“Half of me,” Leilani conceded, “might turn heads one day, but that’s balanced by the fact that I’m a mutant.”
“You’re not a mutant.”
The girl stamped her left foot on the ground, causing the leg brace to rattle softly. She raised her left hand, which proved to be deformed: The little finger and the ring finger were fused into a single misshapen digit that was connected by a thick web of tissue to a gnarled and stubby middle finger.
Until now, Micky hadn’t noticed this deformity. “Everyone’s got imperfections,” she said.
“This isn’t like having a big schnoz. I’m either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they’re afraid of mutants.”
“You want people to be afraid of you?”
“Fear implies respect,” Leilani said.
“So far, you’re not registering high on my terror meter.”
“Give me time. You’ve got a great body.”
Disconcerted to hear such a thing from a child, Micky covered her discomfort with self-deprecation: “Yeah, well, by nature I’m a huge pudding. I’ve got to work hard to stay like this.”
“No you don’t. You were born perfect, and you’ve got one of those metabolisms tuned like a space-shuttle gyroscope. You could eat half a cow and drink a keg of beer every day, and your butt would actually tighten up a notch.”
Micky couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been rendered speechless by anyone, but with this girl, she was nearly befuddled into silence. “How would you know?”
“I can tell,” Leilani assured her. “You don’t run, you don’t power walk — “
“I workout.”
“Oh? When was your last workout?”
“Yesterday,” Micky lied.
“Yeah,” said Leilani, “and I was out waltzing all night.” She stamped her left foot again, rattling her leg brace. “Having a great metabolism is nothing to be ashamed about. It’s not like laziness or anything.”
“Thanks for your approval.” “Your boobs are real, aren’t they?” “Girl, you are an amazing piece of work.”
“Thanks. They must be real. Even the best implants don’t look that natural. Unless there’s major improvement in implant technology, my best hope is to develop good boobs. You can be a mutant and still attract men if you’ve got great boobs. That’s been my observation, anyway. Men can be lovely creatures, but in some ways, they’re pathetically predictable.” “You’re nine, huh?”
“My birthday was February twenty-eighth. That was Ash Wednesday this year. Do you believe in fasting and penitence?”
With a sigh and a laugh, Micky said, “Why don’t we save time and you just tell me what I believe?”
“Probably not much of anything,” Leilani said, without a pause. “Except in having fun and getting through the day.”
Micky was left speechless not by the child’s acute perception but by hearing the truth put so bluntly, especially as this was a truth that she had so long avoided contemplating.
“Nothing wrong with having fun,” said Leilani. “One of the things I believe, if you want to know, is that we’re here to enjoy life.” She shook her head. “Amazing. Men must be all over you.”
“Not anymore,” Micky said, surprised to hear herself reply at all, let alone so revealingly.
A lopsided smile tugged at the right corner of the girl’s mouth, and unmistakable merriment enlivened her blue eyes. “Now don’t you wish you could see me as a mutant?”
“What?”
“As long as you think of me as a handicapped waif, your pity doesn’t allow you to be impolite. On the other hand, if you could see me as a weird and possibly dangerous mutant, you’d tell me none of this is my business, and you’d hustle me back to my own yard.”
“You’re looking more like a mutant all the time.”
Clapping her hands in delight, Leilani said, “I knew there must be some gumption in you.” She rose from her chair with a hitch and pointed across the backyard. “What’s that thing?”
“A rosebush.”
“No, really.”
“Really. It’s a rosebush.”
“No roses.”
“The potential’s there.”
“Hardly any leaves.”
“Lots of thorns, though,” Micky noted.
Squinching her face, Leilani said, “I bet it pulls up its roots late at night and creeps around the neighborhood, eating stray cats.”
“Lock your doors.”
“We don’t have cats.” Leilani blinked. “Oh.” She grinned. “Good one.” She hooked her right hand into an imitation of a claw, raked the air, and hissed.
“What did you mean when you said ‘all bets are off’?”
“When did I say that?” Leilani asked disingenuously.
“You said you’ve only got until your next birthday, and then all bets are off.”
“Oh, the alien-contact thing.”
Although that wasn’t;in answer, she turned away from Micky and crossed the lawn in steel-stiffened gait.
Micky leaned forward from the angled back of the lounge chair. “Leilani?”
“I say a lot of stuff. Not all of it means anything.” At the gap in the broken fence, the girl stopped and turned. “Say, Michelina Bellsong, did I ask whether you believe in life after death?”
“And I was a wiseass.”
“Yeah, I remember now.”
“So…do you?” Micky asked.
“Do I what?”
“Believe in life after death?”
Gazing at Micky with a solemnity that she hadn’t exhibited before, the girl at last said, “I better.”
As she negotiated the fallen pickets and crossed the neglected sun-browned lawn next door, the faint click- and-squeak of her leg brace faded until it could have been mistaken for the language of industrious insects hard at work in the hot, dry air.
For a while after the girl had gone into the neighboring house trailer, Micky sat forward in the lounge chair, staring at the door through which she had disappeared.
Leilani was a pretty package of charm, intelligence, and cocky attitude that masked an aching vulnerability. But while remembered moments of their encounter now brought a smile to Micky, she was also left with a vague uneasiness. Like a quick dark fish, some disturbing half-glimpsed truth had seemed to dart beneath the surface of their conversation, though it eluded her net.
The liquid-thick heat of the late-August sun pooled around Micky. She felt as though she were floating in a hot bath.
The scent of recently mown grass saturated the still air: the intoxicating essence of summer.
In the distance rose the lulling rumble-hum of freeway traffic, a not unpleasant drone that might be mistaken for the rhythmic susurration of the sea.
She should have grown drowsy, at least lethargic, but her mind hummed more busily than the traffic, and her body grew stiff with a tension that the sun couldn’t cook from her.
Although it seemed unrelated to Leilani Klonk, Micky recalled something that her aunt Geneva had said only the previous evening, over dinner…
‘CHANGE ISN’T EASY, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing how you think. Changing how you think means changing what you believe about life. That’s hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.”
