted Big Bird's fate to be a friend to all—helpless to help, to care.

"Do you know those kids?"

Leah shook her head.

"They thought they knew you."

Leah shrugged.

"Add daycare worker to your long list of abilities."

Leah shook her head and pointed to her ears.

Brooke smiled. "Doesn't matter, far as I can tell."

Leah looked across the water. The ducks had merged back into the flock, their wakes gone. Two male ducks, with vivid green heads and orange bills, were chasing each other with chaotic splashing, stirring the flock into disorder. On the shore to the right, the retrievers emerged from the water and cast off glittering sprays, oblong halos of gold, then loped off to a young couple walking hand in hand at the top of the hill. Leah hoped they were the dogs' owners. Otherwise the pair were in for a wet surprise—or maybe in for a wet surprise in any case.

"What did Paul say about the Ball?" Brooke asked. Father had raised a toast at dinner in honor of Leah's invitation, and Matt had kindly said, "Don't expect me to escort you!" but none of the details had been discussed. It was unclear at the time if this was out of respect for Leah or in pursuit of family peace or both.

He already has his tux!

"For the Ball?"

From his sister's wedding, but it will work.

"So he will be your escort."

Leah nodded.

"And the Waltz?"

Leah's lips tightened. He cannot dance.

"Or won't try."

Leah shook her head. No, he cannot dance! We tried! Her gestures became quite animated.

"Not good, huh?"

While still seated, Leah feigned tangling her feet and falling.

"Not good," Brooke affirmed, shaking her head.

If I could lead, maybe. But that would not work since I cannot hear the music.

"Then I'll lead."

Leah tilted her head.

"You need a dance partner, right?"

Leah nodded.

"I took ballet and tap in grade school. I can dance when I have to. Let me be your partner."

Leah stared at her, stunned by the offer, well knowing how much Brooke hated dancing, hated archaic traditions, hated being on display in stilted settings. Gradually a broad grin spread across her face as she leaned forward and gave Brooke a hug.

Out on the pond something spooked the ducks and they rose in a cacophonous blur of wing beats and water spray. Brooke watched this commotion over Leah's shoulder.

Leah with her back turned missed all that but noted the flock as they passed low overhead, sunlight glinting through nicks in their pinions. She leaned back from her sister and signed, with a glint in her eye, Do you have your tux?

Brooke hooted. "What a great idea," she cried. "I hadn't thought about that. We'll go check them out at the formal shop tomorrow."

After school.

"I'll pick you up."

They went by the formalwear shop and discovered that Brooke wouldn't be the first woman to rent a tux. The previous spring, the students from a local girls-only college decided to forego the stress (and inevitable selective humiliation) of trying to track down male escorts for their annual spring formal. Instead they'd drawn straws to designate half their number as escorts, then the whole cadre had descended on the formalwear store to pick out and rent the tuxes. "They had interesting tastes in colors," the elderly saleswoman—Marlene Hampton, a spinster and front pew sitter from church—said with an aloof and censorious tone. After trying on jackets in several uncommon colors—pastel pink, powder blue, lavender—Brooke decided to stick with basic black but added the flair of tails and gloves. She even sampled a top hat but realized she couldn't use it during the waltz so what was the point? They reserved the tux and scheduled a fitting for later in the spring. As they were leaving, Miss Hampton said, "Good luck convincing the Committee." Brooke had said nothing about the occasion for the tux's use, and most of their communication during the sampling had been through eye contact or hand gesture; but somehow the crusty old woman had guessed their plan, and soon the whole town, or at least the enclaves that mattered, would know.

So they told Momma and Father at dinner that night. Brooke let Leah take the lead, biting her tongue on several occasions as Leah slowly and methodically, using the familial sign language and an almost beatific steady gaze (her confidence and self-possession had grown tremendously since switching to Horton High), explained her goals regarding her participation in the Ball and her pathway to realizing those goals.

Paul will be my escort for all pre-event training and gatherings, and throughout the presentation and dinner. His name will appear with mine on all printed announcements and brochures and programs. He will also be my companion during the awards presentation and for the reception afterward. Leah paused to register and acknowledge her parents' approving nods.

Momma interjected, "He's such a nice boy."

By now Brooke was nearly jumping out of her skin. She kicked Leah under the table and flashed a look of impatience in her direction.

Leah returned a serene stare. She loved her sister, complete with her impetuousness (most times). She also cherished this rare chance to be in charge of the pace of their common actions. She pulled her gaze from Brooke and looked first to Father then to Momma. For the Waltz she began, signing waltz with the cutest dancing of her fingers in a slow circle above the table.

"I'm going to be her partner!" Brooke blurted.

Leah frowned across the table.

Brooke threw her hand across her mouth and shrugged in apology.

Leah shook her head but couldn't suppress a giggle—Brooke will always be Brooke.

Momma said, "What?"

Father's eyebrows went up and his fork and knife went down, to resting on the plate.

Leah glanced hard at Brooke as if to say now look what you've done then turned to Momma. Paul can't dance or learn. Brooke can't dance—.

"Hey," Brooke protested.

Leah smiled at her. But she can learn. I know it is unusual but so is a deaf girl at the Ball. She paused to let the full effect of that assertion sink in.

Momma's look softened ever so slightly.

Leah continued. And if a brother can be an escort and dance companion, why not a sister?

"A brother is a man," Father said.

Leah turned to him. And that's a requirement for a dance partner?

"That's a requirement for a partner," he said then added, "At this event anyway."

And I have a male escort. His name will appear next to mine in all the printed information. He will be next to me at our table all night long.

"They will never allow a same-sex couple," Father said.

Paul and I are not the same sex.

Brooke could see little edges of anger in her sister's features but doubted her parents could. Her expression was firm and intent and confident. Maybe she learned this from the debate team.

Momma said, "Jim, it's only for one dance."

"It's not just a dance. It's the Waltz."

"And they're sisters," Momma said.

Brooke caught Leah's eye. Had she prepped Momma? But no, Momma was as shocked as Father at first.

Leah's fleeting return response was assured. Momma was the key, had been all along.

"They won't allow the precedent," Father said, though his look of objection was softening.

"Leah's deaf," Momma said, playing the card that was her trump not only here but at the eventual Committee gathering. "There is no precedent with Leah."

Something about the phrase caught in Brooke's ear. To her Leah had never been unique because of her lack of hearing. She'd been unique because she was her only sister. But to Momma, Leah had always been one of a kind because of her condition—the challenge to make for her a whole life, unimpeded by any handicap. And it was this determination, honed over Leah's seventeen years and counting, that had convinced Father and would convince the Committee and the inevitable naysayers that would invoke their imperious frowns. Leah was one of a kind, a singular challenge and opportunity—for their family and for the community in which they lived: end of debate.

Father shrugged, "If you can convince them—." His voice trailed off. He picked up his knife and fork, then added, "But it has to be approved in advance. I don't want any surprises." He looked to Brooke.

Brooke frowned. How had this become about her?

Momma nodded. "I'll get it approved in advance."

No one at that table doubted her.

Leah stared steadily at Brooke, the hint of a grin gently pulling up the corners of her mouth.

Later, parked at the Mill—each leaning against her door, legs crossed on the wide vinyl seat, Leah's left knee resting on the steering wheel, the camp lantern hanging from the rearview mirror—Brooke asked her about Momma's assertion. "Do you feel like one of a kind?"

Leah smiled. Same as you.

"How much is that?"

Always! Leah's right hand flew outward from her toward the dark windshield. And never. She slowly pulled that hand back into herself, buried it in her lap.

"Same as me?"

Is it?

Brooke considered the question. She always felt an outcast, wanting to do something other than the crowd. Yet she never felt truly excluded from her world, always knew her community and her family would find a place for her no matter the offense or outrage. At the tail end of this arc of self-contemplation, her focus fell back on Leah, her face aglow in the silver light. It wasn't the community or even her family that would always make a place for her, it was Leah. Brooke slowly nodded but added, "My rebelliousness isn't the same as your deafness. I can change."

Leah tilted her head.

"I can!" Brooke protested then added, "Maybe I can."

Leah pressed her lips together. I used to wish I could hear, and still do sometimes—as a convenience or a pleasure, not as a necessity of life. But I think everyone has impossible wishes—you might wish you could fly when you are late for class, Momma wishes she could sing soprano, Father would like to be a pro golfer. I wish I could hear the cardinal singing in the cherry tree this morning, or speak my opinions on Lend-Lease in History this afternoon. We all sometimes wish for something we cannot have. She paused in her signing.

For once Brooke held her tongue.

But long ago, I stopped wishing I could hear just for the sake of hearing. This is who I am.

Brooke nodded. "I stopped thinking about it too, a long time ago."

Leah smiled. Why do you think I did?

"Me?"

Leah laughed. Do not act so modest.

Brooke shook her head. "I never did anything with you."

Except love me.

Brooke shrugged. "Of course."

Leah folded her arms—nothing left to say, or sign.

Brooke nodded. "One question?"

Leah waited.

"What's 'give and take'?"

Leah tilted her head.

"Your discussion topic today, in History."

Leah remembered—Lend-Lease—then signed, A path to deeper entanglement. She twined her fingers for this last.

Brooke nodded. "Don't I know about that!"

So the entire unlikely sequence pointed toward its improbable culmination—a deaf girl presented at the annual Debutante Ball of the Central Carolinas!—moved forward with surprising ease and minimal resistance.

Momma met with the Committee and explained her desire to have Leah presented. The Committee was persuaded, as much by the known beauty and grace of the daughter (who wasn't present) as the impassioned and eloquent plea of the mother; and only two of the twelve members—the ancient Carol Alston whose former power had waned since her husband ran off with one of his grad students, and the imperious Justine Leonard—dissented.

There was somewhat more debate over Momma's request that Leah be allowed to dance the Waltz with her sister Brooke as partner and lead. This raised reservations on multiple levels, from the concern that the deaf girl might get out of time with the music and disrupt the other dancers to the fear of establishing a precedent for same-sex couples. But Mrs. Stafford, the dance teacher and an advisor to the Committee, lobbied in favor of Leah's being allowed to dance (despite her quiet reservations about Brooke as a partner, reservations that arose more out of concern for Brooke's ability to lead properly than her gender), saying that Leah was the best dancer she'd taught in her twenty years as an instructor. Mrs. Stafford's endorsement avoided an outright rejection of the request, and eventually a compromise was agreed upon—Leah could dance with Brooke as partner but only after the main Waltz was danced and the award for Waltz Queen presented. Their solo dance would serve as a transition between the evening's formal program and the informal "open floor" dancing and socializing. Momma initially objected to this compromise, wanting Leah to be treated as any other debutante. But she held her tongue, realizing that she couldn't win this debate, not this night anyway. Only after swallowing her objection did she recall her words at the dinner table a week earlier—that Leah was one of a kind—and begin to see a solo dance as an opportunity to highlight this one of a kind daughter, and her not so singular sister (if she could rise to the occasion in support of Leah).

And later that spring Leah began the Deb class with the several dozen other candidates for this year's ball. Her long history with Mrs. Stafford made these classes not only easy but enjoyable, as Mrs. Stafford constantly looked at her while speaking and would often use Leah to demonstrate a certain practice—how to enter the ballroom, how to stand during presentation, how to curtsy. While Leah sometimes felt a twinge of embarrassment at this attention she learned to hide it. And in these classes, she came to both accept and bask in public scrutiny, having the ability to find the best balance between enjoying it too much and dreading it. She was, as Mrs. Stafford said on a regular basis now, "a natural."

Until Paul attended the last two classes, along with all the other escorts. As soon as he came around, Leah lost all her innate grace. It wasn't that Leah was flustered by him or their relationship. They had over the months established a comfortable rapport that was mainly a close friendship with perhaps the earliest intimations of romantic interest. The problem arose when she felt the need to look out for him in this unfamiliar environment, with all the other girls (made all the giddier by the inclusion of their escorts) and the strange lessons and demands—"hold your elbow just so," "look at your date with the correct mix of respect and adoration" (that brought many stifled guffaws). Leah had long since learned to take care of herself, as long as she knew the general parameters of a given situation. But she'd not yet figured out how to take care of others, at least any others not named Brooke (and even that one had limits on the care she would accept). Paul himself was fine—patient and attentive and solicitous. He actually seemed to enjoy these arcane lessons in archaic ritual. It was Leah that got out of sorts.

Yet they managed to get through it alright, no worse than any of the other unsettled couples and maybe better than most. And by the end of the regular classes, no one cared that one of their number was deaf, or even seemed to notice.

Then came the waltz lessons. Twenty-two girls, and their male escorts, took the lessons this year, as participation in the signature dance had revived, helped along by the just established five-hundred-dollar scholarship awarded to the Dance Queen and her partner. Brooke was busy preparing for finals (or so she said) the first two weekends of classes, and so couldn't attend; besides, Mrs. Stafford and Leah and Momma had already agreed that Brooke and Leah would take private lessons, so as not to disrupt the other dancers or reveal the plans for a solo dance. But Leah still attended the waltz lessons, alone as she had two years before, only this time she danced with the others in the studio, not hidden in the observation hall. And Mrs. Stafford danced with her, as her lead, both in example to the other dancers and to affirm and assist Leah's lessons—not that she needed much assistance as she already knew the steps by heart and could perfectly follow the lead of the other dancers, and the music it implied.

By the time Brooke finished her finals and returned home and the sisters showed up for their crash course in dancing the week before the Ball, Leah was as much an instructor as student and had already schooled Brooke in the basic steps during impromptu lessons in their living room cleared of the coffee table and upholstered rocker. So it was left to Mrs. Stafford to incorporate flare and creativity into this solo opportunity, a challenge she approached with relish. And Brooke, bless her heart, was a quick learner. Having no prior training or preconceptions to undo, she adapted easily to Leah's polished form and Mrs. Stafford's cues and hints. She wouldn't have been caught dead doing ballroom dancing under any other circumstances; but as a highly visual and soon to be dramatically public affirmation of support and love for Leah, she approached the lessons with zeal and focus. And Brooke's presence and support granted Leah even greater confidence and freedom of expression. By the end of their week of private lessons, the sisters had their dance down cold. Brooke's ears and lead combined with Leah's grace and style would be, as Mrs. Stafford confidently declared, "a showstopper!"

The night before the Ball had the participants scattered in various directions. Paul was at home with his headphones on (Jethro Tull's Warchild) and car magazines in hand. Brooke was on a blind date with a computer whiz from the local state college ("we'll shuffle his deck of key cards" she said with deliberate double entendre).

And Leah attended the Ball pre-party, for Debs only (and three parent chaperones) and held at Memorial Hall where the Ball would be the next night. The girls ate a meal of barbecue and fried chicken catered gratis by a local family restaurant (in return for a mention in the Ball program) and spent their time decorating the stage and stairs and dance floor with ribbons and bows, streamers and plastic flowers (the real ones would be added the next day by the florist). By now Leah was quite comfortable with all the other girls, as they'd learned to face her head-on when wanting to speak to her and granting her considerable latitude to move among them ignorant of their ambient chatter or exclamations. Leah for her part interacted with confident self-possession, consciously and instinctively aware of those around her, both their overt and, more importantly, their subtle gesture and expression. She would identify bruised feelings or hidden pride before anyone else—including, sometimes, the subject—and respond accordingly with a touch of consolation or a smile of affirmation. To the other girls, she was just one of the girls—a special one. To Leah, it was a chance to be more—more relaxed, more engaged, more included. She was almost beside herself with joy and satisfaction.

