When Girl and Brother reached the big, empty parking lot behind the shopping plaza, most of the other kids had turned off toward their own houses—there weren’t that many kids who walked as far as Girl and Brother, and she envied those who had parents willing or able to pick their kids up after school. Girl hated this section of the long trek home. It was ugly and gray and the sun was hot with no trees to give them shade. There were a few scraggly weeds that managed to push their way up through the cracks in the broken concrete and old rusted lampposts to break up the view of the back of the stores. As they got near the shipping doors for Irondequoit Plaza, a kid on a white bike pulled ahead of the siblings and stopped suddenly, cutting them off and almost knocking Girl down.
It was Richie, one of the school bullies. He was in Brother’s grade but was shorter than Girl, and he rode a girl’s bike that had a tall pole topped with a triangular flag on the back of the white banana seat.
“Look who I found! Brother Lillibridge and his sister. Nice floods, Brother.” Girl’s hands balled up into round, hard apples at her sides. She had never been in a fight with anyone besides Brother. Her hands might have been ready to brawl, but Girl was too scared to raise her fists to beneficial height, and they hung uselessly at the end of her arms. Girl could no more break her paralysis than she could scream in dreams. Richie was short, dark-haired, and squinty-eyed with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. Everyone was afraid of him and his friends. He only hung with the coolest and toughest kids in school, and Girl and Brother were neither cool nor tough.
“Can’t your mother afford to buy you new clothes? Four-eyes.”
Girl’s eyes narrowed—no one could pick on Brother besides her. She hated Richie, and hated that Brother couldn’t stand up to him, even though he was more than a head taller than the bully. She knew it wasn’t in Brother’s nature to fight back. He was afraid of dogs and was too shy to make friends easily. Girl wasn’t very tough either, but she was their only hope.
“You’re riding a girl’s bike,” she sneered.
“It’s my sister’s. Got a problem with that?” Richie spat on the ground. Fear blanked Girl’s mind of any more snappy comebacks. Turns out she wasn’t any better at this than Brother was.
Brother’s moist fingers closed around Girl’s. Run, she could feel him think, his terror fusing with her own as the fear-sweat of their hands acted as a conductor for action. Fight or flight. They flew.
The siblings ran holding hands, Girl’s red book bag bouncing and thumping into her shoulders. Her corsage turned sideways, dangling from the pin that secured it to her birthday dress. Girl’s pink Keds slapped the concrete as she pumped her legs as hard and fast as she could. She wished for the wind to sweep them up into the sky. Brother’s legs were longer, and he didn’t let go—his hand pulled Girl along faster than she could have run on her own. He was the wind that bore them both to safety. Neither of them would ever leave one another behind, not even to save themselves. Never. At home and at school it was Brother and Girl against the world. From that day on, Brother was Girl’s best friend. He stopped pummeling her when he was mad and she dug her fingernails into him no more.
the pool
“The pool is kidney shaped, like a bean,” Mother said, but Girl didn’t know what that meant. Mother had signed up for a family pool membership at the Sheraton Inn by the airport. “And it has skylights,” she added. Girl had never seen a kidney, but she knew what beans in chili looked like, because she carefully ate around them, leaving them in a red pile at the bottom of her bowl. She had only seen round or rectangular pools—a kidney seemed like an inefficient design for swimming laps. When they walked into the pool area Girl fell in love with the graceful curves of the pool, mimicked in four bubble skylights above it. She understood instantly that kidney-shaped pools were the best kind of pools there were.
Mother and Stepmother swam laps, but mostly they sat on beach chairs and read books or sat in the hot tub and talked. Girl and Brother played Marco Polo and if there were other children around they had chicken fights, which they almost always won as long as Brother was the horse and Girl was on his back. Sometimes they would “polar bear,” which meant they sat in the sauna as long as they could stand, then rolled in the snow outside and jumped in the pool. Girl didn’t like breathing the hot sauna air and she was a little afraid she’d get locked in there, even though the door didn’t have a lock. The wooden benches inside smelled good and cedar-y, but if she accidentally sat on a nail head, it burned her leg. Brother liked to sit on the top bench, but it was harder to breathe close to the ceiling. Girl liked best to sit on the floor under the bottom bench if there weren’t any grown-ups in there with them. The snow part of the polar bear was terrible, and Girl never really rolled; instead she ran outside, the snow burning the bottoms of her feet, and rubbed some snow on her legs and arms. She could not willingly lower her body full-length in the snow like Brother. A grown-up was always willing to man the sliding glass door from the courtyard to the indoor
