been at them, and the only cold she's felt the last few months is the lily-pond water from the Berry's backyard.

On the CD, Gordyfoot is singing about the Pony Man, who'll come at night to take her for a ride, and out the window, the sky's going dark fast with the sun gone. Chloe thinks it's funny that the Miracle asked for this CD, since he says he hates Gordon Lightfoot now. But she also understands, or thinks she does. It's hard to imagine being in the way-back, in the car with her parents, and listening to anything else. They keep the entire Gordon Lightfoot collection up there. Also, if the CD wasn't on, they'd have to listen to their mother. Freeze. Please. Pencil-bees.

For a while — long enough to get out of their neighbourhood and maybe even out of Missouri, half a CD or more — Chloe watches the wires in her window swing down, shoot up, swing down, shoot up. It's like starting and erasing an Etch a Sketch drawing, the window fills with trees and darkening sky and the thick, black lines of wire, then boop — telephone pole — and everything's blank for a second and then fills up again. Gets erased. Fills up again. Gets erased. Abruptly, it's all the way dark, and the wires vanish, and Venus pounces out of the sky. It's too bright, has been all summer, as though it's been lurking all day just on the other side of the sunlight.

With the Miracle coiled away from her and his head tilted down, she can see the semi-circle scar at the base of his neck, like an extra mouth, almost smiling. Chloe has always thought of that spot as the place where the miracle actually happened, though she's been told that's just where the clip to stop blood flow went. The real scar is higher, under the hair, where part of her brother's skull got cut open when he was five years old. Of course, she'd been all of a week old at the time and doesn't remember any of it. But she loves the story. Her mother curled on the waiting room couch where she'd been ever since she'd given birth to Chloe, expecting the doctors to come at any moment and tell her that her son was dead. Her mother erupting from that couch one morning and somehow convincing the surgeons who'd said the surgery couldn't work that it would work, just by the way she said it. By the way she seemed to know. And it had worked. The pressure that had been building in the Miracle's brain bled away. Two days later, he woke up himself again.

'What?' he says now, turning around to glower at her.

'Speed, speed, speed,' she chants.

He glowers some more. But after a few seconds, he nods.

'Yay,' says Chloe.

They can barely see the playing cards, which makes the game even more fun. Plus, the piles won't stay straight because of all the vibrations, which frustrates the Miracle but makes Chloe laugh even more as their hands dart between each other's for cards and tangle up and slap and snatch, and finally the Miracle's laughing, too, tickling her, Chloe's shrieking and they're both laughing until their father snarls, 'Kids, Goddamnit,' and both of them stop dead. Her father sounds growly, furious, nothing like he usually sounds.

Because he's trapped up there with Mom, Chloe thinks, and then she's horrified to have thought that, feels guilty, almost starts crying again.

'Sorry,' she whimpers.

'Just… sssh,' her father says.

It's the move, Chloe thinks, chants to herself. She lies back flat, and the Miracle stretches as much as he can stretch beside her.

'The Pony Man' is on again, so the same CD has played through twice, but only Chloe seems to have noticed. She's listening very closely, like the song says, so she'll hear the Pony Man if he comes. But all she hears is their station wagon's tires shushing on the nighttime road, which she imagines to be black and wet, like one of those oil puddles birds get stuck in on nature shows. She's fairly sure she can hear her father's thumbs, too, drumming the beat on the steering wheel, and if she closes her eyes, she can see his stain-y SHOW ME! shirt and the wonderful, white prickles around his happy mouth. He has told Chloe he's secretly a cat, and the prickles are whiskers he keeps trimmed so Mom won't know.

He's been shaving more closely lately, though. Smiling less.

Then she realizes she can hear her mother, crying now. Even the cry is new, a low-down bear-grunt, and Chloe turns towards the Miracle's back and pokes it.

'Tomorrow I'll be half as old as you,' she whispers. The Miracle doesn't respond. So she adds, 'The next day, I'll be more than half.'

The Miracle still doesn't respond, and she wonders if he's sleeping. His back is hard and curved like an armadillo shell.

'Catching up,' she tries, a very little bit louder, and as she speaks she glances into the seatback above her head, as though she could see through it, through the cartons to her parents. As though they could see her.

'You'll never catch up,' the Miracle murmurs, just as quiet, and Chloe thinks she sees his head tilt towards the front, too.

'I can if you wait.'

'Will you just go to sleep?' he hisses, and Chloe startles, squirms back. The Miracle's whole body drums to the road or the steady beat of her father's thumbs. But when he speaks again, he's using his nice voice. 'It'll make the drive go faster.'

Chloe almost tells him she doesn't want it to go faster. She likes the way-back, always has. Shut in with her brother, Gordyfoot's voice floating over and among them, her parents close but not with them, the stars igniting and the hours stretched longer and thinner than hours should be able to go. Silly Putty hours.

Chloe doesn't remember falling asleep, has no idea how long she sleeps. But she dreams of bird-feet hands. Hands, but the fingers too thin, yellow-hard. Her hands? Reaching through the bars towards the frantic, fluttering thing, all red and beating its pathetic little wings…

A bump jolts her awake, or else the cold, that old cold, she almost cries out, wraps herself in her own arms, blinks, holds on, drags her brain back to itself. Air-conditioning, it's just her father blasting the air-conditioning to stay awake, it's not in her chest, there are no hands in her chest. Chloe's eyes fly all the way open, and just like that, she knows.

She knows.

They're not my parents.

She knows because 'The Pony Man' is on again, the CD repeating, how many times, now? She knows because her father isn't tapping the steering wheel, which he always does, always always always, especially to Gordyfoot. She knows because her mother would never let it get this cold, her mother can't stand the cold, they always wind up fighting about it on night-drives and then swatting each other off the temperature controls and laughing and sometimes, when they think Chloe and the Miracle are sleeping, talking love-talk, very quietly.

They are talking now, but not that way. And in their changed voices. Her mother's bumpy, grunty and low. Her father's a snarl. Someone else's snarl.

Most of all, she knows because her mother's eyes — her real mother's eyes — are green, not blue. She very nearly screams, but jams her fist in her mouth, holds dead still. But the realization won't go away.

They aren't my parents.

It's ridiculous, a bird-feet hands dream. She wiggles furiously, trying to shake the realization loose.

But in the front seat, the new people — the ones that were her parents — are grunting. Snarl-whispering. And Chloe's mother's eyes are green.

At least 'The Pony Man' finally goes off. But the next song is the 'Minstrel of the Dawn' one. Another song about someone coming.

Stupid, Chloe insists her to herself. This is stupid. She feels around for the snack bag her father has let the Miracle stow back here, even though they've already brushed their teeth. The spiny, sticky carpet of the way-back scratches against her palms, and the engine shudders underneath her. Her hand smacks down on the paper bag, which makes a little pop. Chloe quivers, holds her breath, and up front, the grunting and the whispering stop.

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