After the meal she stayed late to help the parents, Mrs. Erwin and Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Mangum, clean up then waved her good-bye—till tomorrow she signed with a loop of her hand before heading to the parking lot. There were several cars near the building, including their old station wagon now largely at Leah's disposal; but these weren't what caught her attention. Far off in the shadows at the edge of the parking lot, just where it had been two years earlier, was Danny's bright red pickup with its chrome trim sparkling in the glow of the lot's streetlight. Leah thought for a minute her mind was playing tricks on her, had summoned the image out of memory. But a second look proved the truck was present, not drawn from the past.

In the days and weeks to come she would frequently wonder what motivated her next action. Was it curiosity or hubris or something else, some invisible force or calling or need? The answer to that question was not obvious, then or later. Whatever the reason, she turned from the path to the station wagon and walked across the empty parking lot to the pickup.

Danny sat in the shadow of the driver's seat, the window down, smoking a cigarette. The bright orange tip of the cigarette as he inhaled seemed the only real thing in the picture before her. Everything else—Danny's silhouette, the interior of the cab, even the truck itself and the cracked asphalt it rested on—blurred into surreal. Then even the cigarette's bright glow faded.

She revived her paralyzed muscles enough to curl her lips into a friendly grin and move her right hand to sign a question mark—Why are you here?

Danny faced her with a teasing smile, his very white teeth gleaming within his shadowed face. His hand, the cigarette loosely held between index and middle fingers, reached out of the cab and pointed behind her.

Leah turned to look. Walking across the shadowed parking lot from one of the remaining cars was one of the other debs, Megan. She approached with a silly look on her face. Leah smelled beer on her breath or clothes when she was still several feet away.

"Hi, Leah," Megan said. "Do you know my cousin?"

Then Leah realized the connection—Megan Ashford. In all the various ball preparations and introductions, she'd paid little attention to last names. And even if she had noted Megan's surname, there were many Ashfords in town. What were the chances of a connection to Danny?

As it turned out, the chances were quite high. Megan turned toward Danny. "I don't need a ride. Jackie will take me home." Jackie was another one of the debs, the one with the car.

Danny shrugged, a gesture only apparent from a slight ripple in his silhouette.

Megan nodded then looked again to Leah. "See you tomorrow night, Sparks," she said, using the nickname the debs had given Leah, short for Sparkles. "Get a good night's sleep," she laughed then turned to meet Jackie's car that was now slowly approaching. A few seconds later the car zoomed by, Megan's hand fluttering out the back window.

Leah turned back to the truck.

Danny had switched on the dome light and smiled out at her from above—full-faced now, real skin, that familiar easy and disarming lop-sided grin. Most importantly, his dark eyes were now clearly visible, held that same magnetic mix of knowing and intimacy that had held—and, she now realized, haunted—her since that first meeting at the Fair's livestock pavilion. He tilted his head toward the passenger side then, without breaking eye contact, reached behind him and opened that door.

Simple logic would say that she must've walked around the front of the truck to the door and climbed onto the seat, or around the darker rear of the truck past the fenders and bumper and tailgate and on to the door and the seat. But the fact of the matter is Leah didn't remember how she ended up on that seat. She might've floated or been instantly transported for all she knew or could say.

Inside the cab with her door pulled shut, she faced Danny. The truck smelled of cigarette smoke, beer, and sweat. If she could never say how she'd got around the truck and into the cab, she would always be able to say what she saw in Danny's cool and soothing stare—pure bliss. She leaned forward across the seat and past the shift knob and kissed that bliss.

And Danny kissed back. The dome light went dark. His hands found their way up under her blouse then downward past her belt loosed, her jeans unzipped. Her legs parted readily, or so it seemed to him.

Brooke sat on the side of her bed lightly brushing Leah's long blond hair flowing out over the covers. Leah's face was buried in the pillow but Brooke could tell she was awake, and could tell that she was crying by the few tears that had splotched the lemon colored pillowcase and the methodical gentle heaves of her shoulders. Brooke cried all the time. It was an outlet for her, as natural as her robust laughter or shrieks of delight. But Leah never cried, at least not since her occasional childhood cuts and bruises, and rarely even then. It wasn't that Leah was opposed to tears or uncomfortable with them—she always knew the exact right thing to do when Brooke cried. But Leah had better ways to process her emotions, better ways to get herself to the other side of a challenge or sadness. So Brooke didn't know what to do as she sat there in silence in the diffuse morning light leaking around the drawn curtains.

Momma had waked her ten minutes earlier with a sharp shake of her shoulder and a whisper tinged with worry, "You sister needs you!"

Brooke's mind, still clouded by sleep, couldn't process the words. "Who?"

"Leah! She needs you!"

Though Brooke still didn't understand, and grumbled in protest at the early wake-up on a weekend day, she'd managed to climb out of bed and stumble to Leah's room, closing the door behind her before sitting on the bed.

But Leah still hadn't rolled over or made any acknowledgement of her presence since. Maybe she didn't want Brooke here and couldn't say so. But no, she could've indicated that desire by rolling away or shirking contact. Brooke felt lost by this unprecedented Leah, this unprecedented sadness in one that had always found a way to stability and calm and, eventually, the hope that would fill in behind the calm. What could be wrong? She lay down beside Leah atop the covers and placed her head on the vacant half of the pillow, facing the side of Leah's head. Her hand still lightly brushed Leah's hair.

Leah rolled her head to face Brooke from inches away. Her eyes were red and her cheeks damp, but the tears seemed to have stopped. But when she saw Brooke's worried gaze, she started crying again. She pressed her face into her sister's shoulder.

Brooke held her, pushed her lips against the top of Leah's head, cooed lightly in a sound she hadn't known she had in her until just that moment. She somehow knew Leah could feel the vibration and know its meaning.

Over some minutes that seemed like no time to Leah and an eternity to Brooke in this uncommon role of consoler, Leah's sobs subsided and her shaking stilled. Eventually she rolled her face and entire body away from Brooke so she could look at her from a foot or so away and free her hands from beneath the covers. She signed with downcast eyes, I cannot believe I did it!

"Did what?" Brooke whispered.

Leah raised her eyes. It seemed she might start crying again, but she took a deep breath and held the sobs at bay. Had sex with Danny!

Though they'd long ago worked out their own sign for sexual intercourse—an obvious but ambiguous gesture of the left-hand index finger buried in the right hand's loose fist but no sliding motion to draw attention—and had their sign for Danny—a teasing mimic of his sardonic lop-sided grin and intense stare—well-memorized if not recently used, Brooke still had trouble comprehending Leah's meaning. "What with Danny?" she asked, the color in her face slowly rising.

Leah wanted to look away but forced herself to hold on Brooke's flaring eyes. She repeated their gesture for intercourse.

"Where? How?" Brooke said.

Leah, suddenly calm now the awful secret was out, explained as best she could—Danny was waiting in his truck for his cousin. She left. I stayed. I kissed him. Then his hands were on me. Up here (she touched her breasts) and down there (she put a hand on the sheet covering her groin). I did not know what to do. So I let him do what he wanted to do.

"You let him?"

I did not plan that. I did not want to do that. But it was over before I could stop him. Then it was too late. Leah looked down then, the weight of last night crushing her anew.

Brooke was furious but suppressed her rage long enough to sit up and grab Leah by the shoulders. "Listen carefully, Leah!" she said in a sharp whisper with the breath of each syllable striking Leah in the face. "Did he use protection?"

Leah's eyes showed her confusion.

"A condom. Like on the banana."

Leah suddenly understood. She'd actually received her "deb balloon" along with all the other girls at last week's final deb class. She'd hid it deep in her top drawer, inside a pair of knee socks she never wore. She stared wide-eyed at Brooke. I do not know.

"Were you all wet afterwards?"

Leah stared at Brooke. She never talked in explicit terms about bodily functions or symptoms, but Brooke freely did. And at the moment, Brooke was in charge. Around the opening, she signed and felt herself blushing.

Brooke rolled her eyes but pushed on. "Not dripping from inside?"

Leah shook her head.

Brooke nodded. Danny had always been careful when they were together, could slide a condom on without missing a beat in their foreplay. "Thank God for small favors," she sighed. Then her face assumed a hardened cast. "You stay here," she said and stood beside the bed.

Leah looked up at her sister from the shadows of the bed, her features weighed down by sadness and regret.

Brooke leaned over and held Leah's face between her hands. "Look at me, Leah!" She waited for Leah's eyes to come around to hers. "This is not your fault. Stay here till I get back. I'll tell Momma you're not feeling well and will sleep in for a while. She'll leave you alone."

Where are you going?

"I'm going to fix this." She turned and left, closing the door slowly but firmly in her wake.

She spotted Danny standing in the middle of the farmyard, talking to his younger brother Carl seated above him on the tractor. Brooke raced straight toward him in the station wagon, slamming on the brakes only at the last minute so the car slid toward him on the gravel, stopping only a few feet from pinning him between the car and the tractor's tall tire. Dust followed the car's skid and settled over everything. Danny never flinched despite the car's near strike. He glanced up to his brother's stunned expression and gestured for him to leave. Carl started to protest till Danny shouted, "Go!" So he threw the tractor in gear and drove slowly away.

Brooke was out of the car before the dust had fully settled. She strode forward and punched Danny in the face then kicked him in the groin. The combination caused him to double over, but he didn't fight back. She used her two open hands to push him over. He fell backwards to the drive. "How could you?" she shouted above the tractor's drone and the car engine's purr.

From his seat on the gravel, Danny looked up with a grimace, a little blood trailing from one corner of his mouth. He considered trying to stand but doubted he could do so at the moment. Brooke would no doubt push him down again anyway. She was small but she was strong and tough when this angry. He muttered, "She kissed me."

"What?" Brooke shrieked.

Danny looked at her and repeated, more loudly and with a tad more confidence, "She kissed me!"

"She kissed you, Danny! That's all!"

"She didn't stop me."

"She couldn't stop you. She didn't know what the hell was going on."

"She could've said something."

"She's deaf, you asshole!"

Danny winced. "I mean she could've made some gesture. I would've stopped."

Brooke smacked him across the face but with an open hand this time. "Shut up and listen to me!" She waited for his eyes to come back around to her then said the rest in a hiss, leaning over till her face was just inches from his. "You never again have any contact with my sister. If I hear you've talked to her, if I hear you've waved to her, if I hear you looked at her from across the street, I will come back here and cut your balls off and shove them in your mouth so then you can learn what it's like not to be able to speak and say stop." She stood upright and pulled a black-handled knife from the back pocket of her jeans. The press of a button brought the gleaming blade out of its sheath. "Do you understand me?"

He looked at the knife then up at her and nodded.

"I didn't hear you!"

"I understand."

"Good." She turned back toward the car.

"Tell Leah I'm sorry I misunderstood her intentions."

Brooke turned on a dime and raced back, the knife still open in her hand.

Danny feared for a moment she might use it.

But she left it by her side as she leaned over and said, "You're a fucking liar. You knew full well she was helpless and did it anyway." She turned again only this time walked across the drive to Danny's bright red truck parked in the shade of a silo. She used the knife to draw a neat X on the driver's side door.

She paused before getting back in the station wagon. "Do not touch Leah ever again." She got back in the car and threw it in reverse, scattering more dust and gravel.

Danny watched her exit from his seat in the middle of the drive.

Leah was still in bed when Brooke returned. This shouldn't have been surprising, since Brooke had told her to stay there. Still, the sight of her curled under the covers in the room dimmed by drawn curtains so late into the morning deeply unsettled Brooke. Leah was all about light and enthusiasm and meeting the world on her terms, not hiding in the shadows like some whipped dog. Her anger toward Danny flared up again, and she wished she'd given him another kick in the balls for good measure. Then she willed Danny out of her consciousness, for her sake and Leah's, and went to the window and pulled back the curtains.

Leah rolled over at the sudden change in light. Her face was slack. Her eyes, blinking against the sunlight, were red though dry.

Brooke went to the edge of the bed. "Come on. Get dressed. We need to go pick up my tux," she said then added, "What color nail polish will go good with a black tux?" She extended her hand.

Leah made no move to accept her hand, actually recoiled a bit, deeper into the bed's refuge.

"Get up, Leah! We've got a lot to do to get ready for the Ball."

Leah shook her head. I am not going to the Ball.

"Why not?"

Last night!

Brooke noted a widening of Leah's eyes in anger and indignation. That was good. "Forget about last night. Never mention it again."

You know.

Brooke actually laughed. "Know what?"

He knows.

"He'll never bother you again, and he won't talk."

For a fraction of a second, Leah wondered about the many possible meanings of this statement. But then she let it go, trusted that her sister had found the right mix of retribution and persuasion as far as "he" was concerned. But there was another "he" that loomed large, his shadow steadily growing since Brooke had left earlier. Paul, she signed.

"What about him?"

Leah's eyes widened. I cannot face him!

"Why not?"

What I did! I betrayed him! He will hate me!

Brooke sat on the bed. "Are you screwing Paul?"

Leah actually leaned back in shock. Of course not! We have not even kissed!

"Have you made any promises?"

No.

"Then you haven't betrayed him. You've done nothing wrong."

I have to tell him!

Brooke jumped on the bed and knelt over Leah. She put her hands on Leah's shoulders and leaned close to her sister's face. "Listen to me! You must never, ever speak of last night to Paul. You did not betray him. To tell him will only hurt him and you. Never say a word of it. Never speak of Danny again."

Paul will know.

"Not if you don't tell him!"

How can I face him?

"You pretty your face, you do up your hair, you put on your gown, and you walk up to him at the auditorium with one of your 'charm the leaves off the trees' smiles." This later phrase originated from a comment Father made about Leah to an admiring visitor at church one Sunday. Now Brooke used it anytime she wanted to tease Leah about her emerging self-possession and grace, a tease that carried just a smidgen of sibling jealousy.

Leah wouldn't rise to the bait. And say what?

Brooke sighed in frustration but decided to take one more stab at humoring Leah out of bed and back into life (before dragging her, kicking and screaming). "Did you ever ask him what he meant?"

When?

"The first time Paul sat at your lunch table and you thought he said 'farted'?"

Leah giggled. She'd long since forgotten the incident—so unlike Paul, or her: a comedy of missed understandings. What a way to start her first serious male friendship! She looked up at Brooke with laughter lighting her eyes and shook her head.

"Then tonight after he admires how stunning you look and, if he has an ounce of sense, kisses your hand—and you remember to offer it to him!—after he does all that sappy stuff, ask him what he meant when he said 'farted' that first day."

