See you soon,
Your brother,
Max
She sighed and folded the letter and put it away. She hadn’t seen him soon, and she wanted to know when she would. How much learning could a person do? Wasn’t he done yet? She retrieved her Barbie from the grass and held her up to the light. The doll’s smooth plastic features smelled faintly of home. Thorns had ripped her pink dress, and one of her tiny arched feet was stained green, but she was still beautiful. She was a birthday Barbie, though she hadn’t been given on a birthday. Jean remembered the day her father had brought her home, in a box of glossy cardboard, Barbie standing elegantly behind clear plastic, smiling out as if from a store window.
She wanted to go home.
“Jean?”
The girl’s voice surprised Jean. She looked up. The clearing on which the cottage sat didn’t go very far, and a little way from where she played with her back to the house, the long-necked trees stood in the warm morning, the leaves waving now and then with the humid breeze. The gray and black trunks made lines that kept the shadows in, and she couldn’t see into them. Who was it? It couldn’t be one of her sisters.
“Who’s there?”
She stood, swinging her doll by its legs, and ventured to the edge of the trees. Again, the voice came from the shadows.
“It’s me, remember? You came to my house. I got lost — I — I need help.”
Jean took a step beneath the trees and blinked. Not far off, standing shyly beside an elm tree and picking at its bark, stood Liyla.
“Hi!” the girl said. “Remember?”
Jean raised her hand to wave back wonderingly. Where had Liyla come from? Maybe she’d brought her here by thinking about her.
“C’mere,” the girl said. “You know me. Remember?”
Jean glanced back at the house. No one moved there. Laysia was on the other side, in the garden. But Jean did know Liyla. She moved toward her.
“How’d you get here?”
Liyla smiled, her lips spreading to reveal those sharp teeth.
“I didn’t like the city anymore. I left. I heard there were places to go here, in the woods. Is it true?”
Jean nodded.
“Can you show me?”
Jean looked back again, over her shoulder. A small cloud of insects buzzed in the sunlight near Laysia’s house.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I should go alone.”
Liyla’s smile widened. Her eyes were very round. “I’ll be with you, though, right? And we know each other.”
Still Jean hesitated.
“Maybe I should get Susan. She’ll want to know you’re here.”
Liyla grinned and nodded. But as Jean turned to go, the girl caught her hand. “Wait,” she said. “We don’t have to bother her yet. I’m tired. I thought I’d rest awhile. I’ve been walking so long. You want to stay with me? Just right here?”
Jean didn’t like the feel of Liyla’s hand. Those sharp, clawed fingers. And despite the heat of the day, Liyla’s touch was cold.
“Okay,” she said, pulling her hand gently back. “Just for a little while, I guess.”
Liyla sat down among the tree roots that jutted up from the ground like bent fingers.
“Come on,” she said. “Sit down, why don’t you?”
Jean sat. But she inched backward when Liyla tried to move closer to her. There was something odd about the girl, different from before. She fidgeted too much. Her eyes darted out into the forest, then back to Jean.
“Does your mother know you’re gone?” Jean asked her.
“What?” Liyla jumped a little and reddened beneath the roughness of her strange face. She brought her hand up to smooth her wild hair.
Jean stared. The girl’s collar had dipped, revealing a wide, ugly scab that ran down into her chest. All around it, the hair that had coated Liyla’s skin was gone. Liyla saw her looking and jerked her shirt back in place.
“I got splashed with some tea,” she said.
“Oh.”
Jean wanted to leave. But it wouldn’t be nice, she thought, to simply run from the girl. She was alone, too, after all.
Liyla kicked at the knotty side of a root, trying to worm a toe under it. She looked again into the forest.
“Hey,” she said, smiling suddenly. “Want to play something? A game I know?”
Jean shrugged. “What game?”
“It’s a follow game. You know, I’ll do something, and you see if you can match it. We play it all the time back home. Want to?”
Jean tilted her head. She hadn’t noticed Liyla being much interested in playing before. But maybe it was being alone like this and far from home. Jean understood that.
“Just right here?”
“Sure. We won’t go far.”
“Okay.”
Liyla stood and stretched her arms. “I’m first,” she said. She hopped on one foot over the roots, making a bouncy circle around the tree. “Now you.”
Jean did the same. When it was her turn, she hopped backward over the roots. Liyla tried to follow and lost her balance. But she only laughed when she fell, an unsettling, fluttery sound.
“My turn,” Liyla said. She wound her way, skipping, around several trees. Jean followed. Then Jean climbed to a low branch, and Liyla did the same.
“You’re a good climber,” she said. “But can you run?”
She took off at a sprint then — and Jean followed, Barbie’s yellow hair flying. When she caught up to Liyla, the girl was panting, bent over double.
“You’re good,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Little, but fast.”
Jean smiled. She turned, but she couldn’t see the house.
“We’d better go back,” she said.
“Okay.”
Liyla was still