Leah frowned. I do not know how to sign 'farted'. She spelled the word out in the air.

Brooke jumped off the bed, went to Leah's desk on the wall to the right of the window, took one of the index cards Leah kept handy for notes or reminders, and wrote out: Dear Paul—The first time you sat down at my lunch table and talked to me, you said "farted." What did you mean by that? Love, Leah. She folded the card in half and handed it to Leah. "Give it to him tonight, or I won't dance with you."

Leah opened the note and shook her head. You drive a hard bargain, she signed, moving her hands up and down in opposing rhythm, as in a seesaw or the scales of justice.

"That's what sisters are supposed to do."

Leah nodded. She refolded the note, pushed back the covers, and climbed out of bed, declining Brooke's offer of a steadying hand.

Shawnituck Island

Over the coming year, Brooke methodically set out to fulfill her long held dream of an extended stay on Shawnituck Island, that exotic (in Brooke's mind, at least) and forgotten corner of the state stuck some miles out into the ocean and tied to the mainland by only a small ferry that ran a couple of round trips a day, weather permitting, from the island's tiny and picturesque harbor (Brooke had saved all the postcards of the harbor and other island highlights—a quaint nineteenth century lighthouse being another—Aunt Greta had sent her over the years) to a dock dredged out of the coastal marshes of the state's shoreline. Her renewed focus on this wish derived in part from her boring summer spent at home following her freshman year, when she worked at an ice-cream shop, dated a handful of loser guys, and in general wished she was anywhere but living at home.

Though she wouldn't admit it, part of her glumness that summer arose from jealousy of Leah's strong relationship with Paul, a heretofore platonic friendship that seemed to be deepening into something more. Brooke liked Paul—a little stiff and cerebral for her tastes, but perfect for Leah—and was happy for her sister; but on a more selfish level, she resented the fact that he dominated much of Leah's free time. She also couldn't help but note that for the first time ever Leah had a boyfriend (a friend that happens to be a boy, Leah would always correct) while she was stuck with dead-end dorks, stranded "high and dry in the male companionship department" (that was for Momma and Father's consumption, with her complaints to Leah somewhat more verbally graphic). She did make a few day trips to visit her townie buddies, Billy and Joe outside of Center. But she could never concoct an excuse for an overnight stay that would satisfy Momma and thus had to return home from those trips the same day—more or less sober, more or less by midnight curfew.

So Brooke became determined not to repeat the drudgery next summer, and decided a fulfillment of her Shawnituck fantasy was the perfect solution. She began by quietly lobbying Aunt Greta in an exchange of letters that fall, saying she needed to do a better job of earning summertime income "to assist my parents in paying for my college education" and wondering if there might be summertime employment opportunities for "a hard-working and versatile young woman" on Shawnituck Island. Aunt Greta responded with enthusiasm, seeing in Brooke a familiar rebellious streak and wanting to help her emerge into adulthood from the restrictions imposed by her uptight sister. "There are many summer jobs available to an attractive and conscientious young woman" she wrote while offering to let Brooke stay in the guestroom of her small cottage on the edge of the island's village. "How early in the summer can I come?" Brooke wrote. "How long can I stay?" "As early as you can get here" and "As long as you want" were Aunt Greta's open-ended replies.

Brooke's plans took a large leap forward at the annual Rodwell family reunion at Momma's parents' house the day after Christmas. Brooke and Aunt Greta (Brooke had dropped the "y" from their childhood Aunty Greta title a few years ago, though Leah still thought and signed and wrote Aunty Greta in her mind and communications) went off by themselves for much of the day, sitting on the bright but chilly back porch and hatching all manner of plans as Greta filled her niece in on island geography and mannerisms. In Leah's frequent glances out the kitchen window she saw an unfamiliar Brooke—raptly attentive, hanging on Aunty Greta's every word as if it were a verbal map to a new and wondrous world. And, looking out from another angle, the dining room window this time, Leah also saw a new side of her aunt—eyes flashing as always but merrily this time, with sparkles in the corners. Momma observed all this too, though more discreetly than the bald stares of Leah. She'd seen the allegiance unfolding for years now, secretly known and dreaded it since early in Brooke's childhood when she began displaying a familiar sassiness and single-minded outlook. Well, she'd held that union at bay long as she could—Brooke was twenty and an adult and could go stay with Greta, or jump off the end of the earth for that matter, whether she gave permission or not: might as well maintain some illusion of control, and dignity, by not fighting the inevitable.

Leah's take on all this was similar to Momma's, yet also different. She was used to Brooke making unorthodox choices then pursuing them relentlessly till achieved or exhausted (the choice, not Brooke—Brooke never tired while chasing a dream, far as Leah could tell). Shawnituck Island represented such a choice dating back nearly a decade now. But the methodical rationale, using adult logic and arguments and persuasiveness, exhibited a level of foresight and patience new to her sister, at least when it came to her dreams and desires. Leah understood, both intellectually and intuitively, that these were signs that Brooke was growing up, had taken on both independence and maturity in her two years away at college. What she was less sure about was where the impulsive Brooke had gone, and what might happen if that side of Brooke—the wild gleam in her eyes that hung on Aunty Greta's every word mouthed out there on the frigid porch—reasserted itself within this more mature and calculating sister.

The wind off the gray and choppy water was brutal, blowing bits of sand and seaweed and what Leah would swear were ice pellets, though it was mid-May and air temps were in the low forties, across the narrow beach that bordered the ferry slip and up onto the open-air dock where they clung to the wooden rail and watched the emergence of the low-slung ferry out of the haze though there was an enclosed and heated waiting room a few feet behind them with a picture window affording the same view.

Brooke turned to Leah from a foot away, the shoulders of their bright windbreakers touching. Her face and lips and words were reshaped by the fierce wind. "Aunt Greta says you can see Shawnituck from here on a clear day!" she shouted.

Leah forced herself to look to the east, struggled to peer into the gray haze. She couldn't imagine anything living out there, thought her sister descending into chaos. But she forced a grin, or what she hoped was a grin, onto her face and looked back at Brooke and offered a nod—of assurance, wonder, regret, whatever.

Brooke remained undaunted. Her eyes lifted and she raised her arm in a wave toward the approaching boat. She turned to Leah. "Hear that?" Then realized her mistake and gave her sister a hug, pressing her damp cheek against Leah's still colder one. "Of course not," she said on pulling back. "It was a blast from the ferry's foghorn! Brrrr-rrrrmph!" she shouted out into the wind.

Despite everything, Leah had to laugh. All her misgivings combined with the deep sadness at losing Brooke for the summer were nothing before Brooke's vitality and love of life. What was a gale force wind and an ocean of voracious dark water against that irrepressible spirit? Leah shaped the words in her head then signed them with frozen fingers. Watch out world!

Brooke didn't see Leah's statement. She was already sliding toward the gate at the entrance to the gangplank, intent on being the first to board once the arrivals had exited.

May 12

Dear Leah—

Every eaten conch? Surfed in a wet suit? Driven on the beach with the water thrown up higher than the truck cab? Spotted condoms at the high-water line (ewwwww!) labelled with the Happytime Cruise Lines logo (that makes it a little more interesting)? No? Then hitch a ride on that rickety ferry and come on out to Shawnituck—we've got a show for you!

I did arrive safely on Saturday but over a half hour late as the captain had to tack back and forth to avoid the worst of the currents and some hidden shoals that might've grounded us. A friendly crew member (you remember the guy guarding the gate who smiled at me as I boarded—that's the one, Mitchell Donahue is his name, born out here and my age exactly, working toward his master seaman's certification) gave me a tour of the boat and let me peak in the bridge where the captain was not so quietly cursing the weather and staring more at the depth gauge than at the windshield which was so coated with spray and salt you couldn't see much anyway. "Damn bureaucrats!" he cussed. "Shoulda canned it for today!" After Mitchell closed the door to the bridge I said, "But then I wouldn't have got to Shawnituck on schedule." He whispered with just a touch of real concern, "Better late than never" but laughed afterwards. So I said, "I'll swim if I have to." And he said, "Just might'n."

But I stayed dry and soon enough the low sand bar that is Shawnituck Island came into view with the village's buildings at one end and a long line of beach stretching north for miles without a house or car or person anywhere in sight. Now that's my kind of beach!

We entered a small harbor past a stone breakwater and there was Aunt Greta in a black rain slicker and lobsterman's hat and boots waiting on the ferry dock. I braved the elements and ran out to the front of the boat to wave to her only to have the front of the boat turn into the back of the boat as the grumpy Captain turned the ferry around in the close confines of the harbor so that the cars were all facing the right way. Guess it's easier to turn the ferry around than have all the cars back off the boat, right? But it meant old Brooke made landfall at Shawnituck backwards! (Don't tell anybody.) I eventually weaved my way to the other end of the boat over the slippery deck and past the tightly packed cars. Greta was still there (she asked me to shed the "Aunt" soon as I touched island soil) in her harsh weather gear, walking along the dock and signaling to the Captain in gestures that might have had meaning or might have been for show, I couldn't tell.

In any case, neither her instructions nor the Captain managed to crash us as the boat bumped against the truck tires lining the dock and the Captain threw the engine in reverse to bring us to a stop. The hydraulic ramp was lowered to the deck and Mitchell unhooked the chain and stepped aside with a wave of his free arm that felt like a red carpet welcome and trumpet fanfare as I was the first to disembark. (Truth is, there were only five other pedestrians, all from one family; and they were still in the small lounge bundling up the baby.) I ran over to Greta and gave her a big hug that was a little awkward and slippery around her rain gear but enthusiastic on both side nonetheless. We were startled by a car's blaring horn as we were maybe a little close to the exit ramp. Greta pulled me off to the side then gave that car's driver a piece of her mind, but between the car engine and the boat engine and the wind and the rain I don't think he heard. I did though, and let me just say I've never heard such words come out of Momma's mouth! She looked at me afterwards and said, "Damn tourists!" but with a wink and a smile that would soon become familiar. Greta is the more expressive sister in that family, but I guess we already knew that.

She tossed my backpack over her shoulder like a longshoreman (or woman) on leave and we headed into town along the "sidewalk" that was really just the soft sand along the boards buried in the sand that served as a road. She said the town was debating whether to pave the village's main road, with the residents split about fifty-fifty. Greta says it will just mean more tourists and "riff-raff" and is against it. I don't care about the paved road but a more solid walkway would be nice. That wet sand kept sucking off my clogs till I finally left them off and walked barefoot though then my feet froze. Oh well, you told me island life would be harsh, just didn't know I'd discover it so quickly! A half-dozen islanders, all in four-wheel-drive pickups, stopped to ask if we wanted a ride but Greta always declined. She said she needed the fresh air, but I think it was just her independent streak showing. Or maybe she was giving her niece a lesson in toughing it. Whatever the reason, I was half-froze by the time we turned into a narrow path between two tall hedges and came upon her cottage in a small clearing.

Maybe it was my bias of the moment, but I swear that cottage looked like something from a fairy tale—small and weathered gray with white trim, well-worn but well kept up, and somehow bright and cheerful despite the day, or because of it. We stepped into the shelter of the screened entry porch and stripped off all our wet outerwear and Greta gave me a towel for my hair and face. She grumbled "You'll soon learn to dress more appropriately" but no sooner got out the words then she was helping me dry my hair and lightly brushed my cheek as she gazed at me with the tenderest (is that a word?) of looks. Maybe I'm imaging things, but I felt like she was recalling through my drowned rat appearance her first days out here all those years ago, remembering what it was like to be ill-prepared for island weather.

I might've been ill-prepared for the elements but the cottage wasn't. It was dry and cozy, warmed by a gas heater at one end of the main room. There was only that large room, which included small kitchen, breakfast table, a mismatched couch and chair and a small TV with rabbit-ear antenna on an upended lobster trap. There were two bedrooms off the main room with a tiny bathroom in between. Greta led me to my room, the one in the back. Her room was in the front, with a second door out onto the porch—"To greet the morning or sneak out into the night" she said with a strange smile. I nodded as if I understood. Come to think of it, maybe I do—though it's been awhile.

And so I'd finally arrived.

At dinner that night—conch stew and the best spoonbread I've ever tasted—Greta asked "Is it what you expected?" I answered "Different." "Different better or different worse?" She was smiling the whole time, not really worried, just playing with me or maybe that thing I'd felt earlier—playing she was me. So I smiled back and said, "Both more real and more fantastic and all of it better than I could've hoped." She laughed and said "And you've only just begun." I don't know if she was referencing the Karen Carpenter song or if she has ever heard the Carpenters, but her words were true enough. I had only just begun my adventure yet it had already surpassed my greatest hopes. Shawnituck is simultaneously grittily real, as my sodden and sand-crusted clogs would attest, and dreamily fantastic, as evidenced by Greta's fairytale cottage in the clearing, as warm and secure and welcoming as a perfect idea of home. I slept like a baby that night.

By the next morning the weather had "faired off" as they say out here, with a brilliant blue sky, bright sun, and warm temps, though being surrounded by cool water meant there was a steady breeze that was a little chilly in the shade. After a big breakfast—Greta's rule is "Big breakfast, big supper, snack at lunch"—of bacon, eggs, island fries (no grits out here!), toast, and coffee (can you believe I actually drank coffee?—another of Greta's rules: "Coffee at every meal!"—though I diluted it with lots of milk and sugar), she took me on a walking tour of the village. We went to the general store—named Abner's after some early settler nobody knows the origins or fate of (he's sometimes labelled pirate, sometimes king's exiled sibling)—the post office, the Coast Guard Station, the fish house. Greta pointed out the numerous seasonal gift shops and ice cream stands still boarded up this early in the season. She introduced me to all the residents we met along the way, conversing with them in an island dialect I found hard to follow. I'd recognize a word now and then, but was lost the rest of the time. So I just smiled and nodded and pretended I understood, and prayed that in the process I wasn't agreeing to any tasks I couldn't fulfill!

We went by the one year-round motel and restaurant, run for who knows how many generations by the Garrison family. She introduced me to this generations' matriarch, Mildred Garrison but known to everyone on the island as Polly and now, in her elder standing, as Mrs. Polly. She is, to use Greta's words, "a stately and solid woman of imperious gaze" who lets nothing in her domain (which is, apparently, the whole island) sneak past her. She seems to me someone who could carry her own in the Governor's Mansion or corporate boardroom, but fate had placed her on Shawnituck and she was making the best of it. Greta mentioned that I'd be out here all summer and was looking for employment. Mrs. Polly asked if I'd ever worked in "food service." I nodded, leaving out the small fact that my food service experience was a few months scooping ice cream into waffle cones and paper cups. She looked me up and down like I was a specimen from another planet (maybe I am, if your life's planet is Shawnituck) before saying tersely "We need to add a weekend waitress. You might serve." I didn't ask if she meant her or God. Maybe to her, they're one and the same. I tried to smile and meet her eyes as I nodded thanks. She turned to Greta and said, "Child of few words." Greta was about to offer an opposing view when she cut her off and said, "In my estimation, that is a prized trait." She looked again at me and commanded, "White shirt, black skirt to the knee, black shoes, Friday at four." I nodded again. Though I understood her words (she's one of the few island natives I can understand clearly), I was less sure of what I'd agreed to than if she'd spoke that island dialect. She dismissed us with a wave.

Outside I must've looked at Greta with some version of the trembling I felt in my stomach. Greta laughed and said, "Don't worry. She's just being Polly—got a heart of gold under that stony stare. Everyone else in the family is a dear. Plus, the tips here are better than the wages anywhere else on the island." I said, "Need to get a shirt and skirt." Greta said, "Still got mine from my first summer here." She looked me up and down then added, "Might need to take the hem up a tad, otherwise ought to fit." Lighthouse Inn and Restaurant, here I come.

Speaking of lighthouse, that's where Greta took me next. It's a brick cylinder of modest height painted in a spiral of alternating red and white, leading everyone around here and up and down the coast to call it the Candycane Lighthouse. It has a cute little light-tender's cottage on the neatly maintained grounds and a low white picket fence around the entire property. A handwritten sign at the gate read "Visits by Appointment Only," but Greta paid it no heed and opened the gate and strode across the long boardwalk to the cottage. She opened the side door and said in a normal voice, "Andy?" There was no response, but a few seconds later we heard a clanging from the lighthouse itself. She led me along the boardwalk to the door to the lighthouse.

Inside was a hollow cylinder with a packed dirt floor and a metal stairway bolted to the curved brick walls and spiraling up to a hatchway in the wood floor high above. Greta shouted, "Don't drop a wrench on us. We're coming up!" A white-whiskered face with horn-rimmed glasses and a navy blue knit cap peeked down from the hatch. "Figured it was you when I heard the gate creak," the face said in a squeaky, hoarse voice. "Then thank you very much for coming out to greet us!" Greta said as she mounted the stairs that rattled and creaked under her weight. "The Lighthouse Commission doesn't pay me to promenade about town escorting village women," the man muttered before returning to whatever task was producing those clanging sounds. A few seconds later Greta was at the hatch and said, "Set those tools aside, Andy, and take a break. We won't report you to the Commission," before disappearing onto the upper platform. I followed a little ways behind, not real confident of the creaky stairs and not wanting to concentrate our combined weight in one spot. When I reached the hatch I swear I saw Andy pull away from Greta and blush. Greta said, "Don't fret, you old coot! It's just Brooke, my niece. No secrets from her."

By then I was standing on the platform with them. It was a round room, of course, with windows from waist height to the ceiling and this huge light bulb inside a ring of mirrors and beveled glass in the middle of the room. The man was standing above some ancient looking tools spread out on the rough wood floor. "Andy," Greta said, "This is Brooke, my sister Maggie's oldest daughter. Brooke, this is Andrew Oldham, Shawnituck native and, for the last ten years, resident light tender." We shook hands. His hand was stronger, and younger, than his bearded face and shallow voice that said, "I've heard much about you. Welcome to our island." The way he said "island" and standing there with a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of this tiny village surrounded by all this blue water, implied this island was a world unto itself. I could see the mainland to the west, a low brown line between the darker and lighter blues, and wondered who had left that place less than twenty-four hours earlier, and who would return, if she returned.

You see, Leah, that's the thing about Shawnituck, for me anyway—and obviously for Greta. It takes hold of you and won't let go. As you might've guessed by now, Andy is the guy she followed out here over twenty years ago. He's still married to that native gal (whose name Greta won't speak) but has been living alone in the light keeper's house for the last ten years. He has some rare degenerative disease that's aging him faster than normal, but still manages to fulfill his duties to the island and the Lighthouse Commission. That the residents have made room for his unofficial relationship with Greta tells you a lot about this island, for better or worse depending on your viewpoint.

For me so far, it all falls under "better." People are free to live their lives as they see fit, and everyone else just makes room. Have I said yet that I must've landed in Heaven? And that's before mentioning the guys—all rough and tumbled, weathered, free-spirited souls (and not much resident competition—most of the girls are either off at school or working mainland jobs or already married off to mainlanders).

After we got back from the lighthouse and had our midday "snack"—thick slabs of hoop cheese between two pieces of white bread slathered in mayonnaise (as I said, Heaven)—Greta said, "Now you run on and discover the rest of the island on your own while I take my afternoon nap then do my painting. The bike is on the porch, the towels in the linen closet, the tanning lotion in the medicine cabinet. Supper is at six sharp."

And so off I was, to discover the rest of the island and its residents on my own. But that will have to wait for another letter. This letter is long, the hour is late, and Greta just tapped on the wall to signal lights out. Maybe she's hoping I'll fall asleep so she can sneak off into the night. If so, fine by me. It's nice to hold a secret on someone else for a change!

Your sister reporting from another world—and loving it!

As she loves you—

Brooke

P.S. Come to think of it, the only thing lacking out here is Leah—we'll have to change that! Good night, Sis. Sweet dreams.

May 16

Dear Brooke,

So glad you did not have to swim to Shawnituck! Heavy as your backpack was, it would have dragged you to the bottom for sure!

I am also very happy to hear that the first days of your adventure went so well, but I never doubted they would. You and Aunty Greta (I may have more trouble dropping the "Aunty" than you did) always seemed like twins one generation removed. I saw this similarity best through Momma's eyes. When Aunty Greta would act up at Christmas reunions, I saw in Momma's indulgent exasperation the exact same look she so often directed at you. Now the two of you are together! Lucky for the rest of us you are isolated on an island stuck out in the ocean. I do not know what the world would do if you were released on the mainland!

Just kidding, and maybe a little jealous. I have gotten used to not having you around all the time, but it is hard hearing how much fun you and Aunty Greta are having. I will try to corral my envy and emphasize my sincere joy at how well things are going for you. For now my participation will have to be vicarious, so keep writing please. I love your detailed descriptions. They make me feel like I am right there with you. Where have you been hiding that journalistic ability all these years?

By contrast, life here is all too familiar to you and BORING!

The daily routines of get up, go to school, come home from school, do homework, go to bed have been slightly enlivened by year-end events and recognitions. I was officially inducted into the National Honor Society last Thursday (whoopee!). It was a nice occasion and I was honored and I know Momma and Father were proud to see them put the sash on me. I also appreciated the sign-language translator they included just for me, though it made me a little self-conscious at first. But then the translator (Miss Peacock—did you know she taught herself sign language out of a book?) winked at me in a way no one else could see and helped me relax. From that moment on I knew she was "talking" only to me. I am sure there were no other deaf people in the audience (and believe me, I would know!). And that will probably be the first and only time a sign-language translator is available a high school function, but it was a kind gesture.

Now my attention has turned toward the prom next Saturday. I have my gown almost ready, as Momma and I have been working on "upscaling" that yellow sleeveless one you helped me pick out. Momma scalloped the hem and showed me how to add a midriff sash in tulle that will flow down the back. We tried adding a white lace bodice fringe but I felt that looked too frilly, so we took it off. We'll put some lily of the valley in my hair for a white accent and leave the gown all of one color. I've enjoyed working with Momma on the dress. Though she will not admit it, I think she is starting to feel the sadness of seeing her youngest child graduate from high school. I feel sad too, not for me but for her. That is why working on the gown and preparing for the prom have taken on special meaning.

Paul has been acting a little strange also, especially affectionate and attentive. Every time we have a free minute, he wants to practice slow dancing. He says so he "will be an adequate partner for the town's star dancer." He will not let me forget all the accolades we got for the Waltz, and the ribbing he took for "being afraid to dance with his date." I have long since wearied of his self-deprecation, but lately I am sensing a different motive in our slow-dancing practice. He hums the tune into my ear and taps out the beat with his fingers on the small of my back. With this stimulation and the swaying of his body and the brush of his legs against mine, I sort of think I can "hear" the song, not the words of course but the feel. But more than the feel of the song, it is the feelings of Paul that have me both excited and confused. We have been close friends for more than a year and a half and for most of that time the emphasis was on friendship. As I have told you many times, it was not that we were not attracted to each other; but we both worried what might happen to our friendship if we became romantic. We both know of many friendships that ended soon after they became romantic, with lots of hurt feelings and no chance of putting the friendship back together.

But as we near graduation, and with me headed off to Davidson and Paul to Princeton, I think he is feeling a little like Momma, already sad at the inevitable separation. And those feelings are getting channeled into some increasing expressions of affection and romance, not only through his eyes and words but also at times like in the dancing, through his touch. And though it seems to my head like exactly the wrong path to be on, I cannot help but share in some of these feelings. I like his touch. I look forward to our slow dancing rehearsals. Sometimes at night I wake up and feel his purring in my ears, the only thing I feel until I open my eyes and realize I am alone in the bed. What's wrong with me, Brooke? I cannot start a physical relationship with my best male friend (my only male friend) just as we are getting ready to head off to college. That would be confusing for both of us, and it could mean losing his friendship just when I needed it most.

I am sorry, Sis. I really did not intend to talk about my troubles when I started out about the prom. Things seem kind of inverted at just the time I should be happy and enjoying everything I have worked for. I am glad you are having such a good time with Aunty Greta, and I am so happy for you that Shawnituck Island has turned out to be all you had hoped. But I guess I am a little selfish that I wish you were here to help me work through all this. You are so much better at figuring out these emotional dilemmas.

And at the same time, I am glad you are right where you are, living your dream and discovering a new world. Can you clone yourself and send her here?

If not, stay put. I will find my way through this maze. All I need to say is "What would Brooke do?" and hope I get it right.

Your loving sister,

Leah

May 24

No, no, no, no, Leah!

Guess even if you didn't recognize the handwriting or the Shawnituck postmark, you'd know who was writing this by those words. I'm sorry if I scolded you too much over the years. But what are big sisters for? It's a tough job, and somebody has to keep the little tyke in line.

Or not so little tyke. More like an all grown up tyke that's taller and more beautiful than her big sister. But I still get to scold you now and again.

And this time I'm telling you whatever you do, DON'T DO WHAT BROOKE WOULD DO! You've seen all the trouble that's gotten me into over the years. And the world's used to my being impulsive and screwing up. I don't know what the world would do if you throw caution to the wind and start acting like me. So don't even think about it!

Of course, I might be too late. Dare I ask how the prom went? You and Paul didn't sneak away to some cuddle cubby did you? You know, while I definitely DON'T recommend you start acting like me, loosening up with the guy you've been smoozing with for about forever would be good for both of you. You're not going to go too far too fast. It's not in either of you. And you won't ruin your friendship with a little hanky-panky. If anything it will make you a little more normal. There, Advice from Brooke, free of charge.

While you and Paul were dancing the night away or playing "first to the bra clip wins" (sorry, my last prom joke, I swear!), I was running my feet ragged at my second night waitressing at the Lighthouse Restaurant, which was really my first night because my first night, Friday, was mainly just following Lil, one of Mrs. Polly's granddaughters, around while she showed me the ropes and introduced me to like half the town (and I'm supposed to remember their names when they wave or give me a wink). So Friday wasn't too bad though my feet were still sore from Greta's leather shoes that I think shrunk a size or two over the years.

But if Friday was easy, Saturday was a nightmare! First of all, Mary who was supposed to be the third waitress got stuck on the mainland while visiting her dad. And the reason she got stuck on the mainland is that there was some kind of backup of cars and people to get out to Shawnituck. Nobody seems to know why the sudden rush of visitors the week before the holiday. Maybe it was the beautiful weather or word the blues were running in the north channel or the secret rumor that a beautiful young woman named Brooke was starting her job as a waitress at Lighthouse Restaurant. Whatever the reason, not only did the ferry fill up but so did the island—and the Lighthouse is still the only sit-down restaurant open! The other three open next weekend! And we're short a waitress and a busboy (Anthony nicknamed Alleycat, fishhook in his eye) and have a newbie waitress hoping to learn the ropes on a quiet off-season night.

Well, forget that. From six all the way till ten there was a line out the entry porch and down the steps and across the parking lot. A couple times Mrs. Polly went to the top step and offered anyone who left five dollars to buy dinner somewhere else but she only got two takers and they were her brother and a nephew. So instead she told Onion—that's another one of her grandchildren, a really cute guy my age named Roger but everyone calls him Onion because he started as a kid breading onion rings and has now graduated to running the kitchen's fryer, a central job at this restaurant—to break out the last bucket of last year's clams from the freezer and fry them up in batches and she spent the rest of the night sauntering up and down the waiting line passing out the fried clams and flirting like a schoolgirl! I'm told they all loved it, though I could hardly know because I was running my butt off trying to get the seated crowds fed so the standing crowds could get seated and fed. In the process I dropped four plates of food (never on anyone, thank God!), messed up at least a dozen orders, and somehow managed to put coffee in someone's iced tea glass (though he said it tasted pretty good). But despite all that, Mrs. Polly called me a lifesaver and gave me a raise even before I got my first check.

Whew!

And now it's Monday and my day off. Yesterday was a piece of cake. All the weekenders were gone, Mary was back looking for hours and tips even though it wasn't her night to work, and Lil was there too but she let me handle the tables and she spent most of her time covering the register for Mrs. Polly who always takes "the Lord's Day" off and giving me little pointers she didn't have time to give on Saturday. I'll be back at it again tomorrow night, with just two waitresses on weeknights and three on weekends, though after what we saw last weekend Mrs. Polly is talking about trying four though Lil says that will be too many and we'll spend more time running into each other than serving customers. Mrs. Polly is boss of the restaurant, but Lil is boss of the dining room and I think she'll probably win that argument. She already asked me if I'm ready to hustle on weekends if it means extra tips and I told her bring it on!

Speaking of cake, the restaurant has a fig cake to die for! Maybe I'll see about sending you a piece!

Now for the guys (I know you've been waiting for that!). There are only a few resident guys out here who are more or less my age and more or less available. I've been told and already seen (and felt) for myself that there are plenty of mainlanders happy to come out here and give you a wink or a pinch on the butt and whatever else might follow only to board the ferry on Sunday afternoon never to be heard from again. And though some of those weekenders are pretty hot (O.K., smoking HOT!) I'm not that kind of girl (at least not when sober) and will try to confine my attentions to residents who are not likely to disappear in the night.

I told you about Mitchell, the ferry attendant apprenticing for his Coast Guard certification. He's all about the beach and the outdoors. Everybody out here is, of course, but he takes it to extremes. He sleeps on the beach in all weather, has a waterproof sleeping bag he pulls over his head in the rain, no tent. And when he's not sleeping or working, he's surfing. Most days there's enough surf to get up on the board; but when there isn't, he'll paddle through the marshes collecting crabs and crayfish and scallops he tosses in a floating trap he drags behind the board then sells the catch to Mrs. Polly who will fry up most anything for a price and what she can't fry she'll toss into the fish chowder. I've gone surfing with Mitchell a few times. He got me a wetsuit for the freezing water though he doesn't use one. He says I'm pretty good for someone who's only surfed a few times and all those times at Bogue Beach which he calls "wimp water." Mitchell is a lot of fun, in a rugged water-cowboy kind of way. But there's a side of him that's always out of reach, kind of like the radio sign-off at midnight—the airwaves just go blank. And romantic as sleeping on the beach might sound in the abstract, I guess I'm a little put off by the idea of hermit crabs and sand fleas in my private locales, if you catch my drift. Give me a mattress under my body and a roof over my head, thank you very much!

Then there's Cal, short for Calhoun (and don't even suggest any allusion to that west-coast state, home to "pretty-boy perverts"). He's twenty-four and works on his father's fishing trawler. During the off-season they rig it for shrimping, which he says gives the best return on their time but most nights barely covers the cost of fuel. But now they're refitting the boat for whole or half-day fishing excursions. Cal doesn't have much regard for mainlanders, especially the occasional "Yankee assholes" that find their way out here. But the money is good and except for dealing with the drunk customers the work is easy. And he revels in the fact that few of them ever want the fish they catch, leaving them for his family to sell (yes, to Mrs. Polly) or eat, fresh fish for free all summer long.

The interesting thing about Cal is that when he's not on the boat, he's carving decoys from driftwood—ducks and geese and even a soot-colored replica of a coot (no, not a grumpy old man but a waterfowl that Cal says you mix with the other more familiar decoys to help lure in the real birds—"traitor coots" he calls them, sort of like a "Judas goat," whatever that is). You see, Cal's kind of the artistic type. You'd probably love him. But like Mitchell there's this side of him that's beyond reach. Just when I feel ready to go out and have a good time, he's ready to go carve a duck (and while that might sound like a good euphemism for other activities, in his case it's sadly literal).

Then there's Macon ("last name not Bacon" as he tells everyone he meets) who's quick with a joke or a story. He's the town postman who is already well on his way to being the postmaster (the current one, Mr. Fowler, is approaching retirement and has no children to pass the title and the building to). Macon not Bacon is a lot of fun. He has a designated seat at the town tavern and a story about every resident. I guess everyone has the inside scoop about everyone else, but Macon can tell those stories in a way that makes even the subject of the story laugh, not get mad. He knows just how far he can push the limits. So everybody loves Macon. Unfortunately, Lil let me know early on that he's off limits. I could make a go at him (never stopped me before, right?) but I'd probably lose my job and my welcome on the island. And before you sense in me a dare about to be accepted, let me add that Macon is a little too round and comfortable for my taste, and I don't mean just the extra inch or two at his belt. He's a Shawnituck version of the frat boys at Center—too sure of his own desirability.

By now you're probably thinking the sea breezes have made your sister too fussy for her own good. Maybe so, or maybe I'm just enjoying a diverse and full dance card and bringing to it a newfound perspective. It's nice for once to be the new girl in town, receiving the attentions of an overabundance of men and playing the field like a seasoned pro, or at least the friendly and not too ugly mainlander out here for the summer.

And if I ever need snuggling, there's always Onion. He may smell like fryer grease and isn't the sharpest knife in the cutlery block (pretty good, huh?) but he's laid back without pretensions or black holes inside and easy to hang out with. Oh, and he's got a source for some killer weed (but don't say who told you).

Well, it's "off to bed for this Sleepyhead" (thanks, Momma, for that little ditty). No after the restaurant closes unwinding this night—got to sleep sometime.

Greta says "Hi." I say "If you did like Brooke at the prom Saturday night, I hope you used your Deb balloon." Write soon and tell me all about it.

Sweet dreams, Little Sis. Big Sis loves you—

Brooke

June 2

Dear Brooke,

Hope you're having fun trimming your Onion grass! (That girl has gotten so clever, Mabel. We ought to graduate her from high school and send her off to college!)

Come to think of it (in truth, I've been thinking of little else) I will be graduating from high school this Friday. Another doll-up occasion, this time with a pretty sleeveless white and green print dress Momma got me at Belk's, and my hair done up so soft and shiny by Momma who does a nice job but not as nice as Big Sis would do. And maybe even a little make-up, but not too much. Tell Aunty Greta I will be wearing the beautiful shell bracelet she sent, and thank her also for the generous check. I will send a real thank-you card with some pics after we get them back from the drugstore.

And then I'll be out. Can you believe it—Leah loose on the world? The odd thing is, I have been waiting all spring to begin to feel different; but it has not happened yet—maybe after this Friday. Did you feel different?

The prom was great, but not for the reasons you alluded to (nothing happened on that score). What made it so much fun is for the first—and, at this point, probably only—time, I felt like I was truly a part of Horton High School. I was no longer the grudgingly accepted deaf girl with a few advocates and contacts scattered among faculty, administrators, and students. Everyone at the prom greeted me like an old friend, even some girls I did not think knew me, as well as lots of guys and all the teacher chaperones, even those I had never had for class. Better than being greeted by everyone, no one got intimidated or flustered at the thought of trying to communicate with me. They all just spoke in a natural way to me, a few of them supplemented their words with various versions of sign language, and I understood it all! Well, almost all. When they gave out the Belle of Horton High award, I missed the name of the winner (did you ever notice how Mr. Duncan looks down at moments of high emotion or anticipation?) but clapped along with all the rest until Mr. Duncan walked across the dance floor and presented the trophy to me! I must have blushed five shades of red, but Paul held my hand the whole time and kept me from losing my bearings. Whenever he went off to the bathroom or to get some punch, guys I barely knew would come up and talk to me. A couple of them wanted to dance but I politely declined. I enjoyed their attention but also knew who had "brought me to this dance." I had no intention of leaving—that dance or any other—with someone else.

Which brings me naturally (I have been writing too many papers!) to the subject you not so subtly alluded to. Paul and I had a good talk before the prom and he agreed that introducing too much physical intimacy at his point would be confusing and potentially devastating. At the same time, we both acknowledged feelings (Paul signed "desires"—a bursting out of the heart—probably more accurate but I stuck with "feelings"—the heart in a cradle rocking). So our compromise was that we could express those feelings/desires in private and with our clothes on and our hands above the waist and agreeing that was the limit "for now and far into the future." That latter assertion was a fun, and strictly our own, sign—casting our hands, our whole bodies, out over the mountains, the moon, the stars, seeming like nearly forever but not quite, granting that one day, somewhere far, far in the future, there might be room for more physical touch and expression of "desire" (O.K., I said it, but do not tell Paul!). And pretty much from that moment till now, our hands have not left each other when in private—and of course above the waist!

But it took a minute to get going. After a year and eight months of nothing but chaste and proper contact, we were surprised and a little confused about the new freedoms our pact granted. You would have laughed. We looked all around us—we were in Paul's bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed with the door slightly ajar (his mom's rules) but most of the way closed and no one in the house anyway—and most definitely in private. That realization dawned on us simultaneously. Paul's eyes got really wide and that made me laugh. I think at first he felt hurt but he quickly got over it. Still, neither of us moved for the longest time. Finally, Paul lifted one hand and lightly caressed my cheek. His touch was like sparks. I am surprised I did not blast through the ceiling! But then I must have leaned my face into that touch because it no longer felt tingly but now soft and caring. Then he brought his other hand to my other cheek and cupped his two hands below my chin. And we sat like that for who knows how long. If someone had been watching, they would have thought us a statue—a Rodin bronze in the park titled "Lost." But we were not lost and we were not a statue. Paul was kissing me with his eyes, and I after a while was kissing him back with mine. Who would have thought eyes across a gap could have said and done so much? Well, me for one. Then his eyes closed and he was kissing me with his lips, all over my face. I watched for a while his wondrous release that quickly became my release. Then I closed my eyes and kissed back. Then we lay down on the bed and pretty quickly reached the limits of our agreement. I kept waiting for him to push past those limits and test my resolve (truth be told, I do not think I had any resolve at just that moment). But he was the perfect gentleman. We had drawn a line (on our bodies, I guess, though that is a little more graphic and titillating than I want to think—do not want to make my heart go pitty-pat!) and he was not going to cross it, however powerful the urges. I am lucky to have Paul.

Well, gee, I did not mean to turn this letter into Harlequin romance! Mainly I wanted to let you know that Paul and I have worked out an understanding appropriate to our relationship and our circumstances. Neither of us knows what the fall will bring, after we have gone off to college and are separated by hundreds of miles. It is painful for me to think about. But I know many couples have gone through similar separations—sometimes the relationship survives, most times it does not. We need to be kind to each other and build flexibility into our friendship, not trap ourselves to satisfy short-term desires (there goes Paul again, in my mind's eye, throwing his heart at me!). So it is O.K. And I am getting all the snuggling I could ask for. And the kissing! Let's just say my lips are chapped, and last I checked winter is months past!

Did I do like Brooke would have done?

Or is doing? What is she doing, anyway? Sounds like you have a lot of guy pals, and all confined on one small island. How do you keep from running into each other? Have there been any fistfights? Are you ever going to choose? Will you have to? Cal might seem like my type, but Mitchell is the one that is stuck in my mind. Maybe that is because I recall his cute butt in those tight jeans from that day I dropped you at the ferry! You did not know your sis was observant of that sort of thing, did you? I cannot tell if it is your influence or Paul's newfound touch that has me thinking such thoughts. I might survive graduating from high school but I do not know if I will survive this hormonal awakening! Know of any antidotes?

I better go try on my cap and gown, or take a cold shower!

From this new person in your sister's old body,

With hugs and kisses (but not the Paul type),

Leah

June 14

Dear Leah—

Summer has begun out here, though the date reminds me it's still a week away on the calendar. You would not believe how busy and crowded it has gotten! It was really bad over Memorial Day weekend, but I figured that was just the holiday. It slacked off a little during the week then picked up again last weekend and hasn't let up since. This is all good for the restaurant and motel business, and tips in a certain little poor waitress's pocket, but it drives me crazy to have to wait in line to buy face cream or check my mail, and if one more obnoxious Yankee honks at me (making me jump and giving him a good laugh!) I swear I'll take a sledgehammer to the headlights of his shiny vanity truck. What's a city slick (rhymes with another word starting with a "d") need a four-wheeler with big tires for anyway? Might need to skirt around a garbage truck stopped in his prissy neighborhood? If you read about "girl goes berserk with sledgehammer," send bail money or a file in your cake. Tip money will only go so far.

There! Brooke vent for this letter! Don't you feel better? I do.

On a pleasanter subject, Brooke is still playing the field and the guys are still all out there, ripening toward harvest (this girl is nasty today in her thinly veiled allusions!). There have been no fistfights as of this writing, mainly because yours truly is pretty skilled at keeping those ripening fellows from getting too possessive.

But there was one hair-pulling catfight between two drunk mainland girls who had eyes on your favorite, Mitchell. He's such a tease! He had them both on the line last Saturday night at Edwards Bar till one took exception to the other sitting on his lap which wasn't that big a deal really since he was on a barstool and all she did was kind of lean against his lap. But Brunette didn't like it (Lapsitter was blond) and threw her drink in Lapsitter's face (Mitchell caught a little on his chin and licked it off even though he doesn't like Toasted Almonds). That was all she wrote! Before you knew it they were clawing and screaming and rolling on the floor and beating the base drums on each other's backs. Big Harry the bouncer (he's about three hundred pounds with a shaved head and a permanent scowl) could've picked one up in each arm but decided to give us a little late-night show and let them tussle awhile. But then one of them (Blondie—she could scrap!) ripped the other's dress (can you believe those tarts wore mini-dresses into a beach bar!) and it looked like they were on their way to showing too much skin for an R-rated venue. So Harry took matters quite literally into his own hands and parted the fighters and got one under each arm and carted them kicking and screaming out into the parking lot.

And guess who Mitchell left with? Sorry—don't want to make you jealous. But it'll take more than a couple mainland sluts to nibble on this girl's turf. Mitchell was in my back pocket, catfight or not, the whole time. The rest was just island entertainment.

But my main squeeze has become Onion. Not only do we work together, which means many hours in close proximity in the kitchen, though we hardly ever speak to each other in that hubbub, just lots of order tickets swapped for plates of food and countless hand gestures that would make your sign language look simple. But we also close together, with whoever finishes their clean-up first helping the other. Most nights I get my tables set for breakfast before he finishes in the kitchen. Then I go back and help scrub the fryer or take out the trash. But if I have a bunch of late tables, sometimes he will finish first and come help me. You wouldn't believe the mess he calls a set table—fork askew, knife upside-down, napkin wrinkled or stained! I think he does it to get a rise out of me, but he swears the mess looks right to his eye. He's either a mighty good liar or he has some kind of table-setting dyslexia.

So of course we finish up together and are often the last to leave. He has the keys, which means we can lock up but also lock out. We've had some late-night fun in the store room (chocolate sauce, anyone?) and the exhaust fan is great at clearing away the smoke from our Onion grass trimmings. Or, if the weather is nice, we'll walk through the sleeping village out to the beach between the last cottages and the airstrip. There's hardly anyone out there during the day, and sure as heck no one there in the wee hours of the morning. After one sand-coated escapade, I started stowing a big blanket in a sealed garbage bag tucked in the nook of a dune. Some nights the stars are simply endless out there over the ocean. And lest you think it's all Roman hands and Russian fingers (by the way, we have not done IT and are nowhere near; in fact, I'm pretty sure he's a virgin!), let me say that much of our time together is just talking. Onion may not have travelled far (he's only been off the island three times for things other than doctor's or dentist's appointments, and never for longer than four days), but he's got some really interesting ideas coupled with a Shawnituck attitude, which is, based on my observations so far, relaxed but fiercely independent (sound like someone you know?). His family goes back to the 18th century here and, lest I doubt, he's shown me the chipped and weathered headstones to prove it. Onion and most of the residents are open to newcomers as long as they don't impose their outsider ways or encroach on the natives' turf.

Speaking of a newcomer (like my transition, Miss English teacher?) the residents have accepted me as one of their own. Old Biscuit Crowder showed me his ship-in-a-bottle collection the other day, and Greta claims not even she has seen that (I think maybe she has—she knew the locked room where he keeps it—but was just saying that to make me feel special, and it did!). Marybelle, Onion's aunt, spent most of one morning trimming and highlighting my hair and didn't charge me a dime! You'd love the look—so natural and free, like I'd been out here my whole life!

So why don't you come out here and see for yourself—the new me, but also Shawnituck? Greta needs to go mainland for a week in late July to help out an old friend following surgery. She says she's willing to leave me on my own but "my sister would have a conniption!" It's hard for me to picture Momma having a tantrum, but I can sure see the stone-faced, tight-lipped stare. So why don't you visit that week and save everyone the drama? No one will worry about me with you around. (How'd that happen, anyway? I'm the older sister!) You'll love it, Leah! We'll have so much fun. Whaddaya say, Sis—will you? will you?

I'm going to go tell Greta right now. I mean, tomorrow morning. I mean, later this morning. The clock says 1:22—that'd be AM, but what does time mean out here? I guess it means this much—I'd better end this letter and get some sleep. I'm going kayaking tomorrow with Trent. He's a mainlander and from Maryland no less (double demerit) but has the cutest dimples! What can I say—I'm a sucker for a pretty face! And then I've got to work. So better get a dose of beauty sleep—if there's any left to be had.

Dreaming of you and our week together out here—

Brooke

P.S. I'm so glad you worked it out with Paul. Sounds like you have a comfortable arrangement. And "No, you didn't do what Brooke would've done." She would've found at least twelve ways to have screwed it up. But you did do what Leah would (and should) have done. And that's all that matters (but then you know that already).

Way to go, Girl! Can you hear my cheering? Can you see me with the pom-poms and my short little bicolored skirt flaring up around my ears? If not, come on out here. I'll give you an in-person "Hooray!"

With love from Brooke.

June 24

Dear Brooke,

Great! I would love to spend a week with you on Shawnituck! I was afraid you would never ask. Even more importantly, Momma says O.K. I think she has been worried that Aunty Greta has steered you down a wrong path and is happy to have me go and take a look—as if I could straighten you or Aunty Greta out! Still, it is nice to have her support of the plan. She did say she wants to hear the invitation and the details from her sister, but I am sure Aunty Greta will call or write with the dates and times, etc.

Not only will I be happy to see you and Shawnituck, it will be nice to have a week at the beach. With both you and Matt gone, Momma and Father decided not to rent the cottage at Bogue this year. I guess that made sense. Why spend money on a whole cottage for just three people? And it definitely would have felt lonely without you there, Momma said "Driving me to distraction with worry" and Father just raised his eyebrows in agreement or silent deferral but I knew they both missed your presence, worries or not. The thing I begin to realize about parents is that they will worry about you whether you are near or far away.

It sure has been quiet around here without you. I am getting "empty nest" pangs and I am the daughter! I can only imagine what Momma must be feeling. I feel guilty about going off to college. I know I should not, but I cannot help it. You are lucky to have gotten out first, leaving me to deal with the mess!

I am just kidding! (Do not dare give me that look.)

Things are good here. Earlier this week Paul and I made a day trip to the beach. "Burn and return" he called it. We left around seven and got there a little after ten, just as the sun was getting hot and the fog was burning off. Since it was a weekday, the beach was not crowded. We parked in the public lot down from the pier and staked our claim like one of those "freeloader families" we used to complain about. I told Paul about our name for day visitors and he said "The ocean is free." And I said "Yes, but the beach is not." He looked around at all the empty space and said "Looks like today it is." And he was right. As familiar as that stretch of beach is to me, it felt very different somehow. Maybe it was just because it was earlier in the season than when we would come. Maybe it was Paul, or the strange blanket he had brought (some old brown raspy thing!). I had packed our umbrella, the teal-blue one, so at least that was the same. It just felt different.

Then a little later in the morning I turned from reading my book and saw Paul lying there with his eyes closed, his Popular Mechanics magazine open on his chest. And I had the strangest vision, that we were carried forward in time and Paul and I were married and lying on the beach waiting for our kids, a boy and a girl, to return from whatever mischief they were trying to get into. And as I saw this vision, part of me thought "You should be glad to have this." But a deeper part of me knew I was not glad, that the vision scared the heck out of me. Maybe it is because I was reading Anne Tyler or maybe the whole graduation milestone syndrome has me running scared. But I am not ready to settle down, Brooke. There is a whole world out there I have not seen, and I want to see as much of it as I can before settling down.

I know, you are probably thinking "Chill out, Leah. You just graduated from high school. It is too early to be worrying about settling down." But everything that has happened the last few months makes me think my life has peaked. In principle that is not a bad thing. Momma and Father have a great marriage. And kids and families are all I have ever known. But maybe that is exactly the problem. It is all I have ever known. I think I want to know something else, Brooke. I just do not know yet what it is, and I suppose I am afraid me or the world or my handicap will push me into something safe and predictable.

So I decided to blame it all on Paul. And to correct the situation, I quietly took a cup out of our picnic basket, tiptoed to the ocean and scooped out some very cold water, then went back to the blanket and poured it over a certain vulnerable spot on his body that is off limits to my hands but not to cold seawater. Well, that woke him up! He was on his feet in a flash and though I had an instant's head start, he caught me within seconds and threw me over his shoulder and before you knew it we were both in that freezing water. But I was secretly glad for the shock. And though we have a prohibition against public touch, and there were several other families within sight (and probably watching our shenanigans), I said the hell with it and wrapped my arms and legs around him and kissed him all over the face. He liked that. I could tell because despite the cold water a certain part of him down there (well hid by the water) grew and nudged a certain part of me down there, the two parts separated by only our bathing suits and that did not seem like much impediment. I could have let go and swum away. He would have understood. But I did not want to. I think I even pushed back. I cannot say for sure. My eyes were closed. Our lips were together. And it was, for just a few seconds, a delicious eternal stillness—no future, no past, no commitments, no loss, just the two of us locked together.

Then I had to open my eyes and separate my hands from behind his head and my feet locked at the ankles behind his thighs and gently push away. I could see he was disappointed. Not that there was any future in that kind of contact in that particular place, but I think he was hoping for some sign from me that there was a future in that kind of contact in some future place, however distant the future or far the place. But I could not give him that hope, or at least not that promise. Do not get me wrong. I love Paul. And maybe somewhere in the future there is a place for THAT with him, and for the marriage, kids, domesticity, a blanket at the beach, a cottage rented and waiting that would follow. But it is not a future I can see right now, or commit to. And if I cannot commit to it, I will not lead Paul on. It is not fair to him. It is not fair to me.

Pretty heavy stuff. What can I say? You leave me alone and that is what happens.

So we swam around awhile, dunked each other a time or two (careful to keep our hands away from each other's you-know-where), then got out of the water and dried each other off (that contact was O.K., and by then his parts had gone back to pre-swim size) and I unpacked our lunch and we feasted on pimento-cheese sandwiches and iced tea and brownies (all made by yours truly—I may not be ready to settle down but I still like to cook!).

And the rest of the day went fine and we got back to the house around dark maybe a little burned but not too bad. And far as I know Paul was none the wiser for all my inner turmoil. We kissed in the car and then he opened my door (I always wait—he is such a gentleman!) and then we kissed again at the side door after he helped carry the basket and cooler to the side stoop and I watched and waved from there as he drove off. It all was quite normal, just like the day before, just like the day to follow.

But I was not the same. I had seen something there at the beach, Brooke. Maybe it has been there all along and I just happened to notice it while lying there on the blanket. I do not know. What I do know for sure is now that I know about it, I cannot ignore it. But neither do I know what to do with it. It all seems such a blur. I want to go back to that moment of stillness in the water. But even that is unclear. Was that stillness linked to Paul? To our parts touching? Or was it free of Paul and those parts? Or was it those parts but not Paul?

What is happening to me, Brooke? I feel so confused, but I do not really feel scared. I want to get on with my life, but I do not want to leave what I have known. I love what I have, but I want more. Is that crazy? Is that even possible? If it is, then how? If it is not, then which should I choose?

See what happens when you leave me alone? I look forward to seeing you next month. Send me the dates so I can start counting down the days, the hours, the minutes.

With love,

Leah

P.S. Reading back over those last paragraphs, it sounds worse than it is. I am O.K. There have been a lot of changes in a short time, with more to come. And your absence is one of the bigger challenges, and more than just not having someone to turn to. It is like a part of me is missing. But we have to grow up, right? I will figure it out. We will figure it out. We always have.

July 5

Dear Leah—

Whoa, Girl! I leave for a few weeks and my stable and orderly sister goes mental? What am I going to do with you?

A guy flew out here for the long weekend and invited me for a ride in his vintage biplane. And no that's not sister-speak for other possible carnal contact. Josh (that's his name) is practically old enough to be my father, at least thirty or thirty-five. And though he maybe thought I was cute in my waitress's outfit (that's where I met him, at the restaurant), he treated me more like a daughter or a younger sister than a love interest. O.K., well maybe there were a few lingering looks at my body, but just a few. Now that I think about it that was kind of weird. Was I the daughter or the younger sister or something else or both (ewwww!)? But it didn't seem weird at the time, and he never did touch me more than a hand to help me into and later out of the plane's back seat—not that I would've minded if he had touched me a little more. Maybe I'm the weird one then.

But I started to tell you about the plane ride. We flew on a beautiful clear morning that was hot as Hades on the ground but cool a thousand feet up with the wind blowing past. He took me for a loop around the island. It's amazing how unspoiled and natural the north end looks from above, just miles of a thin strip of dunes and beach with the ocean pushing in from all sides. And the village looked so small and quaint, like some fairyland inside a diorama or a snow globe minus the snow. Even though I could recognize all the places I've come to know so well, and even waved to a few people, what I saw from up there looked very different from what I know down here.

Then Josh flew across a narrow strait to a little island south of Shawnituck called Windsor's Cove. It used to be a thriving fishing village but was abandoned decades ago when it was deemed too expensive to bring electricity in. Everybody left and most of the buildings were destroyed by Hazel. But a big brick manor house, "Windsor's Castle," is still standing and looks quite impressive from the air. But unlike Shawnituck, nobody lives there and it looked very empty and lonely. Greta has mentioned several times that we should take a daytrip out there. A hired boat from Shawnituck can make it in about an hour. But we haven't got around to it yet.

From there we headed toward the mainland across the sound. And while flying over all that water I got to thinking about you. Maybe it was the disconnect I'd sensed between what I saw from the air and knew on the ground or the strange stillness I felt despite the roar of the plane's engine and the wind racing past. Whatever the reason, I tapped Josh on the shoulder and asked if he could fly me home—I meant for a quick visit then back again to work that night. At first he didn't understand, with all the noise. Then, after the third try when he did understand, he laughed and said we'd run out of fuel about halfway there. That didn't sound good. So I shrugged and sat back in the seat. It was just a crazy whim. He took me for an hour-long tour of the coast, including a swing over Bogue Beach and The Pier. It may have been deserted when you and Paul were there, but it was wall-to-wall last Saturday, including on The Pier. It made me glad for the empty beaches of Shawnituck.

Then we ended up back at the airstrip and he helped me down and I thanked him for the wonderful flight. O.K., so maybe I did give him a thank you kiss but it was just on the cheek. Then he headed off to do whatever you do to a plane after a flight and I walked back to town and got ready for work. Mrs. Polly had asked me to help out with lunch if I was available, and lucky I did since they were swarmed.

But on my walk back, and with the thrill and the revelations brought on by my first flight, I thought a lot about your letter and realized that I'm facing many of the same questions. You're just better at thinking about them than I ever will be. I take it as it comes and follow my gut. Well, a few inches up from my gut, meaning my heart. Or maybe sometimes my heart and sometimes my gut, depending on the situation. But unlike you, I don't use my head, or sometimes after the fact but then it's too late. That's where you come in. You have to be my head to balance out those other parts. I concluded that I miss you as much as you miss me. I'm just too busy to know it.

Speaking of busy, did you read about how the fireworks truck blew up? Fortunately, it was parked in the ferry lot so only a handful of cars got burned up and not the whole village. But you would've thought we were in the middle of World War Three, with all the artillery shells and whistlers shooting off. Old timers said it reminded them of the early days of World War Two when German subs would sink merchant ships off the coast and there'd be fires and explosions in the night. Well, these explosions were in broad daylight and right here in the village and nobody quite knew what was going on. Eventually, Bill and Dave Hammond with the town's one fire truck got there and put out the fires once all the shells had finished exploding. Now there's a gutted panel truck and several burned up cars and a circle of melted asphalt in the ferry parking lot, but at least nobody got hurt.

Needless to say, the island's annual fireworks display got cancelled. But several high school kids, including Onion's brother Jamie, went door to door asking residents for any fireworks they might have stored from years past and were waiting for a special occasion. They gathered up a pretty decent mix (all illegal under state laws, of course, but Sam Saunders our one full-time cop turned a blind eye) and those kids set them off at Harbor Beach after dark yesterday and we all cheered as if it was the best fireworks display we'd ever seen. The exploding truck reminded everyone of just how vulnerable we are, especially out here on the island.

Speaking of Onion (I was, somewhere in there), he can't wait to meet you. And he said "If she wants to invite a friend, he can stay in the motel's 'guest suite'." That's a store room off of the kitchen they turned into a bedroom with a cot and small dresser for kids and family friends. There's no bathroom but the employee washroom is just down the hall. Anyway, with Onion's generous offer (O.K., maybe I prodded him a little bit) I was thinking you should ask Paul to join us out here, maybe for that last weekend. With the free room and free restaurant food (we'll let him bus a few tables to make it official) it wouldn't cost much—just ferry fare out and back and whatever incidentals he purchases. It could be your farewell outing before college.

See, I'm looking out for you lovebirds. And if he drives down and leaves his car at the mainland dock, you can go back together, saving Momma a trip. Now I'm beginning to sound like you, planning everyone's life. What's happening to me?

Maybe I'll go find Mitchell and engage in a little mindless spontaneous fun. What's the use of being young and free if you can't do that?

See you soon (but not soon enough)—

Brooke

Leah stood on the empty dock looking out across the gray harbor as the ferry disappeared beyond the breakwater. A heavy mist trapped between fog and drizzle made her hair hang straight and damp on her shoulders and gave a sheen to her hard-sided suitcase. The ride out had been a little choppy but otherwise quiet, with only two cars and no other walk-on passengers. They'd unloaded quickly and reloaded with a full boat of homeward-bound weekenders. It was Sunday evening.

Leah had hoped for the familiar face (and cute butt) of Mitchell as her ferry attendant, so was disappointed and a little unsettled when a grizzle-faced, gap-toothed old timer leered at her as she boarded and exited. The only good news there was that he had disappeared for the entire crossing and she was free to read her book in the empty and tiny passenger lounge. Now with the ferry gone out of sight, she gazed at the cottages rimming the small harbor, looking hazy and surreal in the dim light.

Suddenly Brooke's face then whole body was directly in front of her. At least she remembered not to startle a deaf girl by grabbing her from behind.

"I hate it when the ferry is early," Brooke said with just the slightest narrowing of her eyes.

Leah looked at her watch. The ferry had not been early.

"Come on, Lee. Don't be like that." Brooke made a little pouty face. "Give your big Sis a hug."

Leah smiled. Forgiving Brooke was a well-honed skill that came back quickly despite recent disuse, like riding a bicycle. She opened her arms and folded her shorter sister into a wide embrace. Brooke's hair was different, dirty blond with lighter streaks and cut in a short bob that stopped above her shoulders. And she smelled different, almost tangy, in what might have been the odor of a new shampoo or body lotion or something from the restaurant. But she felt the same, her face pressed against Leah's shoulder, her arms hugging in gentle spasms. Leah couldn't help but wonder if that embrace would always feel the same.

Brooke stepped back. "Welcome to Shawnituck! What do you think?"

Leah responded with just facial gestures—About the island or you?

Brooke said, "I meant the island; but, well, both."

The island looks quaint and rustic. She gestured toward the cottages with lights winking on though sunset was still hours away, and the plank road receding in the mist as it wound from the ferry slip into town. You even imported an English fog!

Brooke laughed. "Anything for my sister!"

Leah faced her sister. And you seem—. She paused a moment, trying to properly capture a complex reaction. She finally gestured with a quick spiral of her right hand starting near her waist and flying upward past her face, out into the misty sky. The sign might have translated as wild or free, depending on the context. For Leah at that moment, it meant both.

Brooke grinned and nodded. "Exactly." For her the sign meant a version of free to be me, to which she silently added at last.

Then Leah suddenly placed Brooke's unfamiliar scent. It wasn't shampoo or lotion or restaurant odors. It was a boy, just one she'd never smelled before. Her eyes grew wide and jerked upward in an old familiar code.

Brooke recognized the sign. "Onion wanted to come, but he had to work."

Leah nodded. That is O.K. I will meet him soon enough.

"Yes. But for now it's just us." She reached down to grab the suitcase, but it was heavier than she expected and her wet hand slipped off the wet handle. "Geez, Lee; what you got in there?"

Leah laughed. Lots of books, for when you are working.

"Still my Leah."

Leah nodded then grabbed the suitcase. By now they were both quite wet, but it hardly mattered. The evening air was warm, and the two sisters were back together.

To Leah Greta's cottage seemed like something off a stage set—cozy and dry and charming with its plank wood walls hung with all manner of paintings, photos, and seaside detritus (a battered buoy, a stingray's spike), but somehow detached from the modern world. For that matter, the whole island seemed separate from the world she knew. In their fifteen-minute walk through the village, they'd not passed a single moving car and only a handful of pedestrians scurrying to dinner or closing up shops. And though Leah's world was always soundless, this place felt soundless; and she wasn't completely comfortable with the impression.

Once inside (Leah noted the door hadn't been locked—of course) Brooke grabbed the suitcase and led Leah to the small bedroom at the front of the house. "Greta changed the sheets and said she safely hid 'all items that might tarnish Leah's lofty impression of her aunt!' I can't imagine what she meant by that, since my impression was always that she was down to earth and one of us. But maybe she thinks you see her differently. Anyway, this is your room for the week. The sun pours in through that east window, so be prepared to wake early or pull the covers over your face."

Leah nodded and smiled.

Brooke hoisted the suitcase onto the bed with a grunt, then led her sister back into the main room. She directed Leah to a seat at the breakfast table, placed a bottle of soda pop in front of her, and set about preparing dinner. She took a container of barbecue from the restaurant out of the fridge and spooned it into a saucepan and set the pan to warming on the small stove. She spread some hushpuppies on a cookie sheet and slid them into the oven. Then she uncovered a bowl of slaw and put it on the table. She layered plates, napkins, and silverware onto one forearm and grabbed two glasses with her free hand and carried it all across the kitchen to the table. She quickly and almost effortlessly distributed the items into two perfectly arranged place settings, pausing only a fraction of a second (accompanied by the slightest frown) as she waited for Leah to lift the bottle of pop blocking free access to the table spot in front of her. She then returned to the stove to give the barbecue a stir and the tray of hushpuppies a quick shake.

Leah watched all this in amazement. Brooke never voluntarily did anything in the kitchen back home; and when Momma demanded she help out by setting the table for dinner, Brooke performed the chore with a grudging reluctance that caused it to take much longer than it should have. She also had a habit of mixing up the placement of the silverware or the glass, always shrugging when called on the mistake and asking with petulant disdain, "What's it matter which side the fork is on anyway? Maybe I don't want to grab it with my left hand," leaving the listener to wonder if her misplaced fork was a mistake or an act of defiance.

But more so than the smooth efficiency of her table-setting technique—which, after all, had surely been refined in her weeks as a waitress—Leah was shocked to the point of unease at how relaxed and natural Brooke was, not only in the kitchen but in the cottage. Leah had no trouble, in principle at least, with a relaxed and content Brooke—though, truth be told, she couldn't remember having tested the principle in Brooke's case. Leah was troubled by a more basic question—where had her sister gone?

Brooke brought the hushpuppies in a hand-made sea-grass basket lined with a blue-checked napkin balanced on the crook of her left elbow while her left hand cupped a pottery bowl containing the steaming barbecue and her right hand held a plastic pitcher filled with iced tea. She set it all beside the bowl of slaw on the table between them then sat down. She pointed to the bowl of barbecue and said, "Be careful. That's very hot."

Leah pointed to Brooke's left hand that had just been holding that bowl with no protective buffer.

Brooke looked at the hand as if it belonged to someone else then raised her eyes and laughed. "Asbestos palm!"

Leah could only shake her head in wonder, but at much more than Brooke's burn-proof hand.

They ate the meal, which was all very tasty and perfectly seasoned and prepared, with a minimum of conversation. Brooke asked after Momma and Father and their Boston terrier Roscoe who had a bad hip and incontinence and might have to be put down soon but Momma still said "Not yet." Leah asked after Greta, who had left on the first ferry that morning for the all-day trip to her friend's house in Virginia. After Brooke said how sad Greta was not to get to see Leah (she'd be returning late on the night Leah, and Paul, were scheduled to leave in the early afternoon), she added an unlikely thanks. "I can't say how much this means to me."

Leah stared at her, not sure she'd understood her sister's words.

Brooke held her stare across the table and said these words directly to her face. "I don't think any of this was real until you got here."

Leah wanted to respond that it still was not real to her but kept the thought to herself. Whatever it was her sister needed, she'd do her best to provide it.

Brooke broke the long silence with a laugh. "You are not going to believe this blackberry cobbler! I made it myself—at the restaurant of course and with Mrs. Polly's own recipe, but still my little old hands and effort. You stay put while I warm it up." And with that she stood and consolidated all the dishes and cleared the table completely in one trip. A few minutes later she returned with two huge portions of blackberry cobbler in white china bowls steaming around large scoops of vanilla ice cream that melted in white rivulets running down through the purple fruit and brown crust. Brooke was right—Leah couldn't believe it.

That night Leah lay in Aunty Greta's bed staring out through the screen of the east-facing window propped open with a stick. A weather front had come through just after dark and blown all the mist and dampness away from the island and replaced it with dry cool air and a brisk north wind that blew more or less constantly. Though Leah couldn't hear that wind's howl, she felt it as a steady roar across her face and arms outside the covers. She considered closing the window but knew she'd still feel the wind's force through the vibrations in the floor and walls of the house. Besides, she wanted to smell the rich salt air the wind carried with it. That unmistakable odor, in whatever form it took—from fetid to rank to tonight's clean freshness—had always eased Leah's mind, intimated a vast munificent world beyond her knowing that was out there waiting to be discovered. That she'd brushed against that larger world and steadily explored its edges in their annual trips to the beach provided further assurance of safety and welcome.

But tonight that was all turned on its head. This isolated dot of sand in the middle of the ocean was a domain beyond any she'd encountered or even imagined in all her reading. She didn't need to get taken up in a biplane (its own exercise in vulnerability) to fully appreciate this spit of land's tenuous hold on existence. If this gale didn't scour that sand clean (as it seemed destined to do at any second) then the waves would. Yet in the face of nature's lack of welcome if not outright forbiddance, Brooke and Aunty Greta and the villagers and the village itself, the harbor, the breakwater, stood out in their will to persevere, seemed to thrive in the struggle, gain strength from it. What kind of order was this, thriving in pitched battle?

Or maybe thriving in the independence that could only be found out here on the edges, where no sane person would be. Was the struggle the price of their independence or its reward? These abstract questions would have been little more than interesting diversions—the subject for a sociology paper or a short story topic—about the island and its inhabitants, or family ruminations about Aunty Greta's life choices. But once the place grabbed hold of Brooke, or she to it, such questions stopped being arbitrary to Leah, became the latest and most urgent of the ponderous life questions life was so adamantly placing in front of her. If she didn't know the reasons behind her sister's actions and choices, then what did she know, what could she count on?

Why was she in Aunty Greta's bed anyway? Why wasn't she lying beside Brooke, reading while Brooke did her nails or doodled in her scrapbook, the occasional brush of one's knee against the other's thigh or the rocking of the mattress under shifting body sufficient assurance, sufficient answer to all questions? Why were they separated on this reunion by the wood-planked wall, the wind-stirred, salt-laden darkness impenetrable as pitch? Why?

Ah, Your Highness, you ask the wrong question. It was white dolphin, standing beside her in white world with no water anywhere near.

Then what is the right one?

What is a good one but who is a better one.

Who?

White dolphin nodded, his white snout going up and down. With Brooke it is always 'who?'

People are her reasons?

Her heart is her reason, but it settles on people.

Leah had long known this but had counted on being the ultimate resting place of that heart's desire. If this weren't so, where did that leave her? Where did it leave Brooke? Leah asked, Aunty Greta?

Affirmation but not destination, white dolphin said.

Shawnituck?

A place is not a person.

Onion?

White dolphin smiled.

Leah didn't know he could smile. But he is just a diversion, the latest in a long line.

Sometimes one crosses a line.

In the sand. Now it was Leah's turn to smile.

Very good, Your Highness. But this is a line no one, least of all Brooke, saw.

Then what should I do?

White dolphin shrugged.

Leah didn't know he could shrug either. I should do something.

You should be yourself, Your Highness. There is no one else to be.

And nothing else to do?

Being yourself is doing something.

But is it enough?

It will always be enough.

Enough what?

Enough, Your Highness.

Leah laughed. Let us go for a swim.

A swim?

Yes. You know—in the water, your tail moving us along.

I have never done that.

What do you mean? It is all you do.

White dolphin was adamant. No, it is not. I would know.

Leah sighed, fell finally beyond the white world into sleep.

Mere feet away, on the other side of the dividing wall, Brooke lay on her back somewhat more than half awake amidst a compelling vision of her own, a vision of something that hadn't happened yet but seemed oh so near—Onion rising above her here in this bed: him to claim her, her to claim her destiny, or it her.

Leah propped herself on her elbows on the blanket, looking up and down the miles of nearly deserted beach. There were a pair of fisherman about a half mile north looking hardly any bigger than toy men, their poles stuck in the sand like exclamation points at the end of their brief sentence written out on a white sand sheet (Leah thought the metaphor—it was not a reassuring one). A quarter mile to the south a young couple with a toddler daughter (apparent from the pink sun bonnet) huddled in the small shade of a beach umbrella in rainbow colors.

And that was it, plus the two sisters of course, splayed out on Aunty Greta's blanket the pale beige of the sand, all the more to set off the girls' rich tan and bright colored suits—Brooke's a lime-green bikini, Leah's a purple one piece—and multi-colored beach towels. There weren't even any boats visible in the endless water stretching from here to England, and no planes since the Navy fighter had roared past at wave-tip height just as they were descending the dunes that hid the highway and dirt parking lot.

Brooke reached up and tapped her sister's shoulder. "Would you relax," she said from behind big round sunglasses with half her face buried in the towel she was using as a pillow.

Leah glanced at her sister then quickly back at the desolate seascape. Her furrowed brow said all she needed to convey—this empty beach has me weirded out! Leah had never seen anything quite so stark. She couldn't help but picture what they looked like from high above (there were a few seagulls gliding on thermals barely visible in the hazy blue)—a tiny island of human flesh on a larger island of beach on a larger island called Shawnituck and all dwarfed by endless blue—the blue of the ocean, the blue of the sky.

"I told you the beaches were empty," Brooke said.

Not this empty.

"Empty is empty, Leah. There'd be a few more people on the weekend but not many—might have to go a couple turnouts farther north to get some privacy!" Brooke laughed. Last weekend she'd made Onion tote their heavy cooler all the way back to the car twice after she'd got to the top of the dune and seen other people within a few hundred yards of open beach. At the third turnout, Onion had kept the cooler in the trunk while she rose to the top of the dune, then dragged it out and lugged it up the slope after she gave the all clear—meaning no humans in sight.

For Leah, empty was unsettling—not just at the beach (though she was long trained by stays at Bogue to expect at least modest crowds) but anywhere. It may have been related to her deafness, as she needed others nearby to signal when, and when not, to be concerned or alert. But in her mind the fear went beyond compensation for her limits (which were, after all, innate in all people, whether they knew it or not). To her such total isolation was unnatural, for humans anyway and also for most creatures, if you spent much time watching the world. She had no problem being set apart; she was set apart every minute of every day. What she had a problem with was the absence of the purpose that came from interactive exchange and obligation. She'd not fully understood till just this minute how important casual interaction with others—even if only a glance or a smile or a wave—was to her sense of self-worth. She'd spent her whole life learning to integrate with the public; now momentarily deprived of that public, she felt lost.

Brooke ringed Leah's near wrist with her thumb and forefingers. "I'm here."

Leah looked down, her eyes still clouded with doubt.

"So relax," Brooke said and pulled Leah's arm to the side and caused her to fall flat on the blanket.

Leah looked miffed but didn't try to sit up again. She rolled her head to face Brooke across the gap of blanket. When you decide to flee, you flee! She tucked her hand under her opposite arm at the end of her signing, to denote not only flight but hiding.

Brooke nodded. "Like Greta."

Leah refused the bait of diversion. Are you coming back? Her hand ended this time squarely in the middle of her chest—back as in to their home, to her heart.

Brooke frowned.

Are you? Leah repeated.

Brooke rolled from her stomach onto her back and stared up at the sky. Without looking, she found Leah's near arm and pulled it across her waist. She turned the wrist up and slowly, ever so gently, ran her fingers up and down the soft pale flesh, recalling the games of tickle-flesh they'd play for hours on end as kids.

Leah understood Brooke's answer, and also understood there'd be no changing it. The realization made her sad but was not a surprise. She elected to close her eyes and enjoy Brooke's touch for as long as it lasted in the present, for all it recalled of the past. And with her eyes closed, she could almost forget how utterly alone and vulnerable they were in this place, how utterly alone she was now.

A little later Brooke roused from her shallow daze and sat up. She was instantly awake and clear-headed, no momentary confusion about setting or circumstance. Though she'd always been so—a quick riser—this reaction in this location was for her a silent affirmation of rightness of place and trajectory. She'd always known this was where she'd end up.

She looked down at her dozing sister, lying on her stomach, her face turned away. Not seeing that face made it easier for Brooke to believe what she'd been subconsciously telling herself for months—that Leah could stand on her own, was safe outside her protective radius. Leah's long legs, tanned and toned back set off by the purple suit, strong shoulders, and blond hair radiant in the hazy sunshine all combined to affirm this aspect of sufficiency, of independence. Brooke gladly ignored the fact that she, or anyone else (were anyone else in the vicinity) could scream at the top of her lungs inches from Leah's resting head and Leah would not rouse. But as if fate chose not to let Brooke shrug off her obligations so conveniently, a Navy fighter jet roared out of the south, its rumble audible seconds before is silver skin came visible a few hundred yards offshore and not twenty feet above the waves. It streaked past in barely a blink but its rumble lingered for almost a minute after it was gone. Brooke couldn't help but gasp at the sound then again, a minute later, when she recalled her sister's presence and discovered Leah unruffled by the intrusion, still resting with her eyes closed.

Brooke forced aside the reminder by reaching for Greta's wicker picnic basket and their simple lunch stored inside. In the effort she intentionally brushed Leah's leg with her forearm.

Leah rolled her head to face Brooke, her blinking eyes clouded by sleep. Unlike Brooke, Leah took awhile to rise from her sleep and the dreams that companioned it.

Lunchtime, Sleepyhead, Brooke mouthed without sound. She couldn't have said if it were silence she was preserving or solidarity with Leah. It just felt right.

Leah grinned, not at the prospect of lunch but at Brooke's reliable presence. At that moment she saw nothing except her sister, could not have said where she was or why she was there, could have cared less.

Brooke smiled and shook her head at her sister's blind and helpless trust. She raised the basket's leather-hinged top and unpacked its contents onto the blanket between them. First were peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, their oldest and still favorite shared picnic lunch (neither ate them at any other time), though these had the crusts still in place, the bread was whole-wheat sunflower seed from Sally's All Things Baked in the village, the jelly Greta's fig preserves, and the peanut butter all natural unblended. Then there were four squares of wax-paper wrapped brownies, some rinsed grapes (scuppernongs from Mrs. Polly's vines) in paper towels, and a thermos of iced tea spiced with spearmint sprigs from Marybelle's herb beds.

Leah, back in the present now but trying hard to ignore the sense of isolation that had unsettled her earlier, sat up and crossed her legs opposite her sister. That morning she tried to help prepare the lunch but had been waved away by new homemaker Brooke, so this was her first view of their fare. It didn't take heightened powers of observation to see the message in Brooke's careful choices—all old standbys in new renditions—but Leah was unsure whether to be impressed or depressed by the mixed reference. Was the menu a new phase or the end of the old? She was sure Brooke intended the former, but was Brooke right? She gave her sister an ambivalent grin.

"What? Don't like sunflower seeds?"

Leah laughed. Love them. This is wonderful. Her eyes donned a mischievous glint as she pointed at the brownies.

"What?" Then Brooke caught her meaning. "Leah, how could you think such a thing? From scratch from our recipe, no supplements added!"

No Onion grass?

"I wouldn't do that!" Then she added, "At least not without asking. But if you'd like some—."

Leah waved off the suggestion—Thanks but no thanks! But then she asked, after unwrapping her sandwich and pouring a paper cup full of tea, When do I meet this mystery man? She passed her hand across her face as in a shroud.

Brooke laughed. "Onion is a lot of things, but mysterious isn't one of them! I asked him to come over after work tonight."

Leah nodded over bites of her sticky sandwich. The mix of ingredients gave the old standby a totally new and exotic cast.

"It might be kind of late."

Leah shrugged—That's O.K. I will wait up.

Brooke looked out at the water, sparkling blue in the midday sun, with her hand holding her sandwich resting on her knee. "I was thinking maybe he could stay over."

Leah waited for her sister to face her before shaking her head in a tight-lipped No.

"Why not, Leah? I'm in love with him!"

Leah paused to absorb that. In all the years and all the boys, she'd never heard her sister use that preposition with that noun in reference to a specific individual. Clearly, in Brooke's mind the statement made a difference in her request, perhaps also in her life. Nonetheless, Leah knew her answer. It is Greta's house. She shaped her fingers into a pitched roof that might have been a temple as well as a house.

"It's my room, my bed." This last was maybe more graphic than she intended—then again, maybe not.

I am Greta's guest.

"But not my chaperone!"

I am Greta's guest. Neither her eyes nor their fire had left Brooke's face.

Brooke turned back toward the water. "I've already got a mother, Leah."

And a sister, Leah signed, circling her upper body with the half-eaten sandwich in her hand. She made the gesture big, hoping Brooke would see it out of the corner of her eye.

Brooke finished her sandwich with several quick bites then jumped up and ran to the water, into the water, dove under the waves soon as it was deep enough.

Leah watched from where she sat, wanted to warn You shouldn't swim right after eating but knew it was no use. She exhaled a long sigh when Brooke's brown hair looking almost black like a seal's fur appeared above the water out beyond the cresting waves, the only anomaly in that taut blue sheet stretching to the horizon.

Onion was nice enough, though more than a little diffident after a glancing down handshake and some mumbled words she had no chance of understanding. Not this again Leah thought though her smile and bright gaze lasted through the introduction—not that Onion could see, staring at the floor. But Brooke certainly did, watching like a hawk off to one side.

Onion said little as they sat around Greta's breakfast table drinking beer—Leah sipped judiciously on hers, not because she was afraid of getting drunk but because she didn't like the taste, while Brooke and Onion quickly finished their cans then moved on to seconds and, for Onion, thirds—and nibbling from the big bowl of popcorn Brooke had made just before Onion arrived. Brooke and Leah "chattered" away about home and family friends and acquaintances and familiar places—that is, Brooke talked and sometimes signed and Leah signed or sometimes let her facial expression and gestures suffice in response. Every so often Brooke would translate a particularly elaborate statement of Leah's for Onion, but otherwise she ignored him. Leah couldn't tell if this was their normal mode of interaction or if it were due to her presence. She wished Brooke would pay more attention to her beau, or he to her, so that she might better gauge the nature and depth of their relationship and, more importantly, try to determine what Brooke saw in this shy and, so far, unremarkable islander. After a while she began to feel sorry for him and attempted to include him in their exchange. But each time she'd face him, always with a grin or smile, he'd look away—to his beer can sweating on the table or out the dark window behind her head, leaving her half-finished gestures to fall away unseen, let alone understood.

As the sisters' conversation turned to college—Leah's imminent departure, Brooke's planned return—Onion looked up and said, "I'm going out for a smoke," bringing two fingers to his lips in what might have been an unconscious gesture or a nod to Leah's presence, though this time she didn't need that help as he'd actually looked up when he spoke.

As he slid back from the table, she noticed Brooke's free arm fall to her side then rise to the table. Leah couldn't believe she'd failed to note her sister's missing hand this whole time. Brooke smiled sheepishly at being discovered then set her jaw—why should she worry about such things with Leah, her lifelong soul-mate? After a few minutes of distracted comments and frequent glances toward the door, Brooke said, "Let me go check on Onion."

Leah nodded, glad to terminate the uncomfortable moment. She sat at the table for a while, staring at the can of warm beer she slowly spun in her cupped hands and sniffing the strong odor of marijuana smoke drifting in through the open window. After maybe ten minutes, she stood and emptied her can in the sink, tossed it in the trash, and headed to bed after peeing and brushing her teeth. Against all expectation, she fell into a sound sleep, wouldn't have heard the two in the next room even if Brooke had dared try.

"I think you and Paul should check out Windsor's Cove on Saturday."

Leah stared at her sister across the rack of home-made tie-dyed t-shirts. They were in one of the numerous summer-season shops run by residents out of their homes. This one belonged to Majestic Harper, a Yankee who'd moved here some years back and fancied herself a folk artist in the emerging new-age genre. Brooke had introduced Leah to Majestic who'd greeted her not with a handshake or a slap on the back but with a bringing together of her hands in a prayerful gesture followed by a deep bow that revealed purple streaks in her dark brown hair. Leah wasn't sure how to respond so had returned a broad grin and polite nod to Majestic's large round eyes when her face came back up. The shop owner was now seated just a few feet away in the cramped space, stringing beads onto what would become a bracelet or necklace to add to her display of "Island Made Healing Jewelry."

"Mitchell said he could run you out there for free," Brooke continued.

Leah could tell by the accentuated movement in Brooke's lips and tongue that she was mouthing the words, not speaking them.

"I told you about Windsor's Cove," Brooke said, growing impatient at Leah's lack of response.

Leah nodded.

"Well, since I'm working a double shift Saturday and you and Paul won't have anything to do, I thought it would be a fun outing for you. You'd have the island all to yourselves—king and queen of your own domain." She grinned at the pretty image she'd conjured.

Leah stared at her sister.

Brooke held up a t-shirt dyed with bold reds and dripping black. She laughed as if to say "Can you believe this? I just have to get it!"

Leah held on her sister's eyes through the diversion.

"Why that look? It's a nice subtle shirt!" She hung it back on the rack. "You just have no sense of flair! Anyway, I figured you two lovebirds could take some food and drink in a cooler. There's an outhouse there in case—you know. And Mitchell says you can get in the house through the crawlspace if the weather turns bad. But it's supposed to be nice."

Leah knew Brooke wasn't done.

"But there's a small problem," Brooke added. "Mitchell has to work the morning shift, so he can't take you out there till mid-afternoon. And you wouldn't want to go all the way out there just to run around for a few minutes then come back." Brooke paused and actually looked at Leah's eyes.

Leah stared back.

Brooke looked away with her eyes but kept her mouth facing Leah as she said the rest in a rush. "So I figured you could take Greta's tent and a couple sleeping bags and sleep out there under the stars. Mitchell says kids do it all the time. It will be so sweet and romantic for you and Paul before your college separation."

Leah exhaled slowly. She wondered if she actually shook her head in disbelief or simply imagined the gesture.

Brooke managed to look up and hold her eyes. "Mitchell would pick you up in the morning and get you back in time for lunch and a little quality time with old Sis before catching the three o'clock ferry." She smiled before pulling out another t-shirt—lime green and pink. "What's this? A pistachio and raspberry sundae?" She laughed, returned the hanger, moved on to the next rack of t-shirts, these with a mix of black symbols—a peace sign, a ying-yang—on pastel backgrounds.

Leah watched Brooke move away and for the first time in her life wondered who this person was. She wasn't angry or frightened; she was just mystified. Was this a person that had emerged since Brooke had left the mainland a couple months ago? Or had this person been inside Brooke all along and she'd simply missed her or intentionally ignored her?

She walked to the shop's narrow front porch with two white rockers looking out on a sun-blasted early afternoon. Everything beyond the porch's line of shade was a glaring white—the sky, the sand parking lot and road, the cars, the adjacent houses, even the gnarled oaks and entwined bushes rimming the clearing. This was a different world, an adult world, a harsh and brutal one she was ill-prepared for. She sat heavily on the nearest rocker, felt its first backward lurch as a tumble into oblivion. She closed her eyes against the multi-pronged assault.

You needn't fear, white dolphin said.

What? Leah said, incredulous.

This. You've prospered in far worse.

Leah noted his contractions. That was new. Not like this.

Yes.

Without Brooke?

White dolphin smiled and this made Leah laugh. She could never quite get used to a dolphin smiling. Brooke will always be there.

No.

Yes. You're simply not leaning on her now; but then, you never were.

Oh, but I was. I still am!

White Dolphin shook his head. You only thought you were.

Something tickled Leah's wrist. White dolphin disappeared. Leah didn't immediately open her eyes. She rolled her wrist on the rocker's arm. Something trailed across her open palm and lightly over her exposed wrist. The touch was both captivating and excruciating. After a few seconds, Leah opened her eyes.

Brooke was kneeling before her on the porch. She stopped the tickle-touch but left her hand on Leah's wrist, lightly encircling it between thumb and fingers. "Are you O.K.?"

Leah, still focused on Brooke's touch, recalled how her sister would hold her wrist firmly but gently as they navigated downtown or walked to the pool when they were young. She slowly, almost dreamily, shifted her attention from Brooke's touch to her face just a few feet away. Backlit by the brilliant day, it was hard to make out Brooke's features. The face seemed an inscrutable mask, hidden and ominous. But gradually it came into focus as she narrowed her view and excluded the brightness beyond. She nodded—I am O.K.

Brooke grinned. "That's good. I thought I'd lost you for a minute."

Leah shook her head—That will never happen.

"Good." Brooke stood into the backdrop of glare, releasing Leah's wrist as she raised both arms toward the sky. "Let's go get lunch. Onion says he'll fry up some conch for you to try." She bounded down the two steps and out into the sun.

After the briefest of pauses, Leah stood and followed.

A Beginning

Raising the wedding gown's sash did better hide her sister's sixteen-week pregnancy. Had Leah been prone to challenge Brooke, she might've asked why it mattered. All the carefully chosen guests—most of whom had made the long drive from home and waited in line for a turn on the small ferry to cross to the island, except for Onion's family—were well aware of Brooke's condition and one could argue that trying to hide it only accentuated the hypocrisy of the white dress and prissy wedding.

But Leah was not prone to question her sister, on this or any point. The face she saw reflected in the mirror, partially screened by Brooke's brown hair gathered atop her head in cascading curls perfectly arranged this morning by Marybelle—Onion's aunt and the island's only hairdresser if you didn't count that recent Yankee immigrant Sue Howell who had the gall to put the words trained and licensed on her salon sign—the face Leah saw in the mirror had eyes that were slightly stunned and a mouth partially open in mute acquiescence.

Brooke looked up from studying the sash's positioning and her gaze crossed Leah's stare reflected in the mirror and hung there for the longest of moments. In that silent exchange the two sisters acknowledged the twining of their lives that went so far back neither could remember a time before it existed, a weaving of experience that made them seem two appendages of the same body, the same head, the same heart, not a condition they talked about but one they lived, had always lived. In that silent exchange they granted a depth of love that knew no bottom.

Brooke smiled and Leah returned that smile with a rare beauty and grace that had already melted the hearts of so many (including Paul, though Leah had politely declined Brooke's offer to invite him), would melt those of countless others as she ventured further outward into the world, at college and beyond. Leah would always be loved. "Now be a dear and clip those loops so no one knows we raised the sash," Brooke directed.

Leah looked at her blankly.

Brooke shook her head in another familiar gesture. "The sash loops, Lee! You can use the nail clippers from the make-up kit."

Leah walked over to the lounge's sideboard and rooted around in the make-up box till she found the clippers at the bottom. She knelt beside Brooke, found the loop on her sister's left side, held it out and carefully nipped the thin thread where it attached to the dress. Without standing she slid around to Brooke's other side, found that loop from amidst the folds of fabric, and clipped it. Then she made the mistake of looking toward the mirror from her kneeling position. From that angle she saw her sister's whole figure, head to toe, saw her as the beautiful bride she had practiced many times in childhood—sometimes in doctored robes and dresses and veils, sometimes in make-believe attire—but always practice, always make believe.

But not today. Today, Brooke was a real bride. Today she would be joined to another in a union that necessarily precluded her sister. It was a new vision but not yet a painful one. Leah had long known it was inevitable, if perhaps it had come sooner and in a way she could not have predicted.

In that vision Leah felt not loss nor loneliness—it was too soon for that. Brooke was still here, wasn't she? But in that vision Leah did feel something, shaping itself as a question more than an emotion, though the emotion of wonder and amazement did drift in around the edges, the periphery of this question: How did this happen? That was enough for now.

Brooke turned and pulled her sister up from kneeling, tucked a loose strand of Leah's blond hair back in place behind her ear, and ran her long fingers gently over Leah's lightly rouged cheeks (a rare use of makeup). Then she kissed her sister's forehead and said, "Now let's get this thing over with before I run out the back door and swim to the mainland, wedding gown and all."

Leah laughed then led the way out of the lounge and toward the small church's sanctuary. She was after all Maid of Honor, had to precede the bride down the aisle by a generous distance.

The End